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Mark C.

Mark C.

Joined on 10/06/06

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 5
Most Favorable Review

It's huge, but has great air flow

Cooler Master HAF XB EVO - High Air Flow Test Bench and LAN Box Desktop Computer Case with ATX Motherboard Support
Cooler Master HAF XB EVO - High Air Flow Test Bench and LAN Box Desktop Computer Case with ATX Motherboard Support

Pros: Purchased two of these for a father/son build. Excellent air flow. The two fans it came with are pretty quiet. Used them in a push/pull set up with a CORSAIR Hydro Series H105 Extreme Performance 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler and a 8700K processor, these and another 120 mm fan I had lying around keep the processor under 60C under my load tests so far.

Cons: The power switch button is a little oversized compared to switch beneath it, but that's nothing. The only thing I didn't like the 8 screws to hold in the front 3.5" tray. If use the 5.25" slots for a CD/DVD drive, and want to screw it down on the one side, you have to remove the 3.5" to get to it. Pretty minor and not worth taking an egg, but it's kind of a pain.

Overall Review: It's a BIG case, so if space is an issue, find something else. Great quality though.

Sweet processor!!!

Intel Core i7 8th Gen - Core i7-8700K Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 95W BX80684I78700K Desktop Processor Intel UHD Graphics 630
Intel Core i7 8th Gen - Core i7-8700K Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 95W BX80684I78700K Desktop Processor Intel UHD Graphics 630

Pros: I purchased 2 of these for father and son builds, and I'm looking forward to testing them against my older 2700K, to see what kind of performance improvement it has.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: Matched these with Cosair Hydro Series H105. Using the two case fans included with my case and these in a push/pull configuration, my load test so far have been under 60C. While I haven't tried overclocking them yet, it's sweet to see the 6 cores processing.

Sweet Motherboard

MSI Z370 GAMING M5 LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z370 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard
MSI Z370 GAMING M5 LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z370 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: I used to build a number of systems, and while it's been a while this mobo is many steps above the ones I've worked with in the past. Excellent BIOS, lots of fan ports, plenty of space. Comes with a SLI bridge.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: Purchased two of these for a father/son build, and they seem to be quite nice boards.

First use of an SSD drive, much faster than the PATA/SATA drives

HyperX Savage 2.5" 240GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SHSS37A/240G
HyperX Savage 2.5" 240GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SHSS37A/240G

Pros: Purchased two of these my father/son builds. The drive are nicely boxed and include a 3.5" tray for mounting. They also come with Acronis True Image registration #'s so you can download the software.

Cons: Not a big deal, but I would rather have the software disk than a registration #. A couple of extra steps if you're using them for replacement drives.

Overall Review: I knocked an egg off because the shipping on this drive was slow and I had to follow up with the 3rd party (who did make it right I will say) but you have to wonder about the ethics of billing people's credit cards BEFORE you ship the merchandise. In my case, a shipping label was created, and a week later it hadn't supposedly been picked up by USPS. Hmmm. That's one hassle a person doesn't need when building a system. Accidents happen, shipments get lost, and I understand that, and in this case, the company made good, so it's no issue other than I ended up ordered some SSDs from the Big A to finish the build with my son.

MASSCOOL 9U291B1M3GO 70mm Ball CPU Cooler
MASSCOOL 9U291B1M3GO 70mm Ball CPU Cooler

Pros: What can I say, it works and for the price you can't beat it.

Cons: A little louder than expected.