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Sean V.

Sean V.

Joined on 12/07/11

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 5
Most Favorable Review

Great card with an even better cooler!

EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 FTW HYBRID GAMING, 08G-P4-6278-KR, 8GB GDDR5, RGB LED, All-In-One Watercooling with 10CM FAN, 10 Power Phases, Double BIOS, DX12 OSD Support (PXOC)
EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 FTW HYBRID GAMING, 08G-P4-6278-KR, 8GB GDDR5, RGB LED, All-In-One Watercooling with 10CM FAN, 10 Power Phases, Double BIOS, DX12 OSD Support (PXOC)

Pros: The card overall is actually pretty lightweight but still feels very sturdy. The VRM fan is super quiet due to the use of the new ACX 3.0 fan rather than the impeller fan used on the 900 series hybrid. At 100% I can't hear the card's fan over my case fans. The RGB LEDs look great and the amount of control over the RGB LEDs through Precision XOC is awesome. The card is boosting to well over the stated boost clock on its own so the combination of the additional power phases and the cooler definitely works well.

Cons: The only real con is that the included radiator fan is pretty terrible. That's about it.

Overall Review: So I'm not really sure if this is a con or not, but I almost placed it there. EVGA recommends the radiator be positioned to where the hoses coming off the rad are located on the bottom for "best performance and acoustics". The placement may not make that huge of a difference, but if you were to follow those recommendations, it obviously limits where you can place the rad in your case. I'm not sure if this because of the pump design or the rad, but I have an H100i V2 as well and I don't believe they have any caveats as to how to place their radiators. I would definitely recommend this card for anyone looking to game at 1440 and occasionally 4K.

Great features and connectivity for the price.

CableMod® WideBeam™ Magnetic LED Strip RGB Kit - 60cm
CableMod® WideBeam™ Magnetic LED Strip RGB Kit - 60cm

Pros: - Comes with plenty of connectors for further expansion. - A Y' cable is also included so you can run two different strips on the same wireless remote. - Magnets are more than enough to keep the entire strip stationary without any sag or drooping. - The LED strip itself only has female connectors so if you bend a pin, the dual sided male connector between the LED strip and the power adapter can just be tossed and replaced with another connector and the LED strip isn't ruined.

Cons: - While the remote itself is pretty self-explanatory and labeled well, the instructions included are basically a folded note card and mention nothing the different modes the kit is capable of.

Overall Review: Unfortunately, I have an ASRock Z170 OC Formula motherboard, so I'm not able to comment on the ASUS Aura capabilities of this kit. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to get some color into their case.

Great Memory

G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C14D-16GTZKY
G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C14D-16GTZKY

Pros: - XMP profile was recognized and booted immediately with no issues at the advertised latency and speed. - Timings are extremely tight considering the high frequency.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: The color is an EXTREMELY close match to my ASRock Z170 OC Formula but not quite perfect. These are very obviously the same parts as the standard TridentZ with different colored heatsinks and seem to be performing just as the reviews for those sticks would suggest.

Excellent GPU

SAPPHIRE NITRO Radeon R9 390 8GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 Graphics Card 100382NTOC-2L
SAPPHIRE NITRO Radeon R9 390 8GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 Graphics Card 100382NTOC-2L

Pros: - Really REALLY quiet for a 3 fan card. - Comes with a back plate which actually contributes to the looks of the card (if you're an aesthetics person) as well as being functional. - Quite a bit of over-clocking room compared to past AMD offerings. I was able to get to 1150 core and 1650 memory easily from 1040 and 1500 respectively.

Cons: None really. If you have a small case the card may not be for you considering its length.

Overall Review: I'm coming an HD 6950 so I was long overdue for an upgrade. Comparatively, the Tri-X fans are quieter than SINGLE (but slightly larger) fan on my HIS Ice-Q 6950. So if being quiet is a major priority for you, then this would be a great choice. My cpu is an FX 4100 and my entire system other than the new gpu is 4 years old, which I'm pretty sure is bottlenecking the new card. But it's still leaps and bounds ahead of the 6950 in performance and about the same as far as heat (despite the TDP being much higher than the 6950).

10/22/2015

Great board for the price

ASUS Z97-A LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
ASUS Z97-A LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Solid board with excellent features.

Cons: Wish it supported both PCI-E and SATA M.2 drives rather than just PCI-E.

Overall Review: I know several have complained about the bios on this board but I actually thought it was great. It was unbelievably simple to navigate and make changes in (last pc I built was on a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 which has a TERRIBLE bios). With a Corsair H60 on a 4690k, I managed to get settings for a stable 4.3Ghz @ 1.25 vcore in about 10-15 minutes. I know it's not an amazing overclock, but for that little effort and tweaking, I'd say that's pretty respectable.