Pros: Good enough performance. So far extremely reliable.
Cons: Not really a con, but not sure my fancy motherboard m.2 heatsink actually increased performance, so, should you not have one, I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
Overall Review: Definitely would recommend if on sale. Be advised this was a slightly older /slower model. pay close attention to the part number for the newer faster ones.
Pros: Works with my MIDCO ISP / was on their compatibility list. Over the phone very quick setup. MIDCO said would update firmware automatically in an hour or two. Could be my imagination but seems snappier / less glitchy than my old Linksys CM3008.
Cons: for a used modem, price was somewhat high, however unit was clean, properly reset, nothing rattly, runs relatively cool and included a generous hi quality network cable and power supply.
Overall Review: Cannot speak to the wireless router portion other than the onboard 2.4 ghz was wonderfully easy to disable, -a simple mechanical switch on the front. I already had a good dual band router so extra wireless was not necessary (but certainly was necessary to be able to turn off!) Nice to know I have backup though.
Pros: Hynix ICs, Hynix pcb.
Cons: Hynix ICs, Hynix pcb.
Overall Review: I suppose they work and stay cool. Using four of these in an old i7 6850 rig and they seem to work ok. Affordable on sale.
Pros: Overclocked a 2x16GB set of inexpensive Timetec ram to 3600 CL 16 easily on this board. The layout is nice and simple, Second M.2 works off the chipset(?) so no unexpected surprises with suddenly losing primary x16 pciex functionality there like some boards. Smokin fast wifi, and rock solid Intel LAN. Rock solid VRM section with a large heatsink. It just works, but you can fiddle with more VRM settings beyond auto should you want to. Higher quality IO shield that has the cushion back without all the little grounding "feelers" that can aggravate a smooth install. Came with latest bios, but handy Bios Flashback function there just in case you need it.
Cons: You do lose two SATA ports to the primary M.2 which happens to most B450 boards, and most all the extra PCIE slots to the second m.2. Not really a con, but this does have MSI's stripped down black and white 'Click Bios". Main difference: You can only save Overclock profiles to a USB stick, -no room internally for that in bios.
Overall Review: This board gives the impression of quality, and the rainbow LEDs are tastefully done. Some reviewers go on endlessly about how the second 4 pin auxilliary cpu power supply is not really needed, etc. etc.. As a person that has lost a perfectly good motherboard during a bios flash due to a flaky 8-pin, I for one think they should be standard, as they greatly increase the probability that all positive rails are connecting solidly there (take that, Buildzoid!)
Pros: A bit different flavor for somebody that has been used to Nvidia cards. It's a likeable, steady card that scores well on Open GL and gaming tests (scores @ 4/5ths of what my reference 1070 can do.) My sample seems to run quite cool and its cooler appears to be designed adequately and is not too noisy in my view. On sale and with a rebate, comes in quite inexpensive indeed.
Cons: None. Win 10 took a while to recognize and adjust the driver landscape, then I downloaded recommended Catalyst Suite from MSI's Product Website. Everthing fine so far. It's MSI, so I expect it to hold up well.
Overall Review: Money well spent. Higher memory bandwidth than a GTX 1060, and its quite noticeable. Wish I had ordered two!
Pros: Updated review: T. Burner will not reveal if these are truly CJR Hynix, -but they are of quite recent manufacture and are now hitting DDR4 3600 with quite good benchmark scores at 16 19 19 38 2T with TFAW and a few others tightened up as well on an admittedly superior Gigabyte Z390 Ultra 6 layer board and 9700K processor. They would clock higher but scores were not as good. The naked black PCB of the sticks more or less match this mobo and to me really look awesome.
Cons: Not really a con, but loosening timings as stated above, then setting training voltage to 1.38 and setting running voltage a bit higher (1.4v.) did the trick to get them there, otherwise 3333 was seemingly as high as they wanted to go. The Neo CJR 3600 available from Gskill's XMP might be a bit less fuss (which I have also tested...) -but, honestly these run cooler and bench better.
Overall Review: Solid performance, seemingly good quality (nothing to indicate otherwise) and extremely reasonable price-wise. Worth checking out!
