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Michael W.

Michael W.

Joined on 03/24/08

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 9
Most Favorable Review

awesome card

EVGA 03G-P3-1595-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) Classified ULTRA 3072MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
EVGA 03G-P3-1595-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) Classified ULTRA 3072MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Pros: It's a beast. Tons of Ram, tons of speed, tons of overclocking potential. Don't unerestimate its fan either. It's STRONG.

Cons: Kinda loud, but for the kind of cooling that its beast of a fan provides, I'd easily take the good with the bad. Theres no squeek or whine, it's just pushing a ton of air. It's also pretty dang big, but compared to most of the top end cards these days it's really not out of the ordinary. Would be nice if the ordinary got a little smaller though....

Overall Review: 1 card will run skyrim at max settings. 2 cards Is probably overkill for just about anyone. Still, I'll probably be buying a 2nd card some time in the near future. :-)

Most Critical Review

Nice features, design could be better

ASUS Sabertooth X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
ASUS Sabertooth X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Very Nice set of features on this board

Cons: My major complaint is with the design of the PCH thermal solution. It really could use a little more thought. If you have a large video card you will almost definitely be covering the intake of the fan. Also, what do you do if the fan stops working? You will almost definitely need to rma the board. Its a ticking time bomb.

Overall Review: It is a very nice board with real quality features. I would recommend it, just beware of that pch fan.

Good when it worked

Cooler Master Sleeve Bearing 80mm Silent Fan for Computer Cases and CPU Coolers
Cooler Master Sleeve Bearing 80mm Silent Fan for Computer Cases and CPU Coolers

Pros: it did the trick for a while

Cons: Fan only lasted about 8 months then started making an unbearing grating noise. It appears that the blades of the fan are too large for the fan encasement. After a while the bearing gets looser and the fan blades become more unstable. When this happens they scrape again anything close to them and make a loud grating noise. Bad design....

Overall Review: Sadly it doesn't seem like there are too many reliable 80 x 15 mm slim fans out there. This one might be your best option unfortunately.

Works well when updated

Corsair Force Series GT 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CSSD-F240GBGT-BK
Corsair Force Series GT 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CSSD-F240GBGT-BK

Pros: It's very fast. Will score you a 7.9 on the windows experience index. Good storage size for an ok price.

Cons: It caused me blue screens before I updated the firmware and the firmware is not easy to update for this drive. The system setup the drive needs in order to be updated is very specific. (This is bad design in my opinion, because it really shouldn't need to be setup in such a specific manner just to update the firmware.) In some cases, if your system does not have right hardware, you may actually not be able to update the firmware yourself. In that case you would have to RMA the drive.

Overall Review: The tricky firmware aside. This really is a good drive. I just wish corsair cared enough to address the firmware installation issues.

Simple, but effective

Fan Controller w/ Five 30 watts Channels
Fan Controller w/ Five 30 watts Channels

Pros: Works as advertised. Has long wires. It's inexpensive.

Cons: Its not fancy. Would be nice if it reported fan speeds, but it still works well.

Overall Review: I'm happy with it.

Good price, Good drive

Sony Optiarc Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 8MB Cache SATA 12X Half Height Tray Blu-ray Writer BD-5300S
Sony Optiarc Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 8MB Cache SATA 12X Half Height Tray Blu-ray Writer BD-5300S

Pros: Easy to install and its been working perfectly for almost 2 months

Cons: really can't think of any. It doesn't come with software, but I didn't expect it to.