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Christopher P.

Christopher P.

Joined on 12/03/11

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 6
Most Favorable Review

Another Great EVGA Power Supply

EVGA 650 B3, 80 Plus BRONZE 650W, Fully Modular, EVGA ECO Mode, Compact 150mm Size, Power Supply 220-B3-0650-V1
EVGA 650 B3, 80 Plus BRONZE 650W, Fully Modular, EVGA ECO Mode, Compact 150mm Size, Power Supply 220-B3-0650-V1

Pros: -Modular -650w continuous. I love how all EVGA PSU's are listed as their continuous operating wattage, not some max "struck by lightning" rating. -fan is fairly silent even when not in ECO mode. -Comes with fool proof tester

Cons: -need sata power cables with only one plug on them. I have one M.2 Sata SSD for speed, a blu-ray drive and a large HDD for storage. I don't have a HDD bay anywhere near my Blu-Ray drive bay, nor would I want one. Having 3-4 power plugs on every sata power cable makes cable management difficult and often leaves an exposed plug visible from the case window.

Overall Review: -Highly recommend this PSU for any build. It comes at a great price and the modular design allows you to have a cleanly designed case for a decent price. -If you aren't sure about the power usage of your build or are using a single graphics card released in the last two years... you probably don't need more than 650w. Most power supplies hit their efficiency sweet spot around 50%, so if your system power is around 325w(i7 or ryzen + GTX 1070 or GTX 1080) then you will actually get better efficiency out of this BRONZE rated PSU than a lot of 1000w SILVER rated PSU's and similar results to a 1000w GOLD rated PSU.

Most Critical Review

not so awesome CoolerMaster product

Cooler Master GeminII S524 - CPU Cooler with Aluminum Fins and 5 Heatpipes
Cooler Master GeminII S524 - CPU Cooler with Aluminum Fins and 5 Heatpipes

Pros: Brought temps down 10C-15 while at full load and about the same at idle. Stock cooler ran 60C at full load and this one can hold it in the mid-high 40s. If positioned correctly it blows air onto memory sticks... but with that air possibly being 60 degrees celcius, im not sure it helps.

Cons: Installation: Biggest pain in the world to install for AMD, it comes with all your normal intel stuff so it be the same as any other coolers. The backplate for the cooler is huge since its a one size fits all so it didnt really fit on my mobo in the case without forcing it to. Not to mention you have to hold the cooler in place on the cpu while holding the backplate in place while threading a hex nut on to the screw ends from the heatsink all while trying not to mess up your thermal paste. It sucked... Design: Its a huge cooler that covers alot of mobo space. For me that meant all the ram sticks and the port the fan had to be plugged into. So im sure when I upgrade ram in the future that will be fun either trying to work around it or pulling it off.

Overall Review: Overall I should have spent $20 more and bought a corsair liquid cooler and had a little better performance and a way easier install without having a huge heatsink to work around and have blowing hot air all throughout my case. I installed one on a friends FX PC and installation too 5 minutes max. Corsair is smart enough to use the AMD brackets already there. And ALL AMD socket heatsinks are compatible with each other. My Specs: AMD A10 5800k running stock 2X4GB Team Vulcan 1600Mhz MSI 85A Mobo Cooler Master 431 plus Case

Worked Great

G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) Desktop Memory Model F4-3000C15D-16GVR
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) Desktop Memory Model F4-3000C15D-16GVR

Pros: Price/Performance Worked using XMP profile no muss no fuss

Cons: Speed could be faster and Timings could be tighter but this is a budget set so no big deal there

Overall Review: This RAM worked right out of the box, I did the one click to activate the XMP profile on an ASrock Pro-4 Motherboard. Everything works as expected and for the price this is a great set of RAM.

RMA'd two sets and gave up

G.SKILL Flare X (for AMD) 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200) Desktop Memory Model F4-2400C16D-16GFX
G.SKILL Flare X (for AMD) 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200) Desktop Memory Model F4-2400C16D-16GFX

Pros: Cheap

Cons: Had to return two separate packages and deliveries of this RAM as they both threw errors. Had constant crashes, ran Memtest and each set had all kinds of errors.