Pros: This actually works well, ...better than a set of four mid grade Sams B-Die on my Ryzen 5 2600X rig tend to do, as Dual Rank configs are notoriously hard to run on Ryzen. I believe its at 3000 with 16 16 16 30-ish timings down tight using Ryzen calc suggestions. (Actually, perhaps in the 14s, -can't quite remember.) As for intel Z370 and up, easily getting 3200 at 16 18 18 36 1T, perhaps somewhat tighter. Your mileage may vary... these seem of very consistent quality. No individual serial numbers given or necessary.
Cons: Not Really a con, but Gear Down Enabled called for on the Ryzen, however-still getting very impressive 40GB/sec w Sandra's quite understated Bandwidth Benchmark. msi 570 Gaming Plus mobo is what was used for Ryzen benching. Yes, its undoubtedly a Daisy Chain Topology Board..
Overall Review: Highly recommended. Seems 16 GB isnt really quite enough these days...
Pros: These perform exemplary well with my 8600k on an msi Z370M Gaming Pro AC, easily overclocked a bit further to DDR4 3333. Pretty high bandwidth scores while sticking with just 1.36 volts. Very consistent performance.
Cons: Not really a con, but these utilize Hynix ICs.
Overall Review: Slightly different than as shown in the pictures, I received a vers. 5.32 kit
Pros: Over the top performing fans (yes, they are loud if wide open. They don't need to be.) Oversized rubber tubing. ICUE controllable pump (two speeds) and Fans (three speeds). Controllable RGB logo on pump (very subtle.) ICUE works well.
Cons: the cold plate/pump surely is not their finest. Even wide open, am not sure it holds a candle to its more primitive predecessors as found on a H55, for example. Shows twice the rpms compared to predecessor...must be something way different in design. Have had two of these. One seemed perhaps slightly better. Chose to run fans on medium setting, pump on quiet setting (in fear of it burning out more than anything else... there must be a reason why they get refurbished!!)
Overall Review: AM4 adapter brackets were included on this second one. Don't know that I would want this paired with anything larger than socket 1151...ICUE shows coolant slow to heat up...again, not so sure cold plate is doing its job very well...but, this is very nice priced, and the fans provide incidental system cooling within the case if done right...
Pros: Samsung B-die -pretty sure now. Have gotten a pair of them up to DDR4 4256 @ 18 19 19 19 39 at 4.5 volts without much problem. This was with an i5 8600K on a MSI 370M Gaming Pro AC, cache running at 4.7 Ghz. I settled for DDR4 3866 @ 18 18 18 38, as less volts (1.4) as well as a 4.4Ghz cache speed with a cheaper Z390 board does the trick there. Performance smoothness improvement in 3d games well worth it'
Cons: not a con but could not find anything on this kit on the Corsair website. This was probably old stock and thus the ridiculously low end-of-season sale price. Box printing mentioned something about 2014 on it.
Overall Review: Sometimes you get lucky, as I did here. Its been said B-die will be discontinued. I'd imagine as well as these scale with voltage it may also be their achillies heel when it comes to stability when temps go up, thus, the fans.
Pros: Beast of a fan that is PWM and hits 2000rpm or higher if needed (but one need NOT, -it is that good!) Little rubber adhesive bumpers to lessen vibration at the screw positions.
Cons: NADA
Overall Review: This is the original model of fan the original Hyper 212 came with. So glad I found that they still are available!
Pros: This case was the cheapest one I could find featuring a true USB C breakout front panel port. The rest of the features and flexibility this case brings really impressed me. Tons of room for a front radiator (although have not yet owned one, a triple 120 shouldn't be any problem.) Tons of room for a triple on the top. Magnetic dust filters on front and top. Mechanical HDD bay can adjust sideways considerably. Cool RGB front with a button on top and its own controller that has decent enough pattern choices, as well as an 'off' setting. All USB ports seemed high quality and worked without a hitch.
