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Nason H.

Nason H.

Joined on 01/29/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 4
Most Favorable Review

Case Review

APEVIA Black / Silver SECC Steel / Aluminum X-MASTER-AL/500 ATX Media Center / HTPC Case
APEVIA Black / Silver SECC Steel / Aluminum X-MASTER-AL/500 ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

Pros: It's $80. Even without the PSU it would be a deal. All metal except for the front panel. Not a bad looking case for $80. It will take full size PCI/e cards (well maybe not your 12" Gaming Graphics card but I think there are only about 3 HTPC cases out there that would. )

Cons: 1. Sure the PSU isn't great, but pretty much any case with a PSU included for $80 is going to have a low end PSU. Not a big deal, just plan to put in a good power supply at some point in your build. 2. Rear fans kinda noisy. My advice dump them, and pop in a 120mm Scythe on the side. 3. Eject button may need some padding.

Overall Review: This is a good case for a budget build HTPC. The PSU on mine died last month after about a year but I figured it wasn't going to last long. I vote that Newegg make the "Tech Knowledge" selection a quiz reviewers have to take instead of a drop down. Ranking from "I once took a part a Toaster" to "I build PC's for a Living" I find way to may reviews with "High" tech knowledge that I find questionable.

Most Critical Review

worthless

Tripp Lite AVR900U AVR Series 900 VA 480 Watts 12 Outlets Line Interactive UPS for PCs
Tripp Lite AVR900U AVR Series 900 VA 480 Watts 12 Outlets Line Interactive UPS for PCs

Pros: We bought six of these units for our office. All of them have had the same issue within a month. Really can't say there are any pros since the product doesn't really do what it's built to do.

Cons: The big issue is that almost every time we had a power flicker or outage the switch beeps fails and turns itself off offering no battery back up for your devices. We contacted the manufacturer and they denied any fault difficult to work with.

Overall Review: The few that we didn't throw out now serve as power strips for non essential equipment. Waste of money keep looking there are better UPC's out there.

Great cooler. Quiet, Modular, Well Built

Noctua NH-D9DX i4 3U, Premium CPU Cooler for Intel Xeon LGA20xx (92mm, Brown)
Noctua NH-D9DX i4 3U, Premium CPU Cooler for Intel Xeon LGA20xx (92mm, Brown)

Pros: It's quiet cooler. Has bee keeping CPU Temp way lower than my previous CPU cooler. Modular design is good quality. Packaging was impeccable.

Cons: It's a little tight next to the RAM on LGA 2011 motherboards where the DIMMS are close to the CPU socket.

Overall Review: two thumbs up

Great Buy

ASRock P43DE LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard
ASRock P43DE LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: This board is widely compatible with a number of CPU's and DDR2 ram. If you have an old Pentium 4 3.4 ghz CPU like me and are looking for a board to run it this is a great cheep board to do it on. I had no problems getting everything set up and working in no time flat. 6 SATA 3Gb/s ports is a nice feature.

Cons: There are no IEEE 1394 firewire ports on the board and no serial port. Both are technologies that have long since been replaced by the mighty USB (of which this board has a ton 6 in the back panel and 2 internal ports) but it would have been nice to have the option.

Overall Review: The board has an 8 pin alt power plug and 24 pin main power connector. If your using a 4 pin alt power 20 pin PSU you want to check that the 4 pin power is plugged in the right way. I found that it can be plugged in backwards if your not careful. Check that first if you think your board is DOA.

12/31/2009