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Matthew W.

Matthew W.

Joined on 07/21/02

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 17
Most Favorable Review

Awesome low power mobo

ASRock D1800M Intel Dual-Core Celeron Processor J1800 Micro ATX Motherboard / CPU / VGA Combo
ASRock D1800M Intel Dual-Core Celeron Processor J1800 Micro ATX Motherboard / CPU / VGA Combo

Pros: This thing has great low power consumption. I used a bench DC power supply with a PicoPSU-120 to measure. At Linux idle with a single 8-chip DIMM, GigE up, 1920x1200 DVI up, and a HDD in power-down mode, this thing consumed 6.3W. I tried a couple while true; busy loops and the power consumption was 8.9W. Blanking the display and bringing down Ethernet gave me an idle of 5.2W. I like how it has 3 PCIe slots.

Cons: Obviously performance is much slower than a real Haswell or such. But with a ceiling of ~9W I really like the performance I get for a router or media center or such.

Overall Review: Most ATX power supplies will have significantly more at-wall power consumption than my measurement. Even some 80+Gold units were double according to killawatt.

12/10/2015
Most Critical Review

Not Perfect But Can Get The Job Done

SYBA Dual Compact Flash to 44 Pin IDE 2.5" Adapter Enclosure - SD-ADA45006
SYBA Dual Compact Flash to 44 Pin IDE 2.5" Adapter Enclosure - SD-ADA45006

Pros: Well, it does what it is supposed to if you have the room.

Cons: Other reviewer is right in that one of the pins should not be populated. This wasn’t a problem for me because none of the cables I had were nice enough to be properly keyed. I had a hard time attaching the IDE cable, almost like the pins were too large. However, the pins seemed to be in the correct location. The plastic was too wide by a mm or two. I was replacing the hard drive in a Fit-PC Slim (the orginal one, not Fit-PC2) and this adapter simply wouldn’t fit where the standard sized hard drive had originally been. It’s easy to detach the plastic if you need to (but then you’ve over paid). The adapter did fit in my T42’s UltraBay module with the plastic still attached though. So less exacting installs may be okay with the plastic.

Overall Review: Unlike what one of the other reviewer suggests, CF to PATA is pretty much a straight through connection. Any booting problems are most certainly not the result of this adapter.

Great entry Z370 mobo

ASRock Z370 Pro4 LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z370 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard
ASRock Z370 Pro4 LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z370 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: This seems to be a great Z370 mobo for the price. I like how the second x16 slot is a x4 off the southbridge -- this means I can install something like a 10GbE card and still retain the full x16 from the CPU to the GPU. Plenty of PCIEx1 ports for other stuff and still get two full speed M.2 slots. Nice Intel GbE. I'm also using Asrock's TB3 AIC, works fine.

Cons: My only wish is that I could use two TB3 AICs but I don't think any mobo has supported that. I also personally would probably trade one of the M.2 slots for another x4 card slot, but that's just me. Some might find fault with the lower end audio compared to other boards but it's fine for me. Ultimately nothing I'd knock an egg off for.

Overall Review: I haven't tried overclocking on it so can't really gauge how well it does there. Pleased with this board. This review for ASRock review rebate program.

11/16/2017

Good switch, but not energy efficient

TP-Link 5 Port Gigabit Switch | Easy Smart Managed | Plug & Play | Desktop/Wall-Mount | Sturdy Metal w/ Shielded Ports | Support QoS, Vlan, IGMP and Link Aggregation (TL-SG105E)
TP-Link 5 Port Gigabit Switch | Easy Smart Managed | Plug & Play | Desktop/Wall-Mount | Sturdy Metal w/ Shielded Ports | Support QoS, Vlan, IGMP and Link Aggregation (TL-SG105E)

Pros: Performs as advertised. A smart switch for under 20 bones.

Cons: I knew this going in, but it’s not 802.3az (Energy Efficient Ethernet) compliant. I think it’s a bit deceiving to stamp “Energy Efficient” in the product literature since it doesn’t support the most energy saving Ethernet spec. I took an egg off for lack of 802.3az.

Overall Review: I took some quick idle power measurements with a bench supply: * No cables plugged in: 54mA (0.48W) * Single GigE idle link: 94mA (0.84W); I tried both a 2ft cable and a 25ft cable and got same results. Not sure if longer cables will affect this. * Two GigE idle links: 136mA (1.22W)

Can't rely on it, probably wouldn't buy again

Nippon Labs DP-DVI-6 6 ft. DP DisplayPort Male to DVI-D Male Adapter Cable, Black
Nippon Labs DP-DVI-6 6 ft. DP DisplayPort Male to DVI-D Male Adapter Cable, Black

Pros: Worked with many displays and video cards. Seems to be a descent cable.

Cons: When connecting a Dell E248WFP to a Dell PowerEdge T20 the display was never recognized. Didn't matter if I plugged it in before boot or after Windows running. Nothing -- not even a sound from Windows of a recognized display when plugging in. I tried for a good 15 minutes before giving up. Other monitors on this server with this same cable worked. A Dell 023NVR (also a passive DP->DVI adapter) worked between these two devices perfectly.

Overall Review: Next time I need a passive DP->DVI connection I will probably just buy another one of the Dell adapters and a DVI cable. So far those have been 100% compatible for me while this cable is not. If I'm paying a premium for an adapter integrated in a cable I expect it to work as well as a discrete solution.

New revision fixes a lot of my old complaints

NORCO RPC-430 Black 4U Rackmount Super Short Depth 15.25" Server Case 6 Internal 3.5" Drive Bays
NORCO RPC-430 Black 4U Rackmount Super Short Depth 15.25" Server Case 6 Internal 3.5" Drive Bays

Pros: I bought a new batch of these at the end of Nov-2013 and Norco has changed the design a bit since my Aug 2013 review. They now correctly advertise up to 12x10.5 board support and not EATX. The front panel is completely changed with working LEDs for: power, HDD, three LANs, and an alert. Also, two USB 2.0 ports with a standard 9-pin plug. And it all works this time!

Cons: Paint quality on my new batch wasn’t as good. Came out of boxes with some light scratches and such already. Not really too big of deal for something that I’ll never look at and is in this price range. (I would subtract eggs from a more expensive chassis with this sort of paint quality) Strangely, one of the USB ports is a blue USB 3.0 plug. But, they don’t have the cable to plug in to a USB 3.0 header on a mobo. Works fine as dual 2.0 ports though. Many fewer holes in the side of the case now. I guess if you’re using Norco’s rails this shouldn’t be an issue but if you are doing anything creative you might have a harder time.

Overall Review: Too bad Newegg doesn’t let you upload pics in a review so I could show changes. Reluctantly giving 5 eggs to balance out my old review since panel is much improved and case is advertised correctly now. Still don’t like the bend-and-break I/O slot covers though.