Joined on 03/26/07
Pros: Good cooling! After 12 hours with a 99% load applied, the card did not go over 65C. With the side panel opened, the card gets up to 85C due to the lack of airflow in open air. My case only has a 120mm exhaust fan and it works fine.
Cons: None so far.
Overall Review: Great bang for the buck if you don't need to play all the latest games with max in-game details. I bought this to display at 1280x1024 and it works just fine considering what I paid for it.
Great little CPU for the price, with a small drawback
Pros: - Cheap as chips - Hyperthreading - Low TDP - More than enough power for my HTPC - Displays in 4K no problem
Cons: - DOES NOT SUPPORT NVMe SSD (see more in review below) - Included heatsink fan has a bit of "swishh" sound - First gen Ryzen architecture means it's not actually a 3000-series chip but a reheated 1000-series
Overall Review: Great price, ideal for a budget build. I used it to refresh my HTPC that was still running on 10+ years old hardware. The 2 cores/4 threads configuration is more than enough power for the HTPC and the 192 shaders integrated GPU will display any video at 4K resolution. The 35W TDP means it'll run cool, so less fan noise in the living room. I found the included heatsink fan to have a bit too much of a "swishh" noise, I swapped that for an Arctic Cooler Alpine 64 CO and it's great. I had only one disappointment with this CPU and it's something I had to figure out the hard way. Apparently the Athlon series of AM4 processors do not support NVMe SSDs, but it's never mentioned anywhere in the product description. After putting the system together, my NVMe SSD wasn't showing up in BIOS. After researching a bit, I noticed it was mentioned way down in the motherboard specs that Athlons will only support SATA SSDs in the M.2 slot. I guess most people buying a cheap CPU will opt for an equally cheap storage solution, but I had hoped to pair it with a 120GB entry-level NVMe SSD for a zippy little HTPC rebuild. Overall great little chip, minus the SSD issue.
Perfect for budget mATX build
Pros: Quite pleased with this case, fits everything you need in a budget mATX build and does it in a small and light case. I'm surprised how good it looks considering the price. The front panel is shiny/glossy plastic. It has mounting options for multiple hard drives and even a couple SSDs (or 2.5" drives) on the floor, which is a nice surprise I had when opening the case!
Cons: The front panel is very hard to remove and you have to remove it to install DVD and/or 3.5" bay devices. The manual says to just pull to remove but there's no way this is working unless you want to destroy the case and your hand at the same time. You gonna need long-nose pliers and patience to press the platic pins inside the case to remove the front panel. This is my main con with this case, the rest is quite fine considering the price.
Overall Review: The grey/metallic accent look metal on the pictures but are textured plastic, but hey! what can you expect at this price point?!?