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Michael H.

Michael H.

Joined on 08/05/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 26
Most Favorable Review

Excellent!

ASRock ASRock Fatal1ty Gaming Fatal1ty Z87 Killer LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX Intel Gaming Motherboard
ASRock ASRock Fatal1ty Gaming Fatal1ty Z87 Killer LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX Intel Gaming Motherboard

Pros: Good customer service and fast RMA handling/shipping time. The 500hz USB port for mice is very nice for those of us who are still using high quality sensors (IE 3.0) and wanting to switch over to windows 8 (for which there isn't a 500hz program yet). Has every feature I need/want at a great price. 3 year warranty.

Cons: The F-Stream program has no "reset to defaults" option. So before you change anything make sure to save a profile with the defaults. Even after unchecking the options to start the program when the OS boots, as well as to auto apply settings when the program starts, it's still applying some overclocked settings. UEFI/BIOS was reset to defaults with no effect. I contacted them about this so hopefully they'll update the program.

Most Critical Review

Bad shape no matter what size your hands are or what grip you use

ZOWIE GEAR AM Black 5 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical Competitive Gaming Mouse with DPI Adjustable Switch
ZOWIE GEAR AM Black 5 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical Competitive Gaming Mouse with DPI Adjustable Switch

Pros: The plug & play, driverless 1000hz and dpi switching is very nice. I uses a good sensor. It has a nice low lift off distance.

Cons: The bottom is wider than the top so there is no grip when trying to lift the mouse. This has been fixed in the newer F K. The middle click is very hard to press. The mouse is very thin and will cramp your hand unless you have small or fat hands. The F K suffers from this same issue. The DPI steps are bad. They are 450, 1150, 2300. Those last two are extremely high and 90 percent of gamers should not be using them. Unfortunately, gaming mice developers have been deceiving gamers into thinking that higher DPI equals better mouse, when the reality is that higher DPI equals higher sensitivity. So now new gaming mice developers who actually care and know what they're doing are forced to include these ridiculously high DPI steps in order to make it look like they're on par with other gaming mice. This might be why zowie incorporated these silly DPI steps. In reality most gamers who know what they're doing will put the windows slider on 6 of 11 (middle) with Enhance Pointer Precision unchecked, and have their mouse on 400 or 450 dpi. Anything up to 900 is reasonable depending on the game and your monitor's resolution. Anything beyond that and you will lose the ability to make small, precise movements. So what the majority of knowledgeable gamers really need are DPI steps between 400 and 900.

Overall Review: I was concerned that the AM would fit my hands better (especially at the right front where your ring finger rests) since I have big hands and I heard that the F K has a reduced height from the AM (which is true - but the height of the front of the mice where your ring finger goes is the same on both mice) so I bought them both to test and I can confirm that there is no reason for anyone to buy the AM. The F K is better for all grips and every size hand. But both the F K and AM are very thin mice so they will cramp your hand unless you have small or fat hands.

Not even worth it on sale

Fuji Labs Black AUFJ-PSQWBS306BK 3.5mm Connector 2nd Gen Sonique - SQ306 High-Grade Pure Beryllium In-Ear Headphones with Built-In Mic
Fuji Labs Black AUFJ-PSQWBS306BK 3.5mm Connector 2nd Gen Sonique - SQ306 High-Grade Pure Beryllium In-Ear Headphones with Built-In Mic

Overall Review: Sound will randomly start to dip in one or both earphones. When I saw the low price I figured I might get a bad one and have to RMA it, but after doing that and getting another one that did the same thing this seems to be a fatal flaw in all of these.

Decent budget case.

Cougar MX330 Mid Tower Case with Full Acrylic Transparent Window and USB 3.0
Cougar MX330 Mid Tower Case with Full Acrylic Transparent Window and USB 3.0

Pros: Got for 41 on sale. 4 front USB. Good cable management. Small and light but also seems pretty sturdy/well built. I like the way it looks.

Cons: Only 1x 120mm fan. 3 pin (DC only, no PWM). No screw holes for a 140mm fan anywhere, so I had to use tape. One or more of the SSD mounting spots are unusable due to the angles it forces the cables to be in. One or more of them would require you to have a SATA cable that has two 90 degree ends on the connector, but I've only seen cables with 1 90 degree and 1 straight. So I had to put my SSD in the HD cage. No big deal for me since I don't have many drives, but would be a problem for people that do. Can't use motherboard standoffs for SSD mounting because the screw holes are the wrong size. Technically has a ODD slot, but using it will pinch the front panel cables at a sharp angle so I opted not to use it and will just remove the back panel and plug everything in if I need to use my ODD. Was hearing lots of weird PC noises in my earphones when using the front panel audio. I didn't know what the problem was till I read that "A lot of cases (even some of the expensive ones) use cheap unshielded wires to connect the front ports to the audio header on the motherboard. They introduce a lot of noise to whatever you're listening to. Sometimes its so bad you'll start picking up noise on the back ports as well unless you disconnect the front port wire from the audio header." I switched to the rear ports and the noises stopped. Unfortunate that the front ports are unusable due to this. My one egg deduction is mostly for this.

Overall Review: I'm not a huge fan of having to take off 4 screws every time I want to open the case. Also not a fan of the fact that the side panel isn't resting on anything/no hinges, but that's more of a problem for glass panels that might crack if they hit the table when you're taking them off.

Great price to performance ratio

MSI Radeon RX 5700 8GB GDDR6 PCI Express 4.0 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card RX 5700 EVOKE OC
MSI Radeon RX 5700 8GB GDDR6 PCI Express 4.0 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card RX 5700 EVOKE OC

Pros: Got on sale for 270.

Cons: It seems all AMD GPUs released in recent years have a problem with occasional/rare black screens that can be fixed via Win+Ctrl+Shift+B to restart graphics driver. I've had the card for months and it only happened about 3 times, and never during something important.

Overall Review: Great price to performance ratio.

Great, affordable ram that overclocks well.

Ballistix Sport LT 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model BLS2K8G4D32AESEK
Ballistix Sport LT 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model BLS2K8G4D32AESEK

Pros: Very affordable on sale.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: B-die = overclocks well & expensive. E-die = overclocks well & is cheap. This is E-die. Not sure why they don't advertise it as such. Ram never used to have an impact on FPS, but there are claims that they do with new Ryzen CPUs. Not sure if we're allowed to post links, so do a search for "MemTestHelper DDR4 OC Guide". I used that to get: Stable at 3266 14-17-17-33 with "Tight" secondary and tertiary, and manual tRFC. On a 2600x & B450 Tomahawk. I did not see any impact to FPS in some games, but I think I did see a significant increase in some heavily CPU-tasked games.