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Daniel C.

Daniel C.

Joined on 11/30/07

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Most Favorable Review

Looks great for a low price

Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-04 CC-9011117-WW Black / Red Tempered glass ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-04 CC-9011117-WW Black / Red Tempered glass ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Pros: If you're familiar with the Corsair Carbide series, a lot of internals on this case will be familiar to you. It has the same basic internal frame with three removable 3.5" hard drive bays, two SSD/2.5" mounting slots where you would normally find the 5.25" bays. For the most part there's plenty of room to route cables behind the motherboard to make sure whatever you install can be shown off without a birds nest of ugly cables. Because the top half of the front mesh of the case is completely open, there is plenty of room for airflow if you choose to install additional intake fans. By default there is one 120mm fan installed in the center, but there is room for a second fan just above that as well. Corsair also includes a dust filter for the bottom of the case where the PSU mounts, should you decide to use it as an intake. I didn't have too much trouble with airflow in this case, nor did it feel like the chassis was louder than any other I've used. Unlike the other models of the SPEC-04 line, this one comes with a gorgeous edge-to-edge glass side door, which really shows off whatever you install inside the case. This is visually a huge upgrade from much smaller plastic window on the standard version

Cons: The largest selling point on this case really is the huge glass side panel, but it almost feels more like a liability to have on this case. I couldn't find any mention in the manual that said whether this glass was tempered or not, though I would assume it is, but it made me very nervous moving the case or the door around without being extremely gentle. I would also advise that you wear gloves or wait as long as possible to remove the protective film, as this glass panel is a fingerprint magnet once it's been taken off. I'm slightly disappointed that this case only comes with a single fan installed. By the time you purchase additional fans for this case you've increased the cost from budget to mid-range pricing. It's also strange looking at the front of the case that there appears to be a cutout for a third 120mm fan to be installed but you can't really access it at all. There will be no direct cooling over the HDDs. Being a mid tower, it's disappointing not having an option to mount a 5.25" ODD. The front upper region of the case will be completely empty space, and only really serves to show off the SSDs.

Overall Review: While I love the huge interior of this case, the front portion of the motherboard tray is raised ever so slightly to allow more cables to be routed behind the motherboard (Or the SSDs be mounted on the other side of the tray). If you have an ATX motherboard that likes to bend the ATX form factor standard, you may have some issues getting it to fit here. For instance, I would have loved to put my old Rampage III Extreme in this case, but the motherboard is an extra 0.6" long, just enough to press against the chassis. If you choose to go with an air cooler, double check the height of the cooler before purchasing this case. Larger units such as the Hyper 212 Evo are too tall to fit in this case.

10/17/2017
Most Critical Review

Good sound, questionable everything else

GAMDIAS Hephaestus E1 3.5mm/ USB Connector Circumaural Headset
GAMDIAS Hephaestus E1 3.5mm/ USB Connector Circumaural Headset

Pros: I found that the audio quality of the headphones are actually quite decent for the price tag ($50 at the time of this review). I've had a number of over the ear headphones from a large number of brands over the years from low priced gaming headphones to high quality studio monitors. I have to admit that I am pleasantly surprised with how these headphones sound. There's a good amount of bass and the audio is crisp and well defined. As said in the other review section I've had a number of headphones and they have ranged from horrible quality, to compressed too much in treble, to just being awesome. These headphones are what I would say right in the middle. They don't stand out as an outstanding sound, but they are well defined enough to be worth using for the audio quality alone. The ear cups are soft and rest well on the head. I find a lot of brands out there make the cushioning on the ear cups way too firm and too small, so it was pleasant to have one that rested softly on the head and were very comfortable. I didn't have too much of an issue with comfort with these headphones at all on extended gaming sessions, they didn't feel like they were pressing on my ears after a few hours like some of the smaller sets I've had in the past. The cushioning on the top band of the set was very comfortable and is actually quite a relief to see, as I find this to be an area that most headphones neglect. I have used some from well-known companies that the top portion of the headset hurt quite a bit after an hour or so.