Cons: Not really a con for me, but some may say screws strip out easily, or that the case is a bit flimsy. So, yes, the metal is a bit on the soft side. But if you are gentle and tighten gently by hand, you'll have little problem. and yes, the fans are a bit weak, but they are quiet wide open, which for me was perfect for the top mount rear and top middle. My 120mm video card radiator mounted top front. Slid my Corsair V100i down as far as possible in front to make room.
Overall Review: The front RGB is not addressable, but I could care less. To me, this white and silver case looks fantastic, is priced right and would definitely buy again.
Pros: Great value
Cons: I own a couple 256gb 760p series M.2 as well and there is little comparison..Even though smaller in capacity, the 760p holds up massively better under stress. That being said, they are also about twice the price.
Overall Review: These are great to fill that extra M.2 slot so many motherboards have these days. As is often the case, perhaps the larger sizes perform better?
Pros: Easy setup. Great bios as to be expected from MSI. Solid quality. At least one M.2 pciex capable slot. Some LEDs for a bit of bling.
Cons: As always, MSI bends over backwards to make sure all memory modules you are likely to pop in there will work (when using K-Series processors.) That being said, my experience trying several kits of XMP,-although they all ran, did not actually enhance benchmark performance like on other more expensive boards.
Overall Review: So my take on this board is to go for a single CL16 2400 or 2666 dual rank 16GB Ram stick over a more expensive dual channel kit. Of interest is the Power header for a Thunderbolt add on card. Could not get my Asus TBEX 3 card to appear, -then again, when does it hardly ever??
Pros: Fast
Cons: none so far
Overall Review: blazing fast reading 64 GB SD card (class 10) w. USB C 3.1. Seemed even faster reading thru Thunderbolt 3 port!
Pros: Corsair fit and feel has yet to disappoint. Here is a set of ram that works out of the box at rated speed and timing even without enabling xmp. My motherboard had identified these as Micron chips (and, alas, after a board bios update the chip identification piece has been now taken away!) Briefly tried these at 2800 15-17-17-36 and they seemed to work just fine.
Cons: none. $200 on sale
Overall Review: anytime you can score $50 per 8GB, that's darn good value these days.
Pros: OK value for under $120. Should you use the UHD 630 graphics it helps make it a good value.
Cons: In these days of Spectre Meltdown patches, I can see why Intel is calling what used to be an i5 an i3...or why they are calling the 8600K an i5. There is a lot more wheel-spinning going on than before. This thing is shy a few clock speed bins to be an appreciable gamer both in CPU and in cache. You certainly do not want to pick this one for any modern content creation unless you are very very patient (as in waiting days!!)! My sample really wasn't running all that cool considering it was only chugging along at 3.6 ghz.. my guess is that if you 'were allowed' to overclock, it would get hot pretty fast . that being said, the provided cooler was completely adequate to keep it under 55* or so full out.
Overall Review: for what its worth some memory overclocking was easily achievable, pretty much like Skylake Kabylake K-Series chips could. I had a 7350K once and that blew this thing out of the water!
Pros: Fantastic value, great compatibility, above average performance,-and intel reliability.
Cons: none
Pros: Stock XMP operation is rock solid. Was able to attain 3033 easily
Cons: none
Pros: Nice, simple software that works with Windows 10. AISO drivers automatically included. Super clean digital output. Decent headphone level output. Driver software labeled "CMedia."
Cons: none so far, although admittedly haven't tried recording with it yet. Doubtful that it will record any more than two tracks thru the optical in...
Overall Review: after getting this, I've finally understood a little more about using AISO4ALL v.2 in regards for setting up playback for a low cost Pro Tools mixdown station. in retrospect, I could've gotten just about as good playback with an onboard Realtek ALC892 or higher audio chipset, then going optical out. This perhaps sounds a smidge better...? And thanks to the supplied AISO drivers, you don't need AISO4ALL, although perhaps you should in addition anyway. Couldn't tell you just how far down you can set the hardware buffer, but stereo playback only seemed to be fine at default of its AISO of 3 msec for 44.1 24 bit... which I think was equiv 256mb.
