Joined on 01/12/07
The heatsink is fine
Pros: Take your motherboard out, lay it on a couple of pieces of cardboard. You can then install the heatsink without worrying about breaking your board. Push down two pins at a time; like an X, top-right bottom-left, then top-left bottom-right. Once you get all the pins down it's actually a good heatsink.
Cons: No bubble wrap.
Overall Review: For an easy overclock, just set the FSB to 1333 (333.33 x 9). That got mine to 3 ghz, and I didn't have to mess with the voltages.
Well, it's better than onboard.
Pros: It's cheap, and it's a decent graphics card.
Cons: When you push it into the slot, it gives a little, like it could spontaneously break. Fanless design sucks, Tuner says it's idling at 75*C.
Overall Review: Oh, and the driver CD is really Engrish. (Setup Finish !)
They're all good!
Pros: I've never given an Intel CPU a bad review, never had one that deserved it. I'm personally running on a 2 or 3 year old 65nm e6600. The thing still performs like a champ, and doesn't get too hot even on the old stock cooler that everyone hated, and by now it's full of... well whatever gets into computers these days; dirt, cigarette butts, idk. I bought this for a friend. It comes with the lower profile cooler that's standard for 45nm procs. With the stock cooler and 0 air flow, this thing tops out at 50C *maybe*, when gaming. The intelligent underclocking feature keeps it at 35C idle, which is just a little warmer than the room, mind you.
Cons: I'm trying to think of one... I guess if it came with a gift certificate to Perkin's that'd be a nice value add.
Overall Review: The board I bought doesn't let me change the CPU multiplier, so I just bumped it from 266mhz to 300. When I opened up CoreTemp for the first time, it told me the proc was running at 300 x 5 = 1500mhz, or something crazy low. At this point I looked for a CPU multiplier option, but found none. I was running in circles trying to figure out why it was running so slow, when Windows Update kicked in and drove the CPU crazy. I saw the multiplier keep jumping around and had one of those "Oh, duh" moments. Now for my thought: If you're into overclocking, but not THAT into overclocking, the speedstep technology can handle all of that for you, and save you some power and heat in the process.
It's a win
Pros: I love the mini atx form factor. Good layout; no giant bridge coolers taking up cpu cooler space. Nearly everything worked as expected. Put a build together for a friend with an e6300. Did a quick overclock to 300x whatever its multiplier is (read other thoughts) and it took it with no problems. Been rock solid with windows 7.
Cons: Terrible RAM overclocking options. There are three settings, that are all weird frequencies, like 700 900 or 1200... or something. Anyway, it could just be that I have an old bios, or maybe it'll be fixed/revamped but I have little control over the RAM speed and none over timings on this board. -1 egg
Overall Review: One USB port was unusable, couldn't get a flash stick into the port. Moved some stuff around in there and now it fits. There's no option (that I saw) to change the CPU multiplier, but I guess that's not a problem since Intel CPUs are changing their multipliers on the fly now.
Power Supply just bit it
Pros: It really is a beautiful case, and sturdy. The power supply worked well for a few months. The airflow is excellent, I mean great.
Cons: The computer had been randomly shutting down during the night (I was casting spells on Oblivion), and today when I went to turn it on there was a loud pop, a blue flash, and the kind of smell you get when you fire those pop-guns. Right now it's sitting beside me, and I can actually shake small pieces of whatever blew up in there into my hand. I hope I can just RMA the PS instead of the whole case, or else I'm getting a Master of Cooling.
Overall Review: If you're looking for a case, Apevia makes excellent ones. If you have the cash, maybe spring for a trusty power supply, and keep this one as a tester. I hope the computer I built for my mom's boss doesn't suffer the same fate.
Pros: I bought the full tower a few months ago, and was so happy with it that I bought this mid tower for a friend's build. The two are the exact same size... There are a few differences though, this one has one less case fan, and the 120mm is located in the back.
Cons: The power cables are not wrapped, and I couldn't find the front LED display's connector... The directions are on the box so UPS may put stickers on some of them.
Overall Review: Still great airflow and lots (more than I expected) of room for expansion. It's worth pointing out that the power supply is a 20+4. (4-pin CPU, like 6 molex, 2 floppy, 2 sata, and 1 PCIe)