cover
John P.

John P.

Joined on 03/14/07

0
0

Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 10
Most Favorable Review

Great Drive

Seagate BarraCuda 7200.10 ST3500630A 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6 3.5" Hard Drive (Perpendicular recording) Bare Drive
Seagate BarraCuda 7200.10 ST3500630A 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6 3.5" Hard Drive (Perpendicular recording) Bare Drive

Pros: Great Hard drive. It is fast, cheap, quiet, and cool. Seagate is definitely going to be on my list of HD makers in the future. My Western Digital's just are too loud and hot.

Cons: NO cable, but it does say OEM.

Overall Review: works perfect in my xbox that uses pata. Now i just need to know how to fill it up.

Most Critical Review

Great Motherboard, Horrible BIOS & Customer Support

ASRock X570 CREATOR AM4 AMD X570 ATX AMD Motherboard
ASRock X570 CREATOR AM4 AMD X570 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: -Two Thunderbolt 3 connectors -Aquantia 10G Lan

Cons: -Price -BIOS has memory compatibility issues where one bios my xmp profiles work fine, while the next one will not boot. Luckily I've built enough to know to downclock the ram ending up with 3200mhz for most bios to boot windows. The best part is that I'm not even trying to push my ram as its 3600c14 tridentz royal and i'm using xmp. This same kit works perfectly in my other build, Asus X570 Crosshair VIII Wi-Fi with a 3800x. I contacted support about the bios issues and they told me to downgrade the bios to one that works or return my motherboard. Terrible!

Overall Review: I don't know what happened to AsRock especially with the bios issues, but I will not buy another board from them or recommend such. A motherboard is only as good as the bios, and when I spend a ton of money on a motherboard and a ton more money for compatible ram with low timings then it should work.

11/14/2020

Great Price!

Corsair Certified HXi Series HX850i 850W High Performance 80 Plus Platinum Full Modular Power Supply
Corsair Certified HXi Series HX850i 850W High Performance 80 Plus Platinum Full Modular Power Supply

Pros: This PSU can handle two RX 480s in Crossfire fine, while supplying power to a i7-6850k on a slight overclock, m.2 drive, a few hard drives, and a blu-ray drive. Also the fan doesn't spin up until it hits a certain load which rarely happens with my setup so it has been extremely quiet!

Cons: The cables are not sleeved which is a tad bit annoying. This is how Corsair does their top of the line cabling now, so I'm hoping they change it soon. Also the wires are extremely thick, inflexible, and it's hard to zip-tie them in place. The platinum rating is great, except that using HW Monitor I seem to be getting around 82-88% efficiency even at low usage loads.

Overall Review: Overall for the price you can't beat this price. Corsair's support is also very nice if you do happen to need it. In the future they need to improve the cables and quit falsifying the energy rating or make it more efficient. The PSU is the normal length 180mm which may prevent you space wise from using this psu in a smaller case (I'm not sure why they couldn't make this around 160mm since they use a 140mm fan).

12/20/2016

Perfect for the X99

CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 3333 (PC4 26600) Desktop Memory Model CMK32GX4M4B3333C16
CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 3333 (PC4 26600) Desktop Memory Model CMK32GX4M4B3333C16

Pros: Works great. Switching to the XMP stored settings is easy on my motherboard. The memory is also low profile if you don't use the included fan/heatsink setup (which is not pictured but included)

Cons: Just remember that 3333 requires a slight overclock to your processor. Cas Latency seems a little slow for the price but is normal for this speed 3333 (in fact the quickest out from newegg is 16-16-16-36 rather than this one at 16-18-18-36).

Overall Review: Black sticks are exactly what I wanted with my build, but I was hoping they also made the kit in white so I could finish the build with a black and white 8 stick combo. oh well. It's also amazing that a processor (i7-6850k) that was built for DDR4 2400 can run DDR4 3333. YMMV depending on your board.

12/20/2016

One of the Better X99 boards from ASrock

ASRock X99 Taichi LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99 USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
ASRock X99 Taichi LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99 USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: I'm running a 6850k inside this board with the 32GB of memory running at 3333 (slight overclock). The fan settings are great if you like a quiet computer. My build was to be a media pc/server. The dual m.2 slots are nice too. I have a Samsung 960 1tb evo coming so I will test them out soon since its backordered. Also, the board has a slot for tpm, but the motherboard uses a custom 17-pin tpm. Asrock currently only sells v1.2 through outlets and v2.0 can only be ordered direct. The PCI-Express slots are adequately spaced for using two video cards.

Cons: My first board was returned due to a bad antenna connector. The plastic shroud on the board is not removable and I don't think the end-user can replace the wireless/bluetooth adapter. The CPU voltage is wonky (motherboard to blame) when set to AUTO making the automatic overclock settings impossible to use (at least for the 6850k). The fans run on high when the computer first boots up until your fan settings are read. Fan settings default to read case temp instead of CPU temp. The bios has options for marking each SATA port as a hard drive or SSD with NO options for blu-ray, DVD-ROM, etc. Also, my first board only came with one m.2 screw (they are custom sized screws and can only be replaced by ASRock).

Overall Review: This was my first ASRock product. I was not impressed. I picked this board mainly for the price/features. Also contacting ASRock customer service is HORRIBLE. I contacted them to find distributors of the TPM 2.0 Module they list on their website. I am still waiting to get the module (they told me to mail a check to their address while requesting it). In the future, I would spend the extra dollars and go with a better manufacturer (ASUS, even MSI/Gigabyte).

12/19/2016

Great motherboard

GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Great motherboard. It can easily overclock my i750 to 4Ghz on air. My system rates at 3.7 due to my older graphics card, but my new Power Color 5770 is on the way.

Cons: Right now there is a compatibility issue with the iPhone and the P55 chipset. It can be corrected with 64bit windows 7 if you enable all the cstates in the bios menu! @bios is Gigabytes program to update the bios and shows older bios on the server than on the Gigabyte website.

Overall Review: I had to call Gigabyte about the iPhone/iPod issues and they were clueless about it. Oh well, this is what i get for new technology but hopefully it gets corrected soon.