Pros: You can overlock these a bit using the odd ratio multiplier and get 2533 out of them with same timings on Skylake Kabylake.
Cons: That's as high as they want to go. Price has nearly doubled as well in very little time.
Overall Review: These look good, too, -fit snugly in the slots, and are light enough so a person won't have to worry about them shaking loose. After decades of overclocking and tweaking, its nice to know these sticks paired with a 6th / 7th gen $200 intel processor, a $30 cooler, a $60 board (preferably on sale), an NVMe SSD, a power sipping supply and a GTX 1070 makes for about the best 4.1 Ghz PC experience I've ever had.
Pros: when approaching 3000 and higher ram speeds, it always takes more voltage at SA volts, IO volts and overall volts. Was able to reduce all of them from XMP pre sets considerably and still run. These sticks were also able to go to somewhat tighter timings when at 2666 and lower speeds as well. Have worked fine in both an X99 w 6850K rig and a Z170 Skylake/Kabylake rig .
Cons: Have yet to have any issue with these or my two other sets of GSkill DDR4 ram
Overall Review: I like these fine at DDR4 2800 / 1.25 volts in my Supermicro Z170 board
Pros: It's an Intel SSD, -same price but with many times the performance of the old SATA3 SATAs. I've tried the 240 GB version, and now this one...it may be faster yet. NVMe performance is spectacular, and these Intels do not dissapoint.
Cons: None.
Overall Review: I have purchased a dozen or so Intel SSDs over the years, and have had only one fail. It had a five year warranty. Running the serial #, the warrany had expired, but by my sales receipt I managed to produce it was still good. Intel sent me an exact replacement in just a week or two. I sleep well at night knowing this.
Pros: Was looking for a CPU water cooler with a single 140mm fan and was hoping to get something that was quiet and would cool my FX9370 well and yet have a radiator that was fairly slim. This has fit the bill perfectly! Even though recertified, it seemed completely brand new as far as I can tell and was the best cooler value ever at $50.
Cons: Not really a con, but I was a bit disappointed that this cooler wouldn't squeeze into an Antec 300 or 302 case next to my M5A99FX mobo's CPU power connector without modification...Ended up using a 302 with the radiator above and the fan pulling from the outside (top) of the case. Since it is raised up, I decided to snip away the case's perforated grille there. If you are thinking of doing the same, it actually goes pretty easy with some side snips...just leave the screw holes portion of the case so there is something holding the assembly. Now I must find a grille for the (somewhat awkward looking, outside mounted) 140mm fan.
Overall Review: This seems to cool the FX's 220 watts markedly better than the Antec 950 Kuhler and the Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus / 212 EVO coolers, all of which I have now tested extensively, even with push/pull fan arrangements, but I can imagine that a person doing tons of wide-open rendering, benchmarking etc. wanting to keep peak temperatures well below 60-70*C may want something with more thermal capacity. This one is beautifully well-behaved, however, and has a very smooth and reassuring sound to it. The pump hits 1500 rpm, higher than my two previous Corsair water coolers, and I can't really hear it or feel it at all. Seems to me most 120mm CPU fans, push/pull or no, can touch the silent power and effectiveness of a good 140mm unit.
Pros: It works in a cnvi M.2 E key slot. It comes with the leads / antenna terminals with nuts and washers to screw into the holes provided by your mobo backplate. It comes with gargantuan antennas and extra long antenna leads. It gets recognized immediately by Windows 10. It says "intel" on it. Would guess It will most likely work on many Z390 / Z490 motherboards with same M.2 E key.
Cons: This thing took forever to get here. The tracking showed it stuck in an LA airport for weeks and weeks. It was in the midst of Pandemic and Trade Wars. It was a bit overpriced when I purchased this, and have since seen a kit offered by "Gaga-bite" for about half the price on another big reseller site.
Overall Review: Seems good. cnvi wireless should have less resource footprint /cpu overhead, and hopefully the advanced Bluetooth features will be great, although I have to admit I've yet to use them. This may still be desirable over a wifi 6 chip as there are not many wifi 6 routers deployed yet which are necessary to take full advantage of that new standard.