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Christopher H.

Christopher H.

Joined on 12/05/06

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 4
Most Favorable Review

Quiet, cool, fast.

Western Digital Blue WD6400AAKS 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
Western Digital Blue WD6400AAKS 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Pros: Quiet, cool, fast.

Cons: First one I ordered was DOA, so the free shipping from Newegg was wiped out by having to ship it back. The replacement works great, however.

Overall Review: Great when they work, but they appear to have a significant DOA problem... maybe 5% if the review ratios on here are representative. But a chance worth taking.

Most Critical Review

Boot loops common. No solution.

GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Fine when it will actually let things pin up and boot. Sadly that becomes rarer over time.

Cons: Googling my symptoms seems to indicate that Gigabyte boards have developed a reputation for the incomplete boot process problem, and there is nothing by way of a solution out there. Rebooting and getting back into windows has become an overnight process for me... let it keep on trying to spin up long enough and it will work.. but not any time within the first hour or two.

Fantastic tiny form factor system

ASRock DESKMINI A300W AMD Socket AM4 AMD A300 1 x HDMI Barebone System
ASRock DESKMINI A300W AMD Socket AM4 AMD A300 1 x HDMI Barebone System

Pros: Tiny, powerful, silent and an awesome value.

Cons: Included heatsink/fan not great, and the AMD stealth fan just barely fits in there if you undo lots of screws... but it does. An extra mm of height would have solved that problem.

Overall Review: I've been wanting to explore sff options for Ryzen and this was the most interesting of the ones I spotted. Easy to use BIOS allows me to OC my RAM sticks above the rated 3200 Mhz, the SOC aspects of the 3200G processor are fully functional. I don't miss the mATX rig that this replaced. I gather that it is even possible to get a m.2 to pcie riser and run a real video card with this thing.... though haven't tried it, and don't know how I would power a real video card. But I'm not playing a lot of games lately, so don't miss the noise and power consumption of a real video card either. IF you get one of these, you're going to need a powered USB hub or two... the 2 USB3 ports on it don't go nearly far enough toward letting me hook up all the miscellaneous webcams, hdds, memory card readers, etc.

Got a flaky one

Western Digital Blue WD6400AAKS 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
Western Digital Blue WD6400AAKS 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Pros: Price was right. It was quiet when it spun up.

Cons: Failed on day one.

Overall Review: Spun up and identified itself to the BIOS once, got partitioned, and then forgot its identity and identified itself as a 0GB drive. The firmware must have died.