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Matthew F.

Matthew F.

Joined on 05/07/11

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 9
Most Favorable Review

Good motherboard

ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Does what it says it does. Nice features for the price. Everything was easy to install on it. Pretty decent layout of component slots. Compact. Seems to be a quality build.

Cons: I so wish it had sata 6 and usb 3. Had trouble with the onboard raid with a set of hard drives, but I'm almost certain that it was the hard drives that didnt want to be raided. They were pretty iffy from the start. They worked great as single drives though.

Overall Review: I've bought 3 of these in the past 6 months and made 3 builds for three friends. They're cheap and they seem to work well. Must be quality where it counts.

10/12/2011
Most Critical Review

Case

HEC 63RABB Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
HEC 63RABB Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Pros: Its a case and its cheap

Cons: Motherboard connectors blow, hard to line up the I/O device slots in the back. Made cheaply, and its layed out kinda junky. Antec 300 was a lot better budget case. Not much space to hide cables, but in the end it turned out clean enough for decent neatness and pretty good airflow. I must say I really dont like cases with tons of holes for fans in it everywhere, I'd rather have more control over the airflow paths.

Overall Review: Not a bad deal for a build for a friend. everything can be made to work with some tinkering.

10/12/2011

Good power supply

Antec EarthWatts Green EA-430D Green 430W Continuous power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS 12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply
Antec EarthWatts Green EA-430D Green 430W Continuous power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS 12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Pros: I've bought 4 of these things in the last year or so, different watts on each of them, and they've all ran great. I havnt tested the power supplies personally, but I know they are pushing the systems I've put them in well and have kept them running stable for weeks at a time.

Cons: Not modular.

Overall Review: Overall for the price Im giving the green series a \m/

10/12/2011

AMD Is good

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition - Phenom II X4 Deneb Quad-Core 3.2 GHz Socket AM3 125W Processor - HDZ955FBGMBOX
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition - Phenom II X4 Deneb Quad-Core 3.2 GHz Socket AM3 125W Processor - HDZ955FBGMBOX

Pros: Ive built three systems with the same core as this one has. It's very reasonably priced for the performance. If you want a good gaming box, I dont see much of a reason to go with anything else. On my workstation builds I have gone with the latest generation of xeons and pentiums, sandybridge cores are nice. But not needed on every system, they both have ther pro's and cons for different applications. For a basic gaming box that looks better than an xbox 360, you can save some money and just grab this and put more cash on the video card. The multi cores are nice.

Cons: Runs way hotter and is less energy efficent than my xeon. but costs a third of the price.

Overall Review: Like i said third system build with these, all three gaming boxes. And they work great, not record setters, but budget oriented gaming/internet/home entertainment boxes. They would probably work decently in a workstation build, but I'd rather go intel for most types of workstation.

10/12/2011

Good Memory

Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT25664BA1339
Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT25664BA1339

Pros: Memory works. It is cheap. It is fast.

Cons: None

Overall Review: I didnt try to jack with the timings yet, but at stock latency its benchmarking nice and even down the charts. Its a build for a friend. Its running stable so I really wont even bother trying to push it.

10/12/2011

Good Drive So Far

Seagate Desktop HDD ST500DM002 500GB N/A 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate Desktop HDD ST500DM002 500GB N/A 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Drive wasnt DOA, seems to be a good drive, isnt really loud. One drive by itself isnt breaking any speed records, but as long as this drive lasts, then I give it a thumbs up for the price.

Cons: The drive seemed very skinny, I dont know if it was any thinner than most other drives, or if it was an optical illusion, because I didnt measure it, but it had a little trouble when i was trying to screw it into the case, The case was cheap as it gets though. Ended up working well, so no worries, it just got scratched up quite a bit when I was trying to line the screw holes up.

Overall Review: Seagate has always performed for me. I've only had WD's come DOA, but I have had some pretty decent WD's too that lasted a long time in raid 1.

10/12/2011