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Michael S.

Michael S.

Joined on 09/15/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 17
Most Favorable Review

Nice product

Thermaltake CL-W0169 Water Cooler
Thermaltake CL-W0169 Water Cooler

Pros: I have used water cooling systems before and this is by far the best one. Easy install, simple air removal and software tunable pump/fan speeds.

Cons: Not really a con but a secondary radiator for the rear of the case would be very nice to have. I will probably be purchasing one soon to help compensate for my SLI rig, dual 8800gtx will heat my house if I am not careful.

Overall Review: I have an Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless mainboard and had no problems whatsoever setting up this pump. Some ESA stuff still kinda works even without the required chipsets. I will be replacing my mainboard in the next couple of months but for now, it works beautifully with no leaks and no air.

Most Critical Review

Horrible drivers

DIAMOND TVW650PCI ATI TV Wonder HD 650
DIAMOND TVW650PCI ATI TV Wonder HD 650

Pros: Fairly simple setup, works ok in windows media center.

Cons: The drivers crash constantly and the media program that came with it is horrific. It is unable to keep the driver running for long enough to get anything done even after completely uninstalling and re-installing the software.

Overall Review: I find it amazing that, after 15 years or so, ATI cannot write a driver to save their collective lives. ATI has always made excellent hardware but support and drivers are definitely not their forte. I am already looking at network based receivers to replace this card.

Great displays so far

Hanns-G HZ281HPB 27.5'' 3ms Full HD 1080P HDMI WideScreen LCD Monitor 400cd/m2  X-Contrast 15,000:1(800:1)Built-in Speakers
Hanns-G HZ281HPB 27.5'' 3ms Full HD 1080P HDMI WideScreen LCD Monitor 400cd/m2 X-Contrast 15,000:1(800:1)Built-in Speakers

Pros: Great displays, vivid color, bright backlighting

Cons: Fairly poor black in my opinion, the bezels could be smaller for Nvidia Surround, and they are only 1920x1200 resolution.

Overall Review: For the size of the displays, they should probably be 2560x1600 resolution though they do look great at their native resolutions of 1920x1200. I am running three of these displays on three GTX470s in Surround at 6054x1200 with bezel correction and they work astoundingly well for the purpose. If you do this, be warned that there can be some motion sickness until you acclimate.

10/17/2010

Great cards, very poor factory heatsink compound

EVGA GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card 012-P3-1470-AR
EVGA GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card 012-P3-1470-AR

Pros: Very fast and I can heat my house.

Cons: I was running extremely high temperatures prior to popping the heatsink and replacing the original heatsink compound. Heatsink does not have a flat base so the contact with the gpu is rather dodgy. The factory compound was applied erratically, was dry as a bone, and looked like a poorly trained bricklayer tried to apply it. These cards generate tremendous amounts of heat under load.

Overall Review: Seriously consider cleaning off the original heatsink grease and putting on a higher quality compound as soon as possible. The factory application was rough on all three of my cards, the excess had squirted out from between the GPUs and was partially filling the surrounding "channel" around the GPU. Fortunately there was no exposed circutry for the excess compound to short out but it was difficult to remove it all.

10/17/2010

Great psu

ABS Majesty series MJ1100-M Continuous 1100W@50°C ATX12V/EPS12V 80 PLUS GOLD Certified, Single 12V Rail, Modular Flat Cable Design, Active-PFC  "Compatible with Core i7, i5" Power Supply
ABS Majesty series MJ1100-M Continuous 1100W@50°C ATX12V/EPS12V 80 PLUS GOLD Certified, Single 12V Rail, Modular Flat Cable Design, Active-PFC "Compatible with Core i7, i5" Power Supply

Pros: Stable power output under load and dead silent. Flat ribbon cables help

Cons: Flat ribbon cables were somewhat difficult to align to not block even more airflow than standard round cables, once aligned, they can actually be used to direct airflow between the SLI cards

Overall Review: Flat ribbon cables have to be guided into a position to not block more airflow than they would have done had they been the original round ones from earlier ABS designs.

10/17/2010

Works for what I need it for

SNT SNT-ESATA350SESR Aluminum 3.5" x 5 Bay Black SATA I/II eSATA 5 Bay SATA to eSATA External RAID Enclosure Backplane Port Multiplier w/ 2 x 80mm fan
SNT SNT-ESATA350SESR Aluminum 3.5" x 5 Bay Black SATA I/II eSATA 5 Bay SATA to eSATA External RAID Enclosure Backplane Port Multiplier w/ 2 x 80mm fan

Pros: Convenient and cheap, drivers did not come with the device but the sil drivers are common as dirt and twice as easy to find. Running as a simple JBOD for my Windows Home Server machine but worked fine with an actual RAID

Cons: None really, but it should have come with drivers.