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Shaun C.

Shaun C.

Joined on 09/25/06

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 20
Most Favorable Review

Nice board, but not without drawbacks

ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution with NF200 3xPCIe true x16 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution with NF200 3xPCIe true x16 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Very good quality board with a solid build. Good BIOS controls for OC'ing. Dignostic card is very usefull. Had no issues using / setting up the board and it POST'd on first try :-). Manual is 'ok'. The ASUS EZFlash & ASUS OC Profile tools within the BIOS are great features. Excellent expandability with it's 6 PCIe slots.

Cons: As so many others seem to have reported I too have Thermal Sensing issues. ~50% of time the CPU case temp reads 10-15C higher than the CPU core temps! (Not sure what temp readings are inacurate Tcase or Tjunction!) Has no FireWire interfaces (my bad for not checking first) had to buy an extra PCIE card (good job the MoBo has all those slots!) Value of the SAS ports is questionable - I have 2x 74G 15KRPM SAS drives in RAID 0 and 2x 1Tb WD Black SATA drives in Raid 0 and I get better throughput to the SATA raid set. I guess the Marvel SAS controller & software raid drivers are not perticularly good Have a problem when suspending - PC goes into sleep mode fine, but when try to wake fans / drives start to spin but nothing else. -Happens every time & requires a HARD power off/on to resolve. This happens with XP x64, Vista x64 & Win7 x64 so I do not think its an OS or driver issue Southbridge heatsink is not very good - gets so hot it can burn you (have the burns to prove!)

Overall Review: Lost 1 star for the Thermal Sensing issue & southbridge temp issues. My build: ASUS P6T6 WS, i7 920 @ 4Ghz with a ZALMAN CNPS9900LED, 6x 2Gb OCZ Platinum DDR3 1333 (OCZ3P1333LV12GS), Radeon HD 4890, CORSAIR 850HX PSU, 2x 74G Maxtor 15KRPM SAS drives in RAID 0, 2x 1Tb WD Black SATA drives in Raid 0, all inside of a LIAN LI PC-A70B case.

Most Critical Review

Watch out on the warranty...

Hitachi GST Deskstar 7K3000 HDS723020BLA642 (0f12115) 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Hitachi GST Deskstar 7K3000 HDS723020BLA642 (0f12115) 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Great price, good spec, good performance, reasonably quite too. Run a lot cooler then other 2Tb/7200 drives I have.

Cons: 1st - The Warranty period on these is very dubious! NewEgg list these with a 5yr Manufacturers Warranty, but as a previous review already stated, per Hitachi, these only have a 3yr warranty. (NewEgg - you need to double check your advertised specs). 2nd - 20% failure rate out of the box. (1 of 5 was DOA with the click of death). Clearly not a shipping issue as NewEgg packed them really, really well (Drives in tight fitting Styrofoam, then wrapped in lots of bubble wrap and then in a large box full of packing chips). -1 egg for warranty discrepancy and -1 egg for DOA unit.

Overall Review: Why, why, why don't drive manufacturers perform QA checks on their products after manufacture????? It is a sad industry where the 'accepted norm' of DOA failure rate is approx 20%-30%! - Get your act together HDD industry.

Solid Product

Kingston 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 Laptop Memory Model KVR1333D3S9/4G
Kingston 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 Laptop Memory Model KVR1333D3S9/4G

Pros: Quality looks great, fitment was good, and it has been working just fine for 3 months now. Price point is great given the benefits received from adding the extra memory.

Cons: None

Overall Review: Purchased to fit into a Samsung NP350 Ultrabook. The extra 4Gb of RAM made a great improvement.

Lawsuit waiting to happen!

12V 5A Universal Power Supply with Cigar Adapter Plug
12V 5A Universal Power Supply with Cigar Adapter Plug

Pros: Probably a good 5A 12V DC PSU

Cons: Seriously! - Telling end consumers to cut-off the adaptor from the cord! - That is just crazy. How long do you think it will be before someone gets one of these, plugs it in and tries to cut the end of with it live! Best outcome is; it shorts the PSU and it dies, worst outcome; electrical shock, burns, etc.

Overall Review: Then again anyone foolish enough to try and cut the end off a live device (even if instructed to do so) will probably deserves to be shocked. However I don’t think that defense would stand up well in court. LOL

Can save you 10x its cost each year!

P3 Kill A Watt Electricity Load Meter and Monitor
P3 Kill A Watt Electricity Load Meter and Monitor

Pros: Has been reliable and very acurate. Easy to use and sturdy construction. Good value for money. Really makes you think twice about what devices you leave plugged in / switched on! (Thought my PC was bad pulling a constant 350Watts but who would have guessed - My old 9ft pre-lit christmas tree draws 750W of power - Ouch!)

Cons: Initial reading should be Watts or VA instead of Volts. Could do with a backlight display and buttons - would be especially usefull when plugging in to a dark / hard to reach outlet (eg in builtin cabinets / under desks / etc.

Overall Review: A few reviews have mentioned the Amps / Volts / Watts readings did not seem to be aligned and were concerned with acuracy. The reason for this is most likely to do with the PowerFactor (PF) of the device(s) being measured. Devices with high inductance (eg motors) have a negative PF and will cause the Watts to be disporportionatly higher then Volts x Amps. Similarly, devices with high capacitance will cause the Watts to be less then Volts x Amps. Look up a Wiki for "Powerfactor" for further info.

12/29/2011

Pathetic quality

OCZ Z-Drive R2 P88 PCI-Express interface (x8) MLC OCZSSDPX-ZD2P881T
OCZ Z-Drive R2 P88 PCI-Express interface (x8) MLC OCZSSDPX-ZD2P881T

Pros: Its fast, very fast.... when it works.

Cons: Made the purchase approx 1yr back. 1st unit was DOA (1 of the 8 'drives' on board did not work). RMA'd and replacement 2nd unit worked for a few months then died. Replaced and 3rd unit worked for 5 more months then died. RMA'd again and 4th unit received DOA. That is just pathetic! This is supposed to be an Enterprise class piece of hardware not a few hundred buck piece of consumer junk. My recommendation is to buy anything else other than this piece of OCZ junk unless you are willing to spend thousands on a 'play thing' that will last a few months at best.

Overall Review: To rub salt into our wounds our IT dept asked for an alternative model as the OCZSSDPX-ZD2P881T has so many issues. OCZ stated they could only offer a Colossus as an alternative!!!!! - A consumer grade single SATA II based SSD. ...Pathetic customer service to go with the pathetic product quality.