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Donald F.

Donald F.

Joined on 06/27/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 5
Most Favorable Review

Great Case, Not 100% Usable

CFI Prime 311 CFI-A0991 Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
CFI Prime 311 CFI-A0991 Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Pros: 1. Lots of room for mid-tower ATX although all of the space stated in the description isn't usable. 2. Solid construction 3. Screwless mounting in both the 5.25" and 3.5" bays 4. Four included 120mm fans 5. Fan controller (but this becomes a con also) 6. Front panel has USB 3.0 7. Bottom vents for power supply and/or fan 8. Thumbscrews for the side panels 9. Plenty of holes in the motherboard tray to do cable management. 10. Even with issues and my quibbles, is worth it for the money you're paying

Cons: The biggest issue, as others have stated, is that the description of this product is somewhat deceptive. It would be like me telling you I'm selling you a 4-door sedan, but come to find out, one door is welded shut. Both the external and internal bays are not fully usable at the counts that are provided in the description. I think the description would have been better in those instances to have been similar to "External 5.25" Bays: 4 (3 usable)" 1. 4 External 5.25" Drive Bays: Technically this is true, but not all 4 are usable. The top 5.25" bay is taken up by the front panel and fan controllers. 2. 4 Internal 3.5" Drive Bays: This isn't true. There are actually six, BUT only 3 are usable because the bays REQUIRE the use of their screwless drive trays. No idea where they got 4.

Overall Review: All in all, this is still a decent price for what I paid ($39.95), and because I was forewarned by reading the reviews and knew what I was getting. I crammed an impressive amount of stuff in this case to colo at FDCServers for an ESXi whitebox (the build is below). That said, I do wish I could have used all six bottom drive bays without having to have done some custom stuff with some plexiglass and my Dremel. I tested a couple of screwless HD rails I had in various configs, and their setup just doesn't fit any industry standards. My Build ======= CPU: Core i7-3930K Six-Core Mobo: ASRock X79 Extreme6 RAM: 64GB DDR3-1600 (8 x 8GB) RAID Card: LSI 9261i 8-port PCI-e 6GB/s RAID Card RAID Volume 1: Samsung 840 500GB SSD x4 (RAID10) RAID Volume 2: 4 x HP 600GB 15k SAS (RAID10) ESXi SSD Host Cache Drive: Crucial M4 64GB SSD (Mobo Port) Mass Storage: 6 x Hitachi 2TB 6Gb/s Drives (Mobo ports) CoolerMaster 5.25 to 3.5" 4 in 3 Drive Bay Intel Pro/1000 Quad GB PCI-e NIC

11/26/2013
Most Critical Review

Power Supply DOA, No Parts

Diablotek RPA-0280 Black SGCC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450W Power Supply
Diablotek RPA-0280 Black SGCC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450W Power Supply

Pros: The price, and tons of spots for fans. Outfit this with some 120mm fans, and you'd have great airflow. Newegg was quick to RMA, but having to wait on the wife's new build sucks.

Cons: Power supply was DOA, plus you could tell it had been used before. Interior rails had screw marks, and a couple of scuffs on the exterior case. No hardware at all except some mobo standoffs already installed. No screws, etc. Not that it mattered, but it came missing a front plate for the top 5.25" bay. Definitely felt like I got an open box return stripped of everything but the case.

Ubuntu18 Server: Great Low Power VPN / Kubernetes Cluster

ASRock Q1900M Intel Quad-Core Celeron Processor J1900 Micro ATX Motherboard / CPU / VGA Combo
ASRock Q1900M Intel Quad-Core Celeron Processor J1900 Micro ATX Motherboard / CPU / VGA Combo

Pros: Needed a low-power embedded board to go in a 1/2 depth 1U case for a basement VPN server to connect out, and in, on. Great server for the price. Was quite surprised to fire it up and find it had Intel V-T, and decided to stick 16GB of RAM in it with a 2TB SSHD, and am running SoftEther, PiHole, and even installed Rancher and am running a little Kubernetes node with MariaDB and a few other things on it. Runs smooth as a rock, and never goes above 82F. This fit perfectly for this use in an older 1U Baracuda VPN box. These VPN boxes can be snagged on that auction site for ~$100. You just take the motherboard that's in there out, throw it away, and stick this in. Works beautifully.

Cons: None that I have found so far.

Overall Review: Note that I didn't run this on Windows, but for me, this was as plug and play as it gets.

WEI Score: 5.9

Pareema 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model MD313C80809L2
Pareema 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model MD313C80809L2

Pros: Cheap, passed memory checks, and gives a decent WEI score. Not expecting blazing performance for this price point, but worked first boot, and great choice for a budget system.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Paired this with an i3-2100, Diablotek RPA-0280 case, and a BIOSTAR H61MGC motherboard.

Works w/Windows 7, Range Could Be Better

EDIMAX EW-7728In Wireless 802.11n Draft 2.0 PCI Card IEEE 802.11b/g, IEEE 802.11n Draft 32bit PCI Up to 300Mbps Wireless Data Rates
EDIMAX EW-7728In Wireless 802.11n Draft 2.0 PCI Card IEEE 802.11b/g, IEEE 802.11n Draft 32bit PCI Up to 300Mbps Wireless Data Rates

Pros: Have had this card about six months now. Caught it on sale for $20 with free shipping, so it was a steal for a Draft-N card. Since then, I have upgraded to Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, and this card works flawlessly under Windows 7. It installed a driver for it, and we were off and running. Really it could not have been easier.

Cons: Although these issues are not enough for me to really complain, they do count enough to dock an egg from the rating: 1. The range could be better. Even with three antennas, I am seeing lower connection strength than with my previous Arlink 101 b/g card. 2. Do *not* install the drivers from the CD, or from the website. Allow Windows 7 to install the drivers, and it does a great job. 3. I also dual boot with Ubuntu 64Bit, and under Ubuntu, I have had strange authentication issues with WPA2 with it not wanting to authenticate with the same router it functions fine with under Windows 7.

Overall Review: Even with the range issues, if you can catch this card on sale, it's well worth the money. If full price, you may wish to look at other cards.