cover
Brian W.

Brian W.

Joined on 03/26/04

0
0

Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 5
Most Favorable Review

Not for the wimps

Habey HB-NB037H Half mini-PCIe 802.11b/g/n Wifi Module Mini Card with Bluetooth built-in
Habey HB-NB037H Half mini-PCIe 802.11b/g/n Wifi Module Mini Card with Bluetooth built-in

Pros: Wireless b/g/n and bluetooth in one card.

Cons: This is not for the weak willed or those who easily give up. In my case the drivers on the disc did not work with the Bluetooth even after a clean windows install on another drive so I ended up finding other drivers that were based on some ASUS netbook (this is all based on Windows 7 32bit Home Premium); but the latest version of Ubuntu had no problems with neither WLAN or BT functionality -- I may end up moving to UBUNTU on this laptop if it doesn't fully settle down.

Overall Review: I was finally able (knock on wood it continues to work properly) to get it working on my current installation of Win7-32bit Home Premium -- for those having problems -- be sure you remove ALL EXISTING Bluetooth software and drivers, install the card, then install the new drivers. If you are going to do a fresh install -- be sure to install the drivers before getting updates from MS. I put this in an Acer Aspire 5810TZ 1.3Ghz Intel U2700 with 3GB ram

Most Critical Review

Water pump failure

Cooler Master Seidon 240M - All-In-One CPU Liquid Water Cooling System with 240mm Radiator and 2 Fans
Cooler Master Seidon 240M - All-In-One CPU Liquid Water Cooling System with 240mm Radiator and 2 Fans

Pros: The fans seem to be of nice quality; it has hardware to mount on most processors, comes with Y adapter for the fans power -- for the newbs, be sure to plug these into the cpu fan header so that the system can adjust the fan speed. Most of all... It was really quiet....

Cons: ....when it worked as it should. The water pump bearings failed after less than 12 hours of use. If i were forced to be more accurate, I would say it was closer to 4 hours of actual powered on use.

Overall Review: I'm going to give a second one a chance, but since i have to re-install the oem brackets for standard air cooling, I'll run the replacement water system for a solid 24 to 48 hours before bothering to go through the annoyance of re-installing this thing plus, for a proper installation I need to cut some sheet metal to create an adapter plate as my case and this unit don't really agree on space requirements.d

First member of my No-buy Brand Zone

OCZ Vertex Plus 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-1VTXPL60G
OCZ Vertex Plus 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-1VTXPL60G

Pros: Ordered 2 -- they still "work"?

Cons: Wasted 2 days trying to get these to work in some manner that doesn't require destroying my RAID5 array in my desktop -- have them setup in a RAID0 array -- Windows Experience rating is a FIVE.ZERO -- 5.0 that's lower that the 3 year old 7200RPM Spindle Drives -- a 5.9 In laptop (Acer 5810TZ) SATA controller has to be set to IDE mode (in AHCI mode it won't install windows). Required way too much work to even get "formatted" with trips to the command prompt and even a download/burn/boot up with gparted to ensure the partitioning and formatting.

Overall Review: OCZ is now in my no-buy zone when it comes to SSD from now on. Complete rubbish in my opinion.

VMWare 4.1 ESXi

LSI SATA / SAS 9212-4i4e 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 RAID Controller Card, Single--Avago Technologies
LSI SATA / SAS 9212-4i4e 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 RAID Controller Card, Single--Avago Technologies

Pros: Just threw it into my VMWare ESXi 4.1 box and it was found without problems (Dell T110 server) On VMWare HCL

Cons: none yet

Overall Review: Still testing, but so far, so good.

fantastic

XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler  I5 775 AMD compatible
XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler I5 775 AMD compatible

Pros: It's so quiet.... my tower no longer sounds like an XR71 Blackbird getting ready for take off.... bigger fan & bigger surface area = better cooling. Apparently comes with most necessary mounting clips and anti-vibration rubber mounts for the fan.

Cons: It's Tall! I mean Tall! Just the tiniest bit over 6" because of the tips of the heat pipes. If you have a slim case this ain't going to fit. Not really designed for the AM2+/AM3 socket - I'm going to check to make sure it hasn't slid down due to fan vibration.

Overall Review: A month ago Phenom I 9850 was running at 70C (and sounded like I was in the middle of an Airport Tarmac) with folding@home going full blast while also doing normal work. Put on new thermal paste; temps dropped to about ~62C but still sounded like JFK at 8AM... now, with this thing, I can barely hear it... stock AMD HSF was running at ~4500RPM this is spinning at 835. The temps haven't dropped significantly with this (-3C with F@H, & -5 to -12C without), but the noise difference makes it worth every cent. I love it.