Joined on 08/26/06
More life for AGP
Pros: I bought this board because I wanted to save my X1950GT and still upgrade to Core 2 Duo. I paired this board up with some DDRII 800 dual channel 2gb and an E6400. Everything works great (except for one minor detail). Everything is so much faster compared to the P4 2.8 I upgraded from. I haven't tried overclocking, I didn't feel the need to. Games run faster, windows xp boots up faster, everything is FAST. Great mobo at a great price.
Cons: I know the maximum memory speed supported is DDRII 667, but underclocking ram shouldn't cause any problems, right? Well, with the DDR speed on "auto" in bios, everything worked fine, at 533 speeds. 667 is unstable for some reason, perhaps because of the processor FSB (only 266*4, 266 is the actual speed, so it requires 266*2, 533 speed DDRII). It would crash during games and flash videos at 667. I didn't notice any performance increase at 667 anyway, so I'll let this one slide.
Overall Review: I was about to RMA this board because the power switch did nothing at first. I took it out of the case and tested it caseless, POSTed fine. Turns out it was shorting with the case because I didn't standoff all 10 holes. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH STANDOFFS and don't make my mistake. Also, PCI-e x4 should be plenty if you're upgrading to like HD3850 or so. I looked it up and the bandwidth of PCIe x4 and AGP 8x are roughly the same (limitations of the chipset), so getting an HD3850 pcie for this board would be the same as getting the AGP version (so don't waste your money on the AGP version, and lack of driver support) Specs: G. Skill DDRII 800, X1950GT AGP, 520W PSU
Pros: Running with a10 6800k, 8 gb DDR3 2400 @2400, has been doing great so far. This system is acting as my steambox right now and it handles any games I throw at it! Although the most graphically intensive games that I play on it are unreal engine games, I haven't touched any settings (whatever is default seems to run/look great).
Cons: None that I can tell
Awesome basic board
Pros: Cheap No slot adjacent/beneath pcie-x16 slot Advanced bios
Cons: Only two DIMM slots No legacy slots (PCI/ATA), only a con if you have legacy hardware (I'm using a SATA/ATA adapter for my optical drive)
Overall Review: Has been rock solid stable for a week. Saved like $50 by not getting an H67, just missing USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0 GB/s, which would both be useless to me. Is even smaller than my older mATX 775 board. Have not tried overclocking, but I bet it would handle it fine later on when I need to. Core i5 2400 stock cooler HD6950 2 gb Corsair 600w PSU 8 gb G Skill 1333
x16 + OC
Pros: Cheap! I got it when it was discounted. POST-ed just fine but windows 7 64-bit wouldn't let me boot after the switch (Fedora 13 64-bit booted fine), so I had to reformat. Oh well. My last mobo (VIA chipset) had only PCIe x4 on the x16 slot and wouldn't let me go past 2.2 ghz on my 2.13 Ghz E6400. It's now running stable at the max FSB the board will allow, 332, so about 2.6 GHz, didn't even have to touch vcore. Going from x4 to x16 was like a video card upgrade, my games all run smoother on higher settings even before the CPU oc.
Cons: Won't let me unlock FSB:RAM ratio, so I'm forced to OC my ram as well: DDRII 800 running at about 1 GHz. Thankfully it's handling it just fine. I'm sad to see that I STILL can't touch the true potential of my E6400. I thought that maybe a BIOS update would let me go past 332 on the FSB, but the drivers and downloads for this motherboard on the foxconn site was down last time I checked. Also, so cheap that they won't even include a pcie x1 slot even though the tracers/solder points are present on the board and the chipset seems ready for it, but I knew this before purchase (I wonder if I can buy one...).
Overall Review: Good basic board for the money.
Pleasant Surprise
Pros: Bought these because my monitor's speakers were terrible. The sound quality is surprising, considering their power source, price, and size. The bass is there, but it's not that strong. Mids are pretty clean and accurate, as is the treble. Again, these are all in relative terms. I didn't have to whack them to get them to work, thankfully. See other thoughts regarding noise. They are simple and classy in appearance, unlike some other USB-powered offerings from popular brands in a similar price range... The gloss black matches my monitor/external hard drive/keyboard/graphics tablet. Seems a lot of things are going gloss black nowadays.
Cons: Headphone jack is terribly noisy, I thought it would be a direct pass-through from the input but it seems to be just attenuated speaker output soldered to the jack. This is fine though as I wasn't planning on using it anyway.
Overall Review: There is some noise when there is no audio playing and the volume pot is turned all the way up, but it seems to be dependent on the sound card: my desktop has virtually no noise but my laptop has a little; again, only noticeable when there is nothing playing and the speakers are turned up.
Very satisfied
Pros: Cheap, sound great, not in-ears, shape of the housing makes it very easy to determine which is right and which is left (the recessed angular part always points forward), compact plug, and comfortable. Definitely live up to the Sennheiser name.
Cons: They're not free?
Overall Review: I have gone through countless canalphones, but realized that while the isolation and sound was great, all were very uncomfortable for me (also isolation isn't the best thing for walking down a busy street). I looked for some decent earbuds and stumbled upon these.