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Matthew B.

Matthew B.

Joined on 10/23/08

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 8
Most Favorable Review

in response to videocard and driver issues.

Lenovo Laptop IdeaPad AMD A6-3420M 6GB Memory 500GB HDD AMD Radeon HD 6650M 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Z575 (12992PU)
Lenovo Laptop IdeaPad AMD A6-3420M 6GB Memory 500GB HDD AMD Radeon HD 6650M 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Z575 (12992PU)

Pros: This laptop has two cards. As one of the reviewers said, the integrated card runs most of the time to save battery life. When graphic intensive applications like games are run, the dedicated 6650 kicks in using crossfire. VERY IMPORTANT DRIVER INFORMATION. You MUST get your drivers from Lenovo or you will screw up your laptops ability to manage the auto-crossfire management. If you try to get your drivers from AMD direct, the special setup that makes this laptop so powerful for games will not function correctly.

Cons: Color?

Overall Review: As long as you get drivers from Lenovo, this laptop is the most powerful by far within its price range bar-none. I hope this information is useful to you to avoid issues many reviewers are having

I dare you, find a better one!

ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS
ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS

Pros: It reads pretty much everything, it's quiet compared to many others, it's solid, it's reliable, it's never once messed up, it's easy to use. I don't really know what to say other than one simple sentence. "It does everything it's supposed perfectly." That's it.

Cons: none

11/20/2012

Amazing case!

Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Pros: Plenty of cooling HUGE amount of space. Front drive bays can be moved around 3 drives at a time. Comes with all the fans you need. All adjustable without even having to open the case or rig it to software, although you CAN rig it to software if you want. Very tough, very good build quality. Supports watercooling and even has a location set aside to mount the hardware. Good cable management. A very clean look to it, it's lit up with the three fans in front, two in back and one on top (provided!) but it's subdued and not cheesey, it just looks amazing for those who want a little "wow" factor yet a clean look.

Cons: Please be aware that there are newer revisions to this case. V3 being the best. I got this one for 94 bucks on a black friday sale, but it's a little pricey normally for the newest revision. (around 150-250 depending on time) This revision does NOT have SSD mounting support, you'll have to buy it from Antec. The filters on this older revision are harder to get to, you need to open the case and then unscrew 24 thumbscrews to slide the drive trays forward an inch in order to remove the filters for cleaning. The new revision has it setup so you don't need to do that. Just FYI. Will fit pretty much anything you want, however it will not fit a Corsair H100 Liquid Cooler without offsetting the fans slightly on the rad. There are a few threads in the popular overclocking forums confirming this.(Yes there is a review website for the H100 that used this case, but I could never get them to give me a clear answer and it does seem like they had to off-set it somehow that's not clear in the pictures). It will fit just about anything else though.

Overall Review: See it on sale? Buy it. It's performance and value are amazing. Don't see it on sale? Wait for it or get something else.

11/20/2012

Best non-SSD drive. Period.

Western Digital Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Western Digital Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Extremely Reliable Is on sale often for about 100 bucks or so. Almost as fast as a WD Raptor out of the box. As fast or faster as a WD Raptor if you short-stroke the drive. The only thing faster is a SSD which has a tenth the space and twice the cost. Short-stroking is easy, even for for first-time builders, see below if you're new to the concept. It doesn't even void your warranty and it makes this drive perform amazing.

Cons: There aren't really any cons to his drive.... It doesn't come with a SATA cable, but it's listed in the description it's a bare drive so you shouldn't expect one.

Overall Review: Shortstroking is easy, you don't need any special software, and even a "newbie" can do it and it's almost impossible to screw it up and even if you do, it's not going to break the drive, you just start over. The concept is that the outermost part of the drive is closest to the heads so they don't have to travel far to begin seeking data. Also, because it's the farthest part of the drive it's physically moving faster than the inner portions relative. So the transfer times are up too. The easy method? Start with your blank drive, create a partition that's 10 percent (fastest) or 20 percent (almost as fast) the total size of the drive. That's your first partition and will always be created on the outermost part of the drive. Install your OS into that partition. That's it, you're finished! That forces the OS to be in the fastest part of the drive, significantly increasing read, write, and seek times, thus increasing the performance of the drive. If you do this on this drive, it becomes just as fast as it's 300 dollar WD Raptor brothers, and has just as much, or possibly more space than those tiny drives. If you mess up, just wipe the drive, and start over. This can all be done if you wish using the windows install disks during the setup process just before installation, so you need no extra software. If you wish, you can then partition the rest of the drive for storage. For slightly more advanced users (But still fairly easy) you can get the trial version of HDTune and then run a benchmark test on the drive. Watch where the performance starts to drop off and then chose that amount to short-stroke by. There will be several "breakpoints" where you'll see it start to drop. You just need to chose performance vs space. On the 1TB drives, I had a breakpoint around 210gb so I shortstroked it to 205gb. (about 20 percent). I could have gotten slightly better speeds at 10 percent but it didn't justify the size loss. After 210 it rapidly went downhill, until it reached the innermost portion of the drive and was at almost half the speed as the first 10 percent. This is normal on any drive, and that's why short-stroking on larger drives is so effective! It's just a little more fine-tuned than the easy method I mentioned above. I hope this might have helped a "newbie" who wants to get the best out of his/her drives. Oh, did I mention yet that it DOESN'T void the warranty? :)

11/20/2012

Solid, reliable storage

WD Elements 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive
WD Elements 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive

Pros: If you're a minimalist, the case is smaller than some, and it's a very clean, very basic looking case. Comes with a WD Green drive, which I've had no problems with, I own 6 of them in varying sizes, none of them have had issues. It's powered, so you don't have to worry about it drawing off your USB ports.

Cons: If you aren't a minimalist, it's extremely basic. Even the single led that tells you it's working is located in the back (same side as all the cables) so you won't generally even see that unless you want ugly cables showing. It's only USB2.0 (not offered in USB3.0) and it's 2TB, so if you're using it to backup an existing, filled drive, it's going to be a day. Best to set it backing up while you head off to bed, and it'll still be going when you go to work, and might be finished when you get home. Not the end of the world and in my opinion, doesn't really detract at all from the drive. Because it's powered, you need to make sure you have enough space on your surge protector for the "brick" that acts as the plug.

Overall Review: Short and sweet? It's reliable, it's quiet, it's basic, it's a little slower than the newer USB3.0 units so your big backups need to be planned.

11/20/2012

Very Very good price for performance

ZALMAN CNPS9500A-LED 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
ZALMAN CNPS9500A-LED 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler

Pros: Inexpensive for it's performance. Looks cool. Matches your case if you use blue LED's. Perfect for Core2 CPU's. Quiet

Cons: If you're a first time builder, it might be a little confusing. Fortunately there are actually youtube videos out there with this exact cooler on how to install it, so don't feel discouraged.

Overall Review: Hands down, this thing is awesome. I installed it on my Core2Duo E6600 which I had "mildly" overclocked from 2.4ghz to 3.2ghz for a "daily use" overclock on stock voltages. Room temperature was about 22-26c (73-78 degree's F) so rather warm. This cooler kept my cpu at 23c at idle pretty solidly and only rose to about 43-45c under the heaviest of gaming. Prime95 would kick it up to 51-52c under load.....well under the 100c shutdown temperature built into the cpu. Adding voltage even up to 1.4v still kept temperatures under 62c.

11/20/2012