cover
matthew b.

matthew b.

Joined on 11/19/04

0
0

Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 42
Most Favorable Review

Good Z87 board

ASRock Z87M PRO4 LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
ASRock Z87M PRO4 LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Bios is the best I have ever seen, although could use a bit of improving. Bang for the buck is high, ton of features for little cost. Well layed out motherboard. Tons of options to tweak settings and overclock

Cons: Bit of a rough start to get it going. Bios can be overwhelming at times with to many options and not enough explanation for what those options do. Manuel is extremely weak

Overall Review: Overall a pretty good motherboard. It seemed a little weird at first, would randomly blue screen and windows boot loop. Flashed bios and it seems to be ok right now. Has all the options I wanted on it for a cheap price which is really good. Used other brands my entire life such as asus gigabyte, etc. Thought I would give asrock a chance, glad I did. Their bios is simple the best ive ever worked with. Just wish that it would have come with more explantion on the options

Most Critical Review
APEVIA CF4SL-UBL-LED 80mm Blue LED Case Fan
APEVIA CF4SL-UBL-LED 80mm Blue LED Case Fan

Pros: Nice color

Cons: way to loud for me.

Good card for money

GIGABYTE Radeon R9 290 4GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card GV-R929D5-4GD-B
GIGABYTE Radeon R9 290 4GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card GV-R929D5-4GD-B

Pros: Price vs Perfomance extremely good here, if not the best right now. Future proof for a long time Can play and will play anything on max settings for a long time

Cons: Fan noise Beta drivers Heat

Overall Review: Im a bit ocd when it comes to noise. I like things silent. The reference cooler is anything but that. Idle and low end games the sound is inaudible. You play a heavy graphics game and the thing sounds like a hairdryer on high. I bought the artic accelro cooler anyways so it doesnt matter. Regardless 95C while gaming even though they say its safe scares me. Overall the card is amazing and I dont have any regerts. For 400 dollars though would of loved to see better cooling on it. Other deal with noise,get a aftermarket cooler, or wait for non reference coolers to come out on the cards.

Nice Drive

XPG SX910 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ASX910S3-128GM-C
XPG SX910 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ASX910S3-128GM-C

Pros: Very fast Stable Comes with mounting device

Cons: Software to update cant see the ssd for some reason

10/24/2013

Hardest, most rewarding, build ive ever done

APEVIA X-QPACK2-BK/500 Black Aluminum Body/ Front Mask Micro ATX Desktop Computer Case 500W Power Supply
APEVIA X-QPACK2-BK/500 Black Aluminum Body/ Front Mask Micro ATX Desktop Computer Case 500W Power Supply

Pros: Visually looks good. Temp read out is very nice to have. Seems to move a good amount of air and keeps inside cool. Pull out motherbaord tray really nice, would have rathered had top part be able to come undone though

Cons: Flimsy metal. Psu is junk. Not the best layout inside for newer parts(requires modifcation of case). Little overpriced in my opnion. Poor quaitly control

Overall Review: Probably would give this a 3.5 if I could. Not beacuse it was hard, because I knew it would be, but rather for the quaitly of the case. I wanted to pack as much as I could in this tiny little tower and it turned to be awesome. Wanted it to be a awesome little gaming computer that was small and it turned out great. However it required a lot of modification to the case. Had to drill several holes just to be able to plug in hardware. The metal is a little to flimsy for my taste for the price I paid for it. Some screws were not milled correctly. Yeah the psu is junk but you should never ever use a psu that comes with a case unless you're building the computer with low end parts for checking email or something to that nature. This build was so frustrating and took me 3 days to do(doing it properly and making it look good). For others wanting to build in this make sure you have a high knowledge of building this is not for beginners. Also really important when picking out parts the gpu can not exceed 267mm in length and the cpu cooler cant exceed 76mm in heigth. My build: Seasonic 620 watt atx psu Asrock Pro4 1150 Z87 8gb Gskill Nvidia GTX 660 WD Black 500gb Adata 64gb ssd Creative xtreme gamer sound card Cpu cooler Noctura NH-l9i Intel i5 haswell 4670

Solid all in one

Asus EeeTop ET2411IUKI-B008K All-in-One Computer - Intel Core i3 i3-3220 3.30 GHz - Desktop - Dark Gray Chrome
Asus EeeTop ET2411IUKI-B008K All-in-One Computer - Intel Core i3 i3-3220 3.30 GHz - Desktop - Dark Gray Chrome

Pros: Very solid looking and feeling Great screen size and quality Very fast Easy to physical setup Very clean looking, everything you need in one unit Wireless keyboard,mouse, and wifi Blu-Ray driver Able to mount it to a wall Bang for your buck is high here at current price

Cons: Bloated software, but all new computers come with it Trouble out of box( See other thoughts) 2 partitioned drives right out of the box Limitation on upgrading it

Overall Review: I actually didn't purchase this for myself but rather for my mom to be used at her house as a family pc for her and my younger siblings. My family is not tech savy at all so I set up the all in one pc up for them. I have built many desktop computers and was not expecting this all in one pc to be anything great for its small size. However after opening the box and using it I was blown away with the quality and speed of such a simple unit. Everything you could possible need is on this all in one pc and the wireless keyboard and mouse allow you to take it anywhere with ease unlike a regular tower pc. The reason why it got a egged knocked off it was the windows disc trouble it had straight out of the box. When turning on the unit for the first time it couldn't recognize windows and wanted me to insert the windows disk to install the operating system(It didn't know where to boot from). Now for me this was not a big problem since I know my way around bios's and the like. I just loaded bios and restored it to defaults settings. However for the average person buying this that has little to no computer experience, such as my family, this would have been a instant call to costumer support or a return which would have been extremely frustrating for something you just bought. To put it simple this problem shouldn't have occurred and I'm not sure why it did. It really took away from the "easy and quick" setup process that all in one pc's are know for. Overall though this all in one pc is simply amazing in ever aspect. I would not hesitant to buy one at all, it is quite an amazing machine!