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James K.

James K.

Joined on 03/18/06

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 12
Most Favorable Review

Clearing up the matched set vs. 2 cheaper sets controversy

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 24GB (6 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9T2-24GBRL
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 24GB (6 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9T2-24GBRL

Pros: Excellent quality, good price. Switched to G.Skill a couple of years ago, have been consistently happy with their memory. 24GB is recognized by all i7-9xx processors, but not i7-8xxx, i5-xxx, or i3-5xx. i5/i3-2xxx series, however, support 32GB or RAM. Product specs for all processor families are available at the following link, and you can drill down to each one to see how much memory it supports. http://ark.intel.com/Default.aspx

Cons: Timings are very average... they are the lowest, 'budget' memory timings. No eggs docked, however, because this is not necessarily a bad point; you get what you pay for, and this is reasonably what you'd expect memory with these timings to cost. If you want faster timings, '7' will cost you more than twice as much.

Overall Review: To shed some light on the controversy about buying 2 sets of 12GB for the cheaper price vs. the 24GB kit: You need to match the memory speed, timings, and capacity (as well as number of chips and a couple of other minor points) to have a "matched set". If you buy four individual sticks of memory from the same manufacturer of the same model with the same specs, you can safely use them in dual-channel mode; they will run at the advertised speed with no issues. HOWEVER... the "advertised speed" is the catch. If the memory you get comes from different production runs, each stick will be slightly different. When you try to overclock, the speeds you can attain will differ for each stick. If the first stick hits 1800, and the last stick can't, you'll boot up, but blue-screen when that stick is finally hit (which may take a while with 24GB). If you get a matched set, the models came from the same production run and have been tested together... they will likely overclock better

Most Critical Review

Extremely Disappointing

SAMSUNG ToC T240HD Rose-Black 24" 5ms HDMI Widescreen HDTV Monitor  300 cd/m2 DC 10000:1 Built in DTV Tuner & Dolby Digital Surround Speakers
SAMSUNG ToC T240HD Rose-Black 24" 5ms HDMI Widescreen HDTV Monitor 300 cd/m2 DC 10000:1 Built in DTV Tuner & Dolby Digital Surround Speakers

Pros: 1920x1200 is the perfect resolution for development Easy to put together, and the stand seems more stable than some posts claimed. Doesn't take as much room on the desk as I expected

Cons: The monitor is 50% brighter at the bottom than it is at the top. I read this in some of the reviews and thought 'how bad can it be'. It is very noticeable, and out of the box the contrast was set to nearly 100% to keep the top from being too dark... making the bottom so glowing bright the text in the taskbar was blurry. If you sit 6"-8" above the monitor, the bright spot is centered on the screen and it looks fairly even The bleed from the bottom is also *very* noticeable when watching movies... again, I read about this and thought 'how bad can it be'. The menu system is unfriendly and frustrating... the buttons are labeled 'source', 'menu', 'vol +/-', and 'ch +/-'... source acts sometimes as an enter or return, and menu acts as a menu or return, and I can't keep vol and ch straight, one navigates up and down, the other changes the setting. Part of the problem is the buttons are at the side, so you can't really look at what you're pressing.

Overall Review: 24" is the perfect size for 1920x1200... I debated for the longest time between 24" and 25.5", but the 25.5" would have resulted in icons and text too large. Newegg's delivery time for this was incredible; I ordered it 12/22 at 7:30 at night, and it was here by 1:00 Christmas eve. I would return this if I could... Neweggs 'replacement only' policy really makes a big purchase like this a risk. This monitor is really not suitable for PC use

12/25/2009

**LEFT** Angle Cable... Important Detail!

OKGEAR 18" SATA 6 Gbps Cable, Straight to Left Angle with Metal Latch, Black, Backward Compatible 3 Gbps and 1.5 Gbps
OKGEAR 18" SATA 6 Gbps Cable, Straight to Left Angle with Metal Latch, Black, Backward Compatible 3 Gbps and 1.5 Gbps

Pros: It's a left-angle connector at the drive... for people who noticed this subtle detail, it's exactly what they were looking for. For people who didn't realize there was a difference, it's different from every other cable in their case. Left angle cables, when connected to the drive, point up instead of down. This is useful when you have a drive mounted close to the bottom of the case, or (in my case) a 2.5" drive that doesn't extend far enough to allow for an angle cable without crashing into the top of the drive below.