Cons: The first major issue I have with this headphone set is that the one I received has a defective USB connection. No matter what device or which port I plug this into, it does NOT work over USB at all. Device was tested on a number of devices, from Windows laptop, to Xbox One/PS4, to Linux desktop to Macbook. The LEDs were able to light up signifying that the positive and ground connectors were connected in continuity, but nothing worked over the data pins. I wasn't able to determine what the device compatibility was for this headphone set over USB, but it failed that test regardless otherwise. While I don't expect this to be a standard issue with this device, I wish quality control would have found this unit defective before it was shipped out to a customer. Over 3.5mm it worked well, but audio quality was pretty much middle of the road for what I would expect for a well known high quality brand of earbuds or over-the-ears such as Sennheiser or Audio Technica at the $35-40 price range. That being said this isn't a major drawback, but you're paying just a little more for the non-sound related features of this set. Sound quality is the only thing that impressed me, everything else sucked horribly. I would buy this set of headphones for the audio quality but it failed in every other aspect, which is why I will knock some points off. The size adjustment notches in the ear cups for the over the head strap were too loose and often would start sliding down when I moved my head. I was not happy with having to adjust where these earphones rested on my head multiple times per hour when almost every other company has been fine with the same adjustment settings for years. The box for the LED switch, headphone volume adjustment and microphone mute box were WAY too large. The audio cord was fabric wrapped but in such a thick and coarse material that it feels very cheap. The microphone works and is audible without major issue, but doesn't have much range. The microphone gets a pass if you have no other option, but I wouldn't prefer it over any other cheap microphone under $10 that plugs into the 3.5mm headphone jack on your desktop. One of the selling points for most people might be the LED lighting, but I found this aspect to be extremely underwhelming. For starters, it doesn't appear you have any control over what colors are presented. On top of this, both sides of the headphones are constantly changing colors INDEPENDENT of each other. Each side of the headphones do not appear to sync up in any way, and are always a different color. I have tested about 30-40 power cycles, unplugs, replugs, etc to see if there's a way to make them sync up, but they never do. Worse than this is that the white plastic shell is relatively thin or lacks proper white pigment and the lines that are intended to light up are not well defined, causing the headphone cups to shine through with the LED color underneath and feel very cheap. I really wish I could provide a photo to show everyone what I am talking about, but sadly I can't really do so in this review. The plastic looks and feels extremely cheap, I wish Gamdias spent more money on the plastic to give a sense of quality instead of investing in a fake aluminum heat sink that can be seen from the open port at the front of the headphone cups. These headphones are overly large for the size in what I can only accept as an attempt to give a differentiating shape from other competitors. The issue I have here is that the plastic shell casing feels and looks cheap like a plastic electronic toy picked up from the impulse buy section of the local gas station. While these are on my head I don't really care, but they feel cheap to hold and handle, and when you set them down they feel even cheaper.

Overall Review: My standard disclaimer for audio reviews: I received this product for free for review but factored price into my review. As mentioned in the pro section I was greatly surprised about the audio quality of the drivers. I have spent a number of years testing and trying out a large collection of headphones and ear buds. For the price tag these caught me off guard in that sense, but my Cons section outline my great displeasure. When I opened the package I expected a very underwhelming sound but was greatly surprised by what I heard. While I am slightly biased to audio quality from very expensive high-end headphones and ear buds, I always test sets based on the price range they are supposed to be included in. I love my $400 set of head phone monitors, but there are diminishing returns on the money to performance, so I directly reviewed this product by comparing it to similarly priced headphones and earbuds that I have acquired over the years. For comparison, I did my review by directly comparing this headset to the following devices that I currently have in my possession or had direct access to and listened to side by side: SteelSeries Siberia V2 Logitech G430 Corsair HS50 Sennheiser HD 461 Audio-Technica ATH-M20x Audio-Technica ATH-CKR30iSBK in-ear earbuds

Pleasantly surprised

Patriot Viper V770 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Full RGB/Dedicated Media Controls/Macro Enabled
Patriot Viper V770 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Full RGB/Dedicated Media Controls/Macro Enabled

Pros: I was very surprised trying out this keyboard to find out that it exceeded my expectations. The switches are much quieter than past mechanical keyboards I've tested out, and the LED Lighting and built in patterns were available right off the bat. There's an additional software package that can be installed for customizing the LED patterns and profiles, though the keyboard works plug and play from the start, even without extra drivers or software. The magnetic hand rest is awesome, lights up using a wireless connection without having to plug anything in, and is very sturdy/durable.

Cons: The native drivers aren't even hosted on the manufacturer's website, they instead provide a link to a google drive link, which seems questionable to me. The "instructions" included in the box are so incredibly underwhelming. The instructions are a small index card front and back with less information than the description on the back of the packaging. Software isn't as straight forward or easy to use as some competitor keyboards, but it gets the job done.

Overall Review: It feels like Patriot is still pretty early in the keyboard and accessory business, but they've landed a solid keyboard with the V770.

Great fan, super quiet, requires Corsair lighting node.

CORSAIR ML140 PRO RGB, 140mm Premium Magnetic Levitation RGB LED PWM Fan, CO-9050077-WW. Single Pack.
CORSAIR ML140 PRO RGB, 140mm Premium Magnetic Levitation RGB LED PWM Fan, CO-9050077-WW. Single Pack.

