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Michael S.

Michael S.

Joined on 12/01/09

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Most Favorable Review

Great Upgrade for 4K60 Gaming

XFX Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB GDDR6 PCI Express 4.0 x16 Graphics Card RX-79TMBABF9
XFX Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB GDDR6 PCI Express 4.0 x16 Graphics Card RX-79TMBABF9

Pros: AMD Reference card is very high quality! Fairly quiet even in my mostly-mesh case (Asus AP201). Handles everything I throw at it, even Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 at High settings at 4K native! GTA V maxed out only uses half the GPU.

Cons: Compared to the 7900 XTX, the XT is quite a bit worse in performance per dollar. It's 17% worse than the XTX while being only 10% cheaper. However, depending on your build, that price difference could make the difference between compromising on a different part or pushing you over budget, so that doesn't mean it sucks, it's just something to be aware of.

Overall Review: My RX 6600 8GB was great for 1080P60 gaming, but ever since I upgraded my monitor to 4K60 I've been wanting more. So, I bought myself the RX 7900 XT for Christmas, and I love it! I have this card paired with an i5-11600K, and I think that's a fine match.

12/15/2022
Most Critical Review
LOGISYS Computer PS480D 480 W ATX12V Power Supply
LOGISYS Computer PS480D 480 W ATX12V Power Supply

Pros: -None. not even its cheap price. yes its that terrible.

Cons: -This is a terrible quality psu. -Low quality capacitors -Not many connectors -Cheap, loud fan -Flimsy casing -Ugly -No internal filtering (dangerous) -Designed as a 200-300w Power Supply -It can't do the labeled wattages. It's a lousy over-rated power supply that can do 300w if you're lucky. -Low quality design of the +5VSB rail so if it fails (which it will because its junt) you will damage your motherboard. -BAD BAD BAD!

Overall Review: -First off, you can trust what I have said here because I own an internet forum specifically about PSU and PSU repair. -I purchased one and opened it up to see how it was built. I am not guessing about the Cons i have seen them with my own eyes. -Please don't entrust your new computer components to this "480w" 300w power supply.

Great Video Card for 4K60 Gaming!

XFX Speedster MERC 319 AMD RX 6950 XT Black Gaming Graphics Card with 16GB GDDR6 RX-695XATBD9
XFX Speedster MERC 319 AMD RX 6950 XT Black Gaming Graphics Card with 16GB GDDR6 RX-695XATBD9

Pros: -Great performance at a reasonable price for 4K60 gaming. -XFX cooler runs cool and quiet even under load.

Cons: -Previous gen cards like this don't have as good of Ray Tracing performance as the RX 7000 series BUT if that's not important to you (it doesn't matter to me) these are a much better deal than the "latest and greatest" cards.

Overall Review: Overall, this XFX Merc RX 6950 XT is a great performing GPU for gamers that either play at high refresh rate 1440P or 60hz 4K gaming as long as you don't need the best Ray Tracing performance. I've bought many XFX video cards from the HD 4350 way back when to an RX 7900 XT in another build and now this RX 6950 and they never disappoint.

Interesting Product Probably Worth Buying

ASRock Challenger Arc A380 6GB GDDR6 PCI Express 4.0 ITX Video Card A380 CLI 6G OC
ASRock Challenger Arc A380 6GB GDDR6 PCI Express 4.0 ITX Video Card A380 CLI 6G OC

Pros: -Insanely great video encode/decode performance for the price. -Better DX12 gaming performance compared to other budget cards. handles MSFS 2020 surprisingly well at 1080P, for example! -ASRock's cooler is reasonably attractive, chill, and very quiet even at full load.

Cons: -Not the most consistent card for DX11 and older games. -REQUIRES a newer system with Resizable BAR support for proper performance so if you have a motherboard/system that's not a modern AMD setup or older than Intel 10th-gen, you should NOT buy this card. It will still function in systems without ReBAR but it'll perform pretty badly. -As of this writing, Folding@Home is not supported on this GPU. According to F@H developers, Intel's driver simply isn't stable enough for emulating FP64 functions at this time, which would require Intel to fix that. -The first ASRock A380 I got was defective, it would only output to like 1/10 monitors. The second one I got works perfectly on all my monitors. -It would be nice for ASRock to made a "non OC" low-profile-capable version of the A380 that doesn't require a 6-pin power connector - the A380 chip has a 75W TDP so I know it's possible.

Overall Review: Intel Arc is intriguing, and we definitely need a 3rd player in the discrete GPU industry, so I'm glad this product exists. Its larger brother the A750 is an insanely good value, although I settled for the A380 since it's just for my secondary system and I don't use it much. At the time of this writing, Intel is bunding a few free games and creative software with its Arc cards. Sadly, some of the software is only for a 3-month, 6-month, or 12-month period, it's not forever free. Still, some of the options in the bundle are full versions, which is cool. I wouldn't buy this card just for the included software, but it does make it a better value. I would overall recommend this card, especially if you care about video encode/decode or play mainly DX12 titles or older games that simply aren't intensive enough for the A380's inconsistent DX9-11 performance to be an issue. The competition to the Arc A380 6GB is the AMD RX 6400 4GB. Between the two, this Intel card is overall a better buy in my opinion, but you might want to research your favorite games to see which card will run them better.

Fantastic Case

ASUS AP201 Type-C Airflow-focused Micro-ATX,Mini-ITX Computer Case, Support 360/280 Liquid Cooling - Black
ASUS AP201 Type-C Airflow-focused Micro-ATX,Mini-ITX Computer Case, Support 360/280 Liquid Cooling - Black

Pros: Incredible build quality especially given the price. Professional, simple design looks good for any environment. Front panel IO and power button on front, not on top. Great cooling for your components. Easy to build a system that looks tidy in here. USB C front panel connector. Side panels interchangeable which is nice so you can hide the one that says "ASUS PRIME CASE" if that bothers you.

Cons: Included 120mm fan is e-waste tier 3 pin, in 2022, seriously? This is the kind of fan I would expect on a $20 generic case, not a name brand quality case!

Overall Review: I really, really love this case. I replaced my similarly priced Fractal Design mATX case with this one when I updated my system and it's worlds better. My build is based on an i5-11600K and a reference design RX 7900 XT. Noise and temps are great. I only use air cooling, so while I don't know how it is to build a liquid-cooled system in this case, I'm sure it would be fine. I highly recommend this Asus case, and will definitely buy another for the next system I build for someone.

12/17/2022

The MOST FRUSTRATING case I've ever used

hec RA251C00F 1.2 mm Thickness 2U Rackmount Server Case 2 External 5.25" Drive Bays
hec RA251C00F 1.2 mm Thickness 2U Rackmount Server Case 2 External 5.25" Drive Bays

Pros: Cheap, 2U, full ATX motherboard, standard ATX power supply. It gets two stars for being cheap.

Cons: Clearly whoever designed this case looked at the physical specifications for ATX components like motherboard and power supply but never actually tried to build a system in it.

Overall Review: Building a server in the box it came in would have been far easier than building the server in the actual case. I only picked this because it fit a full ATX motherboard not just MicroATX like other cheap 2U cases, but it retained the ability to use a standard ATX power supply. In hindsight, I should have gone with any other case on the market and just bought a MicroATX motherboard, since you can't use the PCI-E slots anyway... instead of simply giving standard low profile PCI-E slots this case has full-size PCI-E slots at a 90-degree angle... but no riser card is included and nothing supports the cards so if you have a long-ish card (RAID card, GPU, whatever) it's gonna dangle there. I'm going to keep it for now and buy a better case in a couple months - that'll be the best day of my life.