Cons: No latch on the drive side??

Overall Review: It's important to compare products to see what's different between, say, this angle latch and another OKGear Angle latch that looks identical. Products often have subtle differences, and people purchase something without realizing it's not what they're after, and get upset with the manufacturer, newegg, etc. I didn't even know there were left-angle cables until I did a compare on two identical-looking cables, and read through three times to see what the difference was :P

2 Weeks: Failed Raid Array Drive

Seagate BarraCuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate BarraCuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Good performance; reasonable price. Newegg has gotten better about packaging... the five drives came wrapped in six inches of bubble wrap, and were taped so tightly I probably could've dribbled the package. But the box was still crushed in in one corner. C'MON, GUYS!!!! People have been complaining about your packaging for years : ( The replacement drive (see below), and two drives I subsequently ordered to expand capacity were packaged much better... they had plastic drive holders that fit snugly into the box, with plenty of space between the drives and the sides. The boxes were undamaged.

Cons: Two weeks of typical usage, and one of the five drives in my raid array died. Two stars may seem harsh, but a system's hard drive is The. Most. Critical. component of any system. Any other component can be replaced, no harm no foul. But when a hard drive dies, everything on it dies with it. Family pictures? Gone. Tax records? Gone. Email? Projects? Anything you've ever downloaded? Gone. For good. Yes, backups are critical. But how many people have the means (or know-how) to back up 2 TB of data? That's 40+ Blu-Ray discs (assuming you have a burner). I have a raid-6 array, because years ago I had two drives drop out of a raid-5 array... lost everything (see "too much to back up", above). Losing a drive so quickly killed my confidence in the security a raid array provides. A raid array is designed to protect against eventual failures... now, it's a front line defense against poor quality control, instead. Can I even rely on raid-6 being enough, now?

Overall Review: If you're in the hard drive business, a 20% failure rate is unacceptable. You can't use my five drives as a fair base, but there are entirely too many other reviews about failed hard drives. This is unfortunately true of every major manufacturer out there today... the quality is just terrible, and with the amount of data that is stored digitally, backing up data is now more critical than ever. The only reason I gave two stars instead of one is because they are not 'Enterprise-Class' drives. But two stars is still being nice. Newegg made the return without hassle. Seagate, Please - Do something about this.

11/29/2012

SATA Rating: Unknown

Adaptec 2236600-R mini SAS x4 (SFF-8087) to (4) x1 Serial ATA fan-out Cable - 0.5M
Adaptec 2236600-R mini SAS x4 (SFF-8087) to (4) x1 Serial ATA fan-out Cable - 0.5M

Pros: It's hard to find pros about a cable. It works.

Cons: There is no indication anywhere what SATA spec these cables are rated for. Yes, they will work on SATA 3 (6.0Gbps) drives, but if they're not rated for SATA 3, you may not get the transfer speed the drive is capable of.

Not 25 GB

memorex 25GB 4X BD-R 30 Packs Spindle Disc Model 98499
memorex 25GB 4X BD-R 30 Packs Spindle Disc Model 98499

Pros: They look cool... slate-blue color with white writing. Lid to the disc-stack screws in place. Nice touch. Almost enough to get it a second star, but really, it's the functionality that counts.

Cons: Not 25GB... more like 23 and change. I'm assuming they're pulling that garbage about 1GB being 1,000MB, not 1,024 like it's meant since the dawn of computing. Bad enough hard drives pull that ******** ... I didn't think these discs would do it, too. Lost the first disc to a coaster because of it. I do have Verbatim discs that take a full 25GB of data, the real GB, so it's not an industry standard. First disc burned at 2.2x for the first half of the disc... reached 3.2x around 77%, but the disc took more than 35 minutes to burn. Tried discs in Nero and CDBurnerXP... no better luck. Even had Nero analyze the speed, did not help. I can't give these discs anything higher than a one, because they do nothing they are advertised to do.

Overall Review: Nothing on the Memorex website talks about how many bytes "25GB" really is. If the details section on Newegg had specified the actual capacity, I would have taken it into consideration before purchasing.

11/22/2011