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John S.

John S.

Joined on 03/27/01

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 8
Most Favorable Review

Great little cpu!

AMD RYZEN 3 2200G Quad-Core 3.5 GHz (3.7 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 65W YD2200C5FBBOX Desktop Processor - Retail
AMD RYZEN 3 2200G Quad-Core 3.5 GHz (3.7 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 65W YD2200C5FBBOX Desktop Processor - Retail

Pros: I bought this as a combo with an ASRock a320m-hdv and some g.skill ram to replace my celeron g1820 in my server. So far very happy with it. I am using PlayOn to record from Netflix and other online streaming services and the Vega cores built in can record to 720p using under 30% gpu. I encoded some Blu-ray Discs in hevc format and they transcoded thru Plex to my rocky tv beautifully.

Cons: No cons so far.

Overall Review: Great little multitasking machine on the cheap!

GREAT GPU!

AMD Ryzen 7 5700G - Ryzen 7 5000 G-Series Cezanne (Zen 3) 8-Core 3.8 GHz Socket AM4 65W AMD Radeon Graphics Desktop CPU Processor - 100-100000263BOX
AMD Ryzen 7 5700G - Ryzen 7 5000 G-Series Cezanne (Zen 3) 8-Core 3.8 GHz Socket AM4 65W AMD Radeon Graphics Desktop CPU Processor - 100-100000263BOX

Pros: Very fast with really capable video performance!

Cons: I hate the fact that a compatible motherboard needs a BIOS update to be able to use this CPU at all. Any AM4 motherboard should be able to boot and run ANY AM4 CPU, albeit maybe with some 15W and lower voltage setting until updated. Once it was updated, ALL great!

Overall Review: Got this for my wife's pc and paired it with an MSI A520M-Pro and 16gb of 3000 Geil RAM. She isn't a gamer usually, but I started up Fallout 76 at 1080p high everything, and it played the game fine (over 30fps). Admittedly, her monitor is a freesync display. So far it seem very fast and snappy when doing most desktop tasks. Love it!

Gotta have them 2 M.2 slots!

ASRock B450M PRO4 AM4 AMD Promontory B450 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
ASRock B450M PRO4 AM4 AMD Promontory B450 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Nice layout. 2X M.2 slots. Decent amount of fan headers. Slick looking board. Nice performance!

Cons: Acted a bit funky when I first installed everything, but cleared up nicely and awesome now!

Overall Review: I bought this board to upgrade my system slightly from an MSI B350 Gaming Pro. I have a Ryzen 1700, 16G of G.Skill 3200 ram. On the MSI Board, even with the latest updates as of 12/2018, I couldn't run my RAM at 3200: Sometimes it worked, sometimes a bluescreen or error on booting. No issues at all now. I have a WD NVME 1TB M.2 and a Samsung 850 EVO SSD 1TB M.2 drive. It boots crazy fast... maybe 10 seconds? I did this to be ready for the Ryzen 3000 series coming out this year. Overall I am VERY happy with this board. I had originally bought an MSI B450M Mortar, but it was DOA so sent it back. Only thing the mortar has that I wish this had is a Display Port header on the back. Otherwise, this board is perfect for me!

Pretty decent little board that supports Raven Ridge (Ryzen APUs) out of the box!

ASRock A320M-HDV AM4 AMD Promontory A320 USB 3.1 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
ASRock A320M-HDV AM4 AMD Promontory A320 USB 3.1 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Ordered last week and they came ready with firmware 4.40 which supports Raven Ridge. Super cheap board! Has HDMI, DVI and VGA. Supported my 3000 and 3200 Ripjaws V ram at 2666 (haven't tried higher as I don't need it yet. More interested in stability than squeezing every last bit of performance out of it.

Cons: For some reason my case fans are running full tilt and I can't get them to go any speed other than 100%. No issues with this setup so far other than the fans, and I have 2 running a 2200G and a 2400G.

Overall Review: I would recommend this board for super cheap builds!

I am super excited about this power supply!

