Joined on 04/06/09
Fills the gap... mostly
Pros: Includes screws to secure your small drive into place in the large bay. I'm not too worried about my internal media card reader slicing around thanks to these. Decent piece of black plastic, nothing more or less, except for the con...
Cons: It's just a hair too short from side to side for my bay (Corsair 300R case), so there's a tiny gap on the left side about half a millimeter wide. A more enterprising fellow might break out the epoxy or mount it in such a way to spread the gap across both sides, but I'm not going to spend that much time on a sub-10 dollar situation.
Overall Review: Does the job decently, doesn't look incredible but looks way better than a drive flopping (get it?) around in that large bay.
Great for 48 hours...
Pros: I tossed this set into a new average budget build because I've trusted Corsair with every component I can get from them. It worked great right at the get go, flawlessly meshing into the system... until (read cons)
Cons: After running on the new machine for only 2 days (probably less than 12 hours of power-on time) one of the sticks went bad and caused me quite a scare as I didn't know what exactly went wrong with my build. After pulling the bad stick and booting the computer, everything is dandy again, so now I need to figure out how RMA works. I hope this doesn't happen to you, but it's worth noting that even Corsair RAM can die out in a matter of hours.
Overall Review: Great company, I hope I can still say that after I deal with RMA (either manufacturer or NewEgg), but if your new system stops booting after a day or two, troubleshoot your RAM first (I had no POST beeps or anything).
Excellent 1440p card
Pros: -Runs 2020 titles on "ultra" at 1440p resolution in frame rates too high for me to make use of, major upgrade from my old GTX 970
Cons: -Noise/heat production expected of a 3-fan gaming GPU
Overall Review: I haven't tried competing graphics cards as I only buy one every five years or so. That being said, this is an excellent card so far and I've been thrilled with the settings I can play new games on!
Excellent Case
Pros: Used this case for my new build and I'm LOVING it. The design is gorgeous, the build quality is excellent, and it runs frosty cool with 4 fans placed on the mesh grill (grill is included, fans are cheap!)
Cons: Docked an egg because my fan controller doesn't work (common issue on these) and the top dust shield they show in the video didn't come with my case.
Overall Review: This case seems pretty big for a mid tower. If space is a concern you may want to look elsewhere.
Great for my needs
Pros: I was scared about buying this card based on the reviews, and sure enough I was having some crashes on my old XP install. After I upgraded to Windows 7, these problems completely disappeared, leaving me to run Left 4 Dead 2 in full settings (on a 19" LCD 1280x1024) with no hiccups.
Cons: Part of me worries about how useful 1gB is on a 128-bit card, but my lack of technical smarts prevents me from saying for sure. More importantly, this card meets and exceeds my needs for the way I use my computer (occasional gamer, don't need to spend 200+ on a gfx card).
Overall Review: Get this card for a bargain if you're running Windows 7: you'll be DX11 ready and have a quick card at a good price. Watch out for that drivers disk (get them online!), and enjoy getting what you paid for and then some.
Here's Your Board
Pros: I used this board as part of an update to a 5 year old PC, and it's an excellent performance per price board for budget builders like myself. ASUS as usual delivers an excellently constructed board at a competitive price, why not scoop this one up?
Cons: For the record, I couldn't find a firewire connection for my (outdated) case. Maybe Firewire just sort of fell off the bus at some point, but I hate having things not plugged in.
Overall Review: This is an excellent board for budget builders that don't want/need Crysis on max settings for the nerd contests. I'm running: -4 gigs DDR3 Corsair RAM (2 x 2 gB) -1 gB Radeon 5770 HD (Sapphire) -Phenom X2 3.1ghZ -Corsair 550w PSU I'm not an overclocker or an expert, but I'm VERY happy with what this build is putting out for me--my old IDE hard drive is the slowest element of this system, according to Windows 7.