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James R.

James R.

Joined on 12/13/03

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 10
Most Favorable Review

Lots of features for the price

nMEDIAPC HTPC 300BA Black Aluminum/Plastic/Steel ATX Mini Tower Computer Case
nMEDIAPC HTPC 300BA Black Aluminum/Plastic/Steel ATX Mini Tower Computer Case

Pros: This has a very small footprint for a tower case. Segmented interior helps to organize components. Looks like a mix between a DVD player and subwoofer.

Cons: While I like the display, it glows too much and it always animated, which detracts from it being a distraction free media center PC.

12/10/2006

Shaky as a server but a great consumer board

DFI LANPARTY JR X58-T3H6 LGA 1366 Intel X58 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
DFI LANPARTY JR X58-T3H6 LGA 1366 Intel X58 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Over all a very good board for the average consumer looking to build a fast gaming rig. Obviously a lot of features packed into a small board. Runs strong and performance is really good under Vista and Windows 7 as x64. Stable overclocking with lots of nooks and crannies in the BIOS for tweaking. Easily able to overclock my i7 920 easily. 6 RAM slots is fantastic. 6 SATA connections and 1 IDE is great too. Built in Audio is good, gigabit LAN works well.

Cons: Tech support is vacant. Drivers are for consumer OS but most Vista ones work in Windows 2008. I originally purchased this to be a Virtual Machine host in Windows 2008. Yeah, a consumer board for the cheap home server environment. The BIOS had settings to support hardware virtualization but the BIOS failed to keep them at boot. I contacted Tech Support only to be ignored all 3 times spread over 2 months. I posted on monitored support forumns and they ignored my pleas as well. Months later they let out a BIOS update to fix this issue and a month later another BIOS update claiming to fix the same issue. I recently rebuilt on Windows Server 2008 after the latest BIOS update and it works. I am able to support multiple VMs using Hyper-V. However the Securable application (common tool for checking) still indicates that the BIOS is not hardware virtualization enabled, which is concerning but as long as I am functional that is good enough for now.

Overall Review: My stable configuration is: DFI LanParty Jr X58-T3H6 Intel i7 920 2.66GHz (running at 3.2GHz) Stock cooling for CPU (extra fan in the case) Corsair 620 Watt PSU 6 x 2GB G.Skill 1600MHz DDR3 (12GB of RAM) WD 250GB SATA for OS 3 x WD 750GB SATA for RAID5 data drive ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics

Cheap and functional

ECS P4M800PRO-M478 (1.0) Socket 478 VIA P4M800 PRO Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
ECS P4M800PRO-M478 (1.0) Socket 478 VIA P4M800 PRO Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: The price is great. I like the choice for DDR or DDR2 and I chose a 1GB DDR2 stick for it. I am running Windows 2003 Home Server (RC) on it and all is going well.

Cons: I wish it was a 1Gbit network instead of 100Mbit, but a $15 card fixes that.

Overall Review: Keep in mind you can use either DDR or DDR2 on it, not both. It cannot be mixed so think ahead when buying parts.

Great value from a reliable hardware maker

Seagate BarraCuda 7200.9 ST3500641A 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate BarraCuda 7200.9 ST3500641A 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: For the price it is rarely beaten. Seagate is well known and been building high capacity drives for a long time. No problems with the drive at all.

Cons: Noisier than most IDE/SATA drives I own. It is not the whine of the spindle but instead the crackling sounds of the heads writing data. Some small vibration is introduced do to this. At first I thought it was defective, but since I bought another Seagate drive I was able to compare them and it is just how they work.

Overall Review: Definitely at the top of the list or the prime choice when getting a high capacity drive.

Great living room monitor

37" 720p LCD HDTV
37" 720p LCD HDTV

Pros: I am using this monitor with a media center PC in the living room. So it is used as an internet terminal as well as the day to day TV and DVD viewer. Simple to install and configure. The display is crisp and clear. I could not be happier.

Cons: The only complaint I have is the TV will go into sleep mode automatically if the signal, in this case DVI connection from PC, is not there after 15 minutes. This would be fine for a desktop type of monitor, but annoying when I have to turn the ViewSonic back on when the TV-PC wakes back up.

Overall Review: Worth every penny

does the job as a PS should

Winsis KY-500ATX 400 W ATX12V Power Supply
Winsis KY-500ATX 400 W ATX12V Power Supply

Pros: Quite operation and does not feel overly heated after long operations. Plenty of connectors to support standard and SATA devices. All of them were long enough to reach items in a mid-tower without looking like speghetti.

Cons: Nothing comes to mind.

Overall Review: It is hard to overachieve as a PS, so all I can say it is does not disappoint.