Joined on 11/20/03
The Core of my 2014 Budget APU Gaming Rig
Pros: WOW! Was I impressed! Plays games quite well WITHOUT any add-on video card.
Cons: The stock fan works, but I would recommend upgrading it for extended life of the chip. I do not overclock with it.
Overall Review: This is my 2014 Budget PC Gaming Rig After much research I decided to go with the new KAVERI based APU system from AMD. After reading other reviews on this A10-7850K Kaveri and what the architecture of a 12 compute core APU/GPU represents, I decided to bade my budget gaming build on this architecture. I was gambling that this new system should be faster than my old rig, and that the on-board GPU should be able to gt me by until I could by an add-on card. WOW was I impressed! I am in the closed beta for Sony Everquest Next Landmark, and on my old system I would experienced bad stuttering. But with this new AMD A10-7850K system I don't have any stutter at all. My OLD PC specs: Intel 6750 Core2 2.6GHz 4GB Kingston HyperX DDR2 ATI Radeon HD 4770 2TB HDD My NEW Specs: AMD A10-7850K Kaveri 3.7GHz Socket FM2+ GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-D3H MicroATX mobo G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Mushkin Chronos 60GB SSD for boot drive Total cost of parts ~450 NO ADD-ON VIDEO CARD ONLY GPU USAGE ONLY: I am presently running this rig with only the built-in APU/GPU performance, and it it definitely faster in newer games than my old rig. I received the free Battlefield 4 with my order, and this system runs it fine without an add-in video card. Same thing for Planetside 2, Everquest Next Landmark, Firefall, and Skyrim, and other games which nobody cares about. Mind you the performance is not stellar, but is fast enough to play these games at an acceptable level. In the future I plan on adding a discreet GPU but am not sure whether to go with a hybrid system with an R7 series card, or a separate stand-alone card. I will make my decisions after further research.
2nd RMA of this board for failure.
Pros: * It worked good (for 1 month anyway). * Mini ITX means it great for SFF builds. * RGB Fusion for playing with the RGB colors.
Cons: Only 4 SATA connectors, BIOS did not support Ryzen APUs out of the box, so I had to get an RMA for one with an updated BIOS. I finally received back my "NEW" board from RMA only to find they shipped me someone else's DEAD and USED motherboard, and you guessed it, it was DEAD as well. Finally got my "UPDATED" board with current BIOS in it, and built my system, and it ran fine for 1 month, and then guess what? The motherboard suddenly died, with no POST, and no BEEP codes. Time for ANOTHER RMA of this board.
Overall Review: Based my my experience with this board, I would recommend you get something else.
GREAT CASE AT A GREAT PRICE
Pros: Good build quality for the price. Good airflow and support for liquid cooling. Exceptional price point. Comes with 4 RGB fans with RGB mode selector button on the case, or can be plugged into a compatible fan controller.
Cons: I really wish it came in white, and maybe some other colors like red, black with red accents, etc.
Overall Review: Get this case, its good!
I bought two already, and buying one more right now.
Pros: * Ryzen 5 2500U processor with Vega 7 GPU * 256GB SSD faster and quieter than standard hard drive * Price was lower than anything at the time from my regular go-to: ACER.
Cons: * Keyboard keys are a bit odd
Overall Review: Ordered these for a client and they want one more. So far they are running fine. Installed all Windows 10 updates, removed bloatware, which wasn't a lot, installed printer drivers and 3rd party apps like Adobe reader, Google Chrome, and Office 2016 without any problems. So far they are working fine with no issues, knock on wood. Usually I buy Acer laptops for this client, which orders between two to four new laptops each month for new hires, but this Lenovo 14" laptop for $469 was much lower priced than anything currently available from Acer with similar specs.
COMPANY GONE OUT OF BUSINESS - WEBSITE DOWN
Pros: - Mine still "works" with the generic Windows 10 drivers that come with Windows 10 as a "REALTEK 8812AU Wireless LAN 802.11ac USB NIC" but I do occasionally get complete loss of WIFI, as well as random latency issues.
Cons: Company went out of business and there is no drivers or support available - BUYER BEWARE.
Overall Review: It's funny that this product is still for sale on Newegg, and that the company website links take you to a generic domain parking page.
Ryzen Compatibility is Like a Box of Chocolates
Pros: * Does not require a dedicated graphics card.
Cons: * Did not work with three different Ryzen motherboards, but the other processors (A6 9500 Boot Kit APU, and Ryzen 5 2600 DID work.) I narrowed it down to this Ryzen 5 2400G APU. In the latest working motherboard, type system powers on, but there is no POST activity at all. * Messing around with BIOS updates did not help, in fact the Asrock Fatal1ty board that I correctly updated to the latest BIOS became unstable even with the Boot Kit APU after updating.
Overall Review: I have been buying parts from Newegg and build PCs since, well...My Newegg password is only 6 digits long if that gives you an idea. I have NEVER had to return a processor in my entire LIFE, but it is what it is. I have never had such bad compatibility issues with CPUs/RAM/Motherboards since the launch of Ryzen.
Ordered NEW, received a USED that doesn't work properly
Apparently this company thinks people are stupid, and will send them a USED laptop and call it "CUSTOMIZED", which means, they pulled the labels off, deleted ALL the pre-loaded software, and did a Windows 10 system reset. I found a WINDOWS.OLD folder on the hard drive. From the Description: "The new Aspire 5 A515-51G-563W is the perfect laptop for every need." The long and the short of it is, this laptop has problems working with our corporate network, and cannot connect to many of the servers, even though it can see them. Perhaps if they left the software alone, they wouldn't have deleted needed proprietary drivers.
Got a MacBook in great condition
Needed a quick Macbook replacement for a customer. Got this right away from TekReplay.
I think they left the planet
Order was never even packaged. Email to the seller went unanswered. I need a refund.