Seasonic FOCUS GM-550, 550W 80+ Gold, Semi-Modular, ATX Form Factor, Low Noise, Premium Japanese Capacitor, 7 Year Warranty, Nvidia RTX 30/40 Super, AMD GPU Compatible, Ref# SSR-550FM
Seasonic FOCUS GM-550, 550W 80+ Gold, Semi-Modular, ATX Form Factor, Low Noise, Premium Japanese Capacitor, 7 Year Warranty, Nvidia RTX 30/40 Super, AMD GPU Compatible, Ref# SSR-550FM

Pros: It is just slightly smaller than a regular ATX power supply and so it fit better in my cramped micro atx case. Connectors engaged without a fight. All connectors slid into place and locked in smoothly and with very little effort! 80+ Gold spec so when i forget to turn this off at night (most nights) it wont break the bank on my electric bill. I found that the 24 pin and 4/8 cpu cables were supple and easy to maneuver around my case. I was very pleased with everything about this case, including the professional packaging and little velcro wraps and zip ties that were included.

Cons: I cannot think of a single con with this power supply.

Overall Review: I would definitely buy this again and my do so in order to update my always-on server and the wife's PC.

Nice board with just a few issues

MSI B350M Gaming PRO AM4 AMD B350 USB 3.1 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
MSI B350M Gaming PRO AM4 AMD B350 USB 3.1 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Worked well out of the box and with some bios updates seems to be stable and fast. I bought some G.Skill 3200 speed ram and it will boot into windows and run at that speed using bios version 2.3. It's a tiny m-atx board, smaller than my old Asus am3+ board I had running in this case a week ago. It looks pretty nice too.... black with read highlights and then the added red LED lighting around the board is pretty cool in my black and red case I have it in. This board has been very stable for me as well, no blue screens or odd crashes so far! (fingers crossed)

Cons: My only real issues with this board is the issue that when I change the ram speed from anything other that the default 2133, I get anywhere from 5 to 7 beeps on POST. Very annoying. It will continue on and boot and seems to run ok once booted, but still annoying to have the beeps. The only other real issue I have some others have addressed below me. If you change the outputs on the back panel to be 5.1 audio outs, upon POST completion, your subwoofer will POP! Every. D*&^. TIme! I don't know if MSI can do anything about these two issues, but I have seriously considered a different motherboard just because of this. Ignore the ram thing above, it is now working pretty well, tho not perfect. The audio issues are still there and it was annoying to have to change audio setting to get 5.1 out of just the 3 plugs (instead of the 6 plugs that most motherboards have had for ages now). It still has the super annoying POP! when rebooting or moving connectors around. This is even more annoying as it is listed on the specs for this motherboard that it was specificaly designed NOT to do this! I am now considering just buying a dedicated sound card to get past this problem.

Overall Review: Overall it is a nice motherboard, and a great price. If they fix some of the issues it has with bios updates, I will be one super happy camper. I am tempted to get rid of my 5.1 speaker setup and just use my TV's audio through the HDMI, that would knock out one of the nagging issues. Some further bios updates may fix the RAM teething issues that Ryzen is going through. I will try to update when I have a chance to play after a few more updates. One thing I have seen people ask about and I just tried is about shutting off the Red LEDs. If you install the MSI utility MSI Gaming App, it will let you change the CPU Fan LED color and turn the motherboard's red LEDs off or have them 'breathe' or some other effects. UPDATE: I installed the latest (2.4) BIOS update for this motherboard and have to say I am much happier now. I Overclocked the ram to 3200 and had no POST error beeps at all. Speed is much nicer. The 2.4 update has the code for handling the ryzen 5 CPUs and contains the AGESA 1.0.0.4a microcode which is supposed to handle some bugs and ram timing issues. So far, so good. Thumbs up. UPDATE 2: I have the version 2.6 bios running now and as of 2.5, the system has a better idea of the XMP profiles. Running profile 1, gets me 2933mhz and the rated timings (16, 18, 18, 38) and it has been running quite well. If I try running profile 2, I get error beeps and I have to go back to profile 1. Supposedly there is a new AGESA update coming soon, but no idea if that will fix it or not. As it stands, I am very happy with my cheapo ram running near listed speeds on an entirely new platform. BTW, here is the ram I am running (I am now running at 2933mhz with listed timings - this is with XMP Profile 1) - https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232181 and it was pretty cheap and running with no issues.