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Kevin S.

Kevin S.

Joined on 02/23/07

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 12
Most Favorable Review

A case for Serious PC Enthusiast

Cooler Master HAF Stacker 935 Two-Piece Mod-Tower Computer Case with Top Compartment for Extra Storage Space, Water Cooling Support, or Mini-ITX System
Cooler Master HAF Stacker 935 Two-Piece Mod-Tower Computer Case with Top Compartment for Extra Storage Space, Water Cooling Support, or Mini-ITX System

Pros: This case is the ultimate case for anyone that has a lot of components they need to fit for one PC. I needed two power supplies and room for a closed loop cooler, and this case has plenty of room to fit everything. The cutouts from the top piece to the main piece are very big allowing for good cable management.

Cons: I had a problem with the top piece locking in place after it was assembled. When I went to move the case into it's final position after building the PC it came loose.

Overall Review: This case is huge. I knew that, and it is no problem for me because I am not storing it under a desk. But you should make sure there are no hight limitations when you want to keep this beast.

Most Critical Review

Card stops working after reboot

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD 24-bit 192KHz PCI Express x1 Interface Sound Card powered by THX TruStudio Pro
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD 24-bit 192KHz PCI Express x1 Interface Sound Card powered by THX TruStudio Pro

Pros: When the Card works it sounds good. Front Panel header works when card works.

Cons: The card stops working after reboot. I did several trouble shooting exercises with their level one that took 24 hour between each response. They refuse to give me a support number to to call. Every time I reboot the PC, the card stops working. I have to go into device manager, uninstall the card, let windows find it again then it start working until the next reboot. I rebuilt my PC only loaded windows and the creative drive and still had the problem. Creative finally escalated the problem to the next level support, but that happened a week ago and I have not heard from them.

Overall Review: When Creative finally escalated the problem to level 2, the told me the following, which makes me feel like that have no interest in solving the problem for me. "Note that we have already escalated this issue to our next level of support as you requested. However, we cannot confirm how soon you can get a response from a team due to other issues that require attention as well but we will also highlight your situation." "I guess you will have to consult also Asus for other suggestion about their motherboard. From what I can see here, it can only be fixed when a new Windows 7 driver is released and we are unsure when we can expect that." This is horrible customer support, with really bad driver support on top of it. Stay Away!

12/16/2011

Good Board after the BIOS Update

GIGABYTE GA-X99-UD5 WIFI LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99 USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-X99-UD5 WIFI LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99 USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: This motherboard had all of the features I was looking for. Easily overclocked my 5960X to 4.0Ghz on air. Two USB 3.0 internal headers are nice. There is good room between the CPU socket and ram sockets so my cooler does not interfere with the ram. The Board has two NIC cards built in that I was successfully able to team in Win 7 to create a 2Gbps link. I really dig the lighted back panel. I have a silverstone case where the motherboard is rotated 90 degrees so the back panel is actually on the top of my case, so I can really appreciate the lighting.

Cons: This Motherboard was almost useless with default F4 BIOS. I saw all the issues people were complaining about in previous comments. Problems with USB ports not working, the Lighting on the motherboard stopped working, and I could not get Win 7 64bit to load. I tried updating the BIOS several times and it failed saying the BIOS file was invalid. I was only on my fourth USB stick that I was able to get it to read the file and update to version F9. After it was updated to F9 my problems went away. USB started working fine, the Lights on the Motherboard came back on, and windows loaded with no issues.

Overall Review: It is a good board once you update the bios. if you don't have another PC you can download the file from I would stay away from the board because the default BIOS (F4) is unstable.

Superclocked Video Card

EVGA 03G-P4-3888-KR G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 780 Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition 3GB 384-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Video Card
EVGA 03G-P4-3888-KR G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 780 Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition 3GB 384-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Video Card

Pros: This card is the fastest card I have owned to date. The factory overclock makes this card much faster than the more expensive Titan Black. Running Catzilliz with his card at stock speeds put me in the 120 results in the country. The card is put together very well, and the backplate gives it a feeling of very high quality.

Cons: This is one Power hungry card. I did not look to far into the power requirements until I thought about getting another one for SLI. Well my 1000W power supply is not good enough to run two of these things. I will have to hook up a second power supply when I buy a second card for SLI.

Overall Review: There is no lighting bling on the card. A stock GTX 780 TI cooler will have Geforce GTX light up in green. This card does not have anything like that in the custom heat sink.

Best Video Card I Ever Owned

MSI GeForce GTX 680 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card N680GTX Lightning
MSI GeForce GTX 680 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card N680GTX Lightning

Pros: This card plays every game I use on the highest settings, and produces high fps while running them. Never a stutter. With all of the eye candy turned in DirectX 11 games, you see just how superior a PC is vs a console.

Cons: When the computer starts the fans turn on at full speed and don't shut off until the OS loads.

Crazy Fast

Corsair Force Series GT 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CSSD-F120GBGT-BK
Corsair Force Series GT 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CSSD-F120GBGT-BK

Pros: This Drive is very fast, I have two of these in RAID 0 and hit 1000 MB/s peek in Hard Drive Benchmarks. The Drive also came with the latest Firmware loaded.

Cons: None.

12/23/2011