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Jeffrey D.

Jeffrey D.

Joined on 02/08/11

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 2
Most Favorable Review

Excellent buy

ASUS GeForce GTX 680 4GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Graphics Card GTX680-DC2-4GD5
ASUS GeForce GTX 680 4GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Graphics Card GTX680-DC2-4GD5

Pros: Ridiculously powerful card here. I know a $600 investment is enough to make some shy away, but in this instance you get precisely what you pay for. I utilize a great EVGA program to both overclock and frame limit the card and have had remarkable success. Now, for a more simple way of explaining why it's a good purchase: Battlefield 3: 1920 x 1080, all ultra settings, 60 FPS using my HDTV Skyrim: 1920 x 1080, all settings maxed, 60 FPS Bioshock Infinite: 1920 x 1080, ultra settings, 60 FPS See a pattern here? Smooth, reliable gameplay against any title you wish to play. Cannot recommend enough.

Cons: Only one hangup I had while configuring the card. You CANNOT use cable adapters of any kind. My rig was utilizing a DVI-to-HDMI cable in order to connect to my TV (it was necessary for another OS I was hosting on a separate hard drive). This, however, caused my screen to be slightly oversized at 1920x1080, clipping a half inch on all sides of my display. In simple terms, the GPU was saying "Oh, I'm connected to a DVI monitor, let me push a signal based on that!" But on my HDTV's end, it saw an HDMI and didn't line the margins up properly. TL;DR: don't use a display adapter. Use a straight HDMI or DVI cable only.

excellent, affordable case

Cooler Master MegaFlow 200 - Sleeve Bearing 200mm Blue LED Silent Fan for Computer Cases
Cooler Master MegaFlow 200 - Sleeve Bearing 200mm Blue LED Silent Fan for Computer Cases

Pros: The cost is initially what sold me on this case. I mean what can you get for $75 bucks these days? But when I actually received it, I was floored at how drop dead gorgeous the case is. The pictures here really did not do it justice. The 120mm blue fan up front really nice, and the entire front has a high gloss polished appearance Add in the ridiculous amount of hard drive bays and the bottom mounted power supply socket (which initially caught my eye), and I don't know why you WOULDN'T pick this case up.

Cons: I don't necessarily like that the two "hot swap" hard drive bays on the front use server trays that you have to screw the drive into in order to change it out. I would have preferred a mount or bracket that allowed for faster drive swapping. Then again, server trays are cheap, so it's not really a big deal, just an inconvenience.

Overall Review: There are spaces for 4 additional 120mm case fans, two on the top of the case and two on the right panel behind the motherboard plate. I find the best configuration is use two 120mm on the top of the case as an exhaust (heat rises, after all) but one big 200mm on the left panel. Between that fanboat-sized CoolerMaster and my after-market heatsink, my Core i7 2600 Sandy Bridge processor under full load won't go above 80 degrees. STRONGLY suggest this setup