Overall Review: I typically recommend G.Skill memory to everyone but I can not in any way recommend this particular set as Quality Control must be very low on these. I built a system for a friend and ended up having to lend him 2 sticks of RAM out of my computer to let him enjoy his system while I sorted out this RAM mess. Took almost a month of returning, receiving and testing till I finally just requested my money back in order to go for a different lineup of G.Skill RAM. That other RAM worked exactly as expected.

Good Workstation Laptop

MSI WE Series Mobile Workstation Intel Core i7-7700HQ 32GB Memory 512 GB SSD NVIDIA Quadro M2200 17.3" Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit WE72 7RJ-1032US
MSI WE Series Mobile Workstation Intel Core i7-7700HQ 32GB Memory 512 GB SSD NVIDIA Quadro M2200 17.3" Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit WE72 7RJ-1032US

Pros: -Quadro Card will give you verified drivers for AutoCad/Autodesk products. -Performs well for a laptop running 3D point cloud and AutoCAD with large datasets. -32GB of RAM - In my work with 3D point clouds I frequently go over the 16GB of RAM found standard in most laptops.

Cons: -May have gotten better performance out of similarly priced "gaming" laptops

Overall Review: Definitely slower and does not perform as well in my 3D point cloud and autocad software as my desktop with a 6700k & GTX 1070. Obviously a desktop will have more power due to the lack of power and heat restrictions, but if you think the verified drivers alone will make up the difference in those applications... it doesn't. That being said, If you are doing rendering that specifically requires a high FP16 performance then the quadro might be a better buy. This laptop does still perform very well and since this was a purchase for my company, I do appreciate the advanced driver support the Quadro card will get for years to come. There is a lot to speak of for having a piece of equipment that will most likely have less driver and hardware related hiccups when it is a company computer your bosses will be using regularly for at least a few years. If you are fairly well versed in computers and are buying this for yourself... I would say do yourself a favor and get a much faster and more powerful gaming laptop for the same price.

Great Headset for Audio Lovers

Corsair Vengeance 1400 Dual 3.5mm Connector Circumaural Gaming Headset
Corsair Vengeance 1400 Dual 3.5mm Connector Circumaural Gaming Headset

Pros: This Headset has great sound reproduction, which means you need either a good audio chipset on your motherboard or what is probably preferred is a decent sound card. The microphone is also really clean and responsive, I have received many compliments since my purchase from all my friends who instantly asked if I had got a new mic. Also seem to be made of good quality components such as the headsets that have some of the more comfortable ear cups of the headsets I've had and have gotten to try. For the price this headset has no equal I could find.

Cons: The head phone and mic cable has two separate 3.5 mm plugs at the end and I wish it would have came with a single 3.5 mm headphone and mic (headset) adapter so I could plug it into my phone. Probably a cheap adapter but would've been a nice touch.

Overall Review: I have owned a pair of Turtle Beach PX5, Razer Kraken 7.1, Logitech G35's and got to try out the Razer Kraken Pro's and Logitech G435's. The Turtle Beach's were nice but I wanted something with a little better audio quality and no more intermittent wireless audio distortion. These were the only pair of headphones I could find with a decent bass response while not sounding muggy. Also when paired with the on-board audio chipset on my motherboard (MSI FM2-A85XA-G65) they have better Virtual 7.1 Surround than the PX5's or any of the USB headsets I found. If you are on a desktop I would strongly recommend against a usb headset if you can get a headset like these and use a hardware sound processor unlike the software sound processor that a usb headset uses. Its a much more crisp, clean and responsive experience. Plus you could get these and at least test them on your on board audio chipset. If you end up needing a dedicated sound card, for the added cost of a typical 7.1 USB Headset, you could get these and a discrete sound card that will definitely sound better than any software sound processor.