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Louis S.

Louis S.

Joined on 04/20/06

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 16
Most Favorable Review

Liquid Cooling

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 5830 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 100297L
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 5830 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 100297L

Pros: Highly overclockable, very stable, cool, quiet. I was able to max out the ATI overdrive settings at 875MHZ core and 1200MHZ memory (brought the memory up about 35GB/second!).

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: I didn't wait till the 460 came out and overpaid by $50. To the guy wondering about water cooling- yes, you can use liquid cooling, but I don't suggest you do the mod by yourself. If you aren't sure how to pull the HSF off, you shouldn't try something as complicated as water cooling.

Most Critical Review

Unreliable

Seagate BarraCuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate BarraCuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Fast when it worked.

Cons: Had about 1 year, after which the re-allocated sector count started climbing through the roof. at 13 months, SMART says it is going to fail. I have been told by several other people that Seagate wont' give me an RMA until it actually fails so I am keeping it in my system till it stops spinning. I am disappointed , this is the third Seagate drive that has failed on me.

Overall Review: Seagate needs to work on their quality control. From now on I'm going with WD, as the few I have have yet to break.

Expensive Junk

Logitech G500 10 Buttons Dual-mode Scroll Wheel USB Wired Laser Gaming Mouse
Logitech G500 10 Buttons Dual-mode Scroll Wheel USB Wired Laser Gaming Mouse

Pros: Decent gaming mouse while it lasts..

Cons: Lasted for about a year of regular use. I bought a $12 off-brand that's lasted me just as long and has about the same grade components. Logitech makes some good products- this isn't one of them.

Junk

GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD4P LGA 1156 Intel P55 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard w/ USB 3.0 & SATA 6 Gb/s
GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD4P LGA 1156 Intel P55 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard w/ USB 3.0 & SATA 6 Gb/s

Pros: Few

Cons: Faulty, had several components go out (PCI-e slot, onboard SATA)

Overall Review: Gigabyte will not honor your warranty, so good luck... Even if you are so lucky to get a warranty number, you can't track it as their warranty website is broken. Primary graphics slot went out within a few months of ownership, was never able to successfully overclock CPU or memory (tried several CPU's).

Good hardware, bad software!

Archos - 7 Home Tablet running Google ANDROID
Archos - 7 Home Tablet running Google ANDROID

Pros: Has some solid hardware. Screen is great. Looks slick, and has good battery life.

Cons: Resistive touch panel can be frustrating! Forget about watching any HD videos on this, it says "HD" but the streams have to be below 6mb/s so you're pretty much limited to 640X... and below. The software! It's like they just cobbled something together and thew it out, very unpolished, pretty much all the included apps suck, and you have to pay to get anything decent! This can be improved by "rooting", which gives you access to the Andriod apps store, but it might void your warranty (I'm not sure). Apps that suck: video player, web browser, picture browser, pretty much anything that comes pre-loaded. This is a large tablet, so why did they limit it to mini-SD cards? USB transfers are glacially slow.

Overall Review: I am hoping I can use this for ebooks but haven't tried it yet. Hopefully the ebook app doesn't suck as well.

Horrible customer service!

DIAMOND Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 5770PE51GXOC
DIAMOND Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 5770PE51GXOC

Pros: It's an ATI, which is a good thing.

Cons: Diamond is the worst company for returns ever. They have a BBB rating of F. After 6 months I'm still trying to get someone to return my e-mails, phone calls, and support tickets for an RMA. No luck. I found out the hard way, do NOT buy from Diamond.

Overall Review: Diamond went broke back in the early 2000's, now run by a different company (they kept the brand name) that has no interested in after-sale support. Avoid them at all costs!