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Brady M.

Brady M.

Joined on 04/06/13

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 2
Most Favorable Review

Great airflow, great value

Rosewill - Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Dual Front Mounted USB 3.0 Ports, Three Preinstalled Fans: 1 x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan, 1 x Top 140mm Fan, 1 x Rear 120mm Fan - CHALLENGER-U3
Rosewill - Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Dual Front Mounted USB 3.0 Ports, Three Preinstalled Fans: 1 x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan, 1 x Top 140mm Fan, 1 x Rear 120mm Fan - CHALLENGER-U3

Pros: - 3 large pre-installed fans + mesh design = great airflow. I keep it on top of my desk with lots of ventilation, and my temps are as follows: CPU is 34 degrees C at idle (39-40 with load) mobo is 24C idle (27C with load), and video card is 30C idle (60C with load) - Very quiet - Toolless drive bay installation was easy and worked perfectly. Plenty of bays for HDDs, disk drives, etc. - 2x USB 3.0 on the front it a great convenience to have - Blue LED front fan is neat and case looks pretty sleek overall

Cons: - Discontinued and I'm not sure why. The Challenger without USB 3.0 on the front is still very popular but I'm kinda scratching my head as to why they discontinued the same case that had USB 3 on the front - Directions were written by that guy who was at his last day of work. They are horrible. I'm pretty sure they don't even address how to connect the front panel wires and cables (not hard to figure out but still the most technically advanced part of the case should be addressed in the instruction manual). Had to rely on the mobo instructions to figure out how to plug in the mic/audio/power/reset/hdd light stuff - Cable management is difficult. - Does not appear as though you can remove any of the drive bays, which is problematic if you have a larger video card than say a 7870. I'm not sure if a 3-fanned video card would fit in this case. - 1 egg for this. Please respond if I'm wrong and there is a way to remove the cages.

Overall Review: Bought this case for 40 bucks on sale for a really solid budget gaming rig. Rosewill makes quality, affordable products and I will be buying from them again

12/27/2013

Goes a long way for the value

MSI Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card R7870-2GD5T/OC
MSI Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card R7870-2GD5T/OC

Pros: - Bought the card on sale for 150 (I think it retails at 170). - BioShock Infinite on Ultra benchmarked at 70 FPS, runs Skyrim with heavy mods and ENB with very few framerate dips, and is running everything else I play (Deus Ex Human Revolution, Witcher II Enhanced Edition, Planetside 2, etc) on ultra settings (not overclocked). - In a well ventilate case on my desk, the card is a steady 30 degrees celsius in Windows and only gets up to 60C when playing games. - Small so it will fit in any mid tower - Great OC and monitoring software with MSI Afterburner

Cons: - It is a budget video card. It's not going to give you the same performance that a 680 will, and some auto-detect graphics settings will recommend High instead of Ultra. These can be ignored without a problem, but just know that for very modern games, the framerate will dip below 60 FPS when tasked. Remains to be seen how long until it can't run new games on Ultra, but it should keep up for a good long while.

Overall Review: Other Computer Specs: i7 3770 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM 1TB 7200RPM HDD ASUS P8Z77-V LK MOBO Rosewill Challenger U3 Case

12/27/2013