Pros: Extremely quiet fan, very durable and nice looking. Colors on the LEDs are bright and very colorful. The fan makes almost zero noise when compared to the other components in my build (including an H110i pump. The fan and LED cables are quite long, about 18 inches would be my guess, which is a double edged sword. I like being able to reach any fan header, but I dislike having to bundle up short runs, but I'll take long over too short any day.

Cons: My only major gripe about this model of fan is that you HAVE to use the Corsair Node/hub to be able to configure the RGB LEDs, this will not work with a standard motherboard RGB header. The packaging and product descriptions really don't mention this if you're buying the single fan option, and they aren't the same pinout as the motherboard RGB header, so if you try to plug this into your motherboard you'll fry your LEDs the first time you boot up. Trust me, I tested the fit just to see if it would fit in the header, it does. Don't do it though. Because that's such a huge issue for users who may not know this risk, I was extremely upset to not get a warning or any kind of manual that describes this in the single fan kit.

Overall Review: Excellent fan and great LED colors, and the cost of buying a 2 pack with the Node hub capable of driving the LEDs on 6 fans is currently almost the exact same price as buying two single pack fans. Only reason I knocked off an egg is the lack of an included manual or warning that could potentially damage someone's motherboard or destroy the LEDs in the fans.

12/21/2017

Decent speeds for an external drive, great price

Seagate Game Drive Hub for Xbox 8TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive STGG8000400 White
Seagate Game Drive Hub for Xbox 8TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive STGG8000400 White

Pros: Plugging in and testing this drive was a pleasant surprise, as I wasn't really expecting much initially. For an external 3.5" drive in a proprietary enclosure, it had decently good speeds and wasn't much louder than most 2.5" drives I've used. The added USB hub is useful for charging multiple devices, should you still rely on play and charge cables to charge your controllers. Connecting and using was easy and only required an additional external power brick, which also includes adapters for power outlets around the world.

Cons: There's nothing really terrible about this drive that would knock an egg off. It has good price, but also isn't really unique, it just does the job it needs. It'd be nice to have USB Type-C for future proofing, but this isn't really intended to be used as a PC drive, so it's understandable that it doesn't include this.

Overall Review: Would be nice to have options for the color of the plastic, as most existing Xbox Ones are black, but it looks nice either way.

HP - DeskJet 3755 Wireless All-in-One Instant Ink Ready Inkjet Printer - Blue
HP - DeskJet 3755 Wireless All-in-One Instant Ink Ready Inkjet Printer - Blue

Pros: This little printer is pretty solid for the price, it's lightweight, it's compact, relatively easy to set up and configure, and the print quality is on par with other InkJet printers I've used in the past. Unpacking this printer from the box shows just how simple the setup is, the box contains just the printer, a power adapter, a USB cable, and a handful of packing materials and instructions. Initial setup just requires powering on the printer and using the HP Printer software to locate and configure, then I was off and ready to print. The included cloud services option is handy for printing while away from home. I was able to configure a Chromebook/Google account to cloud print to the printer even when not connected to my home network, allowing me to print out documents while away from home.

Cons: While the price of this printer is really low, it's not an inexpensive printer. After the initial ink runs dry, you're looking at $25 for XL Black and $35 for XL color cartridges, already adding up to nearly the cost of the printer itself. This wouldn't be too bad except this printer LOVES to drain ink and burn paper for every little thing it does. During setup I ended up printing 10-15 sheets of paper as part of the normal setup procedure, not including the extras from accidentally triggering extra prints. This is because this printer doesn't include an LCD screen capable of displaying information. Every time I needed to do something, from configuring the network to adding cloud services, 2-3 pages were printed, often with a single sentence or a large amount of unnecessary information. Every time you wish to do a direct WiFi connection print job a pin number is printed out, which was just a few numbers and a title header wasting up an entire page. One thing that really aggravated me was the fact that the wireless MAC address was nowhere to be found on this printer. It's not on the outside shell, when you click the WiFi button it prints out a page that doesn't include it, and short of using a desktop with a USB connection, you won't see the MAC address until you're halfway through the setup process. Even worse is that the Android app for setting up and configuring the printer doesn't show the MAC address at all, so unless you have a Windows/Mac computer and you are planning on using MAC address filtering at all, you need to do setup from a laptop or desktop system. In my opinion this shows that a WiFi enabled printer should include a basic screen and navigation system to configure without relying on another device or software.

Overall Review: This printer is really cheap and is great if you just need something to print, but in the long run it's not going to be cheap to maintain, it's only good if you need occasional printing or scanning. If you print a lot or need to use a printer all day long, you might be more interested in the more expensive inkjets or a laser printer.