Joined on 09/17/11
Excellent compact MATX case
Pros: - Very small case that is able to hold standard components - Easy to access dust filter - OK thickness steel and chassis rigidity (especially considering the price). - Cable management is good considering the size of the case
Cons: - Plastic case feet do not grip very well - Included fan is loud and doesn't push much air - Punch out style PCIe covers
Overall Review: It is a good cheap case that will fit almost any CPU cooler or graphics card while being one of the smallest cases on the market.
Great 3080 for gaming poor for proffessional workloads
Pros: - Overclocked to highest benchmark score @ +100 MHz core and +800 MHz memory (higher clocks lowered score due to error correction) - Keeps card @75C in a slightly poorly ventilated case - Threaded inserts at the end of the card to attach GPU sag support is nice. Haven't seen anything on the market to make use of it, but I was able to make one.
Cons: - Mild coil whine noticeable @+ 100 FPS. I expect it will quiet down with time. - Availability is very limited. Had to order within a minute after getting a tweet from Newegg announcing a drop. Keep trying, you may get lucky. - Thermal pads leak oil and 110 C memory junction temps thermal throttle card during professional workloads even when running stock speeds.
Overall Review: Good card for gaming. Had to modify memory cooling by adding thermal pads on back plate and replacing front pads for rendering. Lowered mem temps from 110 C and thermal throttling w/ 100% fan speed to 89C @ 70% fan speed.
High temperatures and poor driver performance
Pros: Card runs incredibly quiet at stock and the core temperatures are very low. Metal back plate with thermal pads to help with heat distribution. Available 14 GBPS memory bios on the website.
Cons: The memory modules on this unit ran at up to 94 degrees C. This is substantially higher than the temperatures from review models. I thought that was too high and is one of the reasons that I returned it. There are still significant driver issues from AMD despite months since launch to fix navi architecture cards (not gigabyte's fault). I bought the card to first play the Witcher 2 which is a direct X9 game. The stuttering and extreme frame rate dips were not acceptable. My older RX 470 ran the game better. Apparently the architecture has extremely poor DX9 performance due to unrefined drivers. I also had random crashes in games. Not sure what the cause is.
Overall Review: I ended up returning the card due to poor drivers, crashes, and high memory temperatures. I cannot recommend the product or the graphics chip.
Great fanless option for lower power systems
Pros: Ran 6600K w/ RX 480 fan less in gaming loads. Beveled sides made it easy to tuck my audio cable behind the motherboard for cleaner cable management.
Cons: I wish the PCIe cables had a single 6 +2 pin (all of the cables included were dual 6+2 pin so I had to hide the extra cabling.)
Overall Review: I wanted a fan less operating PSU without paying for the fan less tax. This PSU did a great job.
Lasted around 9,000 Hours
Pros: Integrated fan grill Quiet operation until recently Under volts nicely Great directed air flow
Cons: Lasted for 9,000 hours (powered on) before it started ticking with the fan mounted with the airflow going up. I guess this corresponds with the 26,000 hours mean time before failure, but I expected the fans to do a much better job as it aged.
Overall Review: I would recommend paying double for a higher quality fan than need to keep buying these every two years of heavyish operation if noise is a huge concern. If noise is not a huge concern, they are great for an office computer.
Great power supply
Pros: The power supply is: - sleek with it's black cables - efficient with a 80 plus braze rating - quiet (I can't hear it over the other fans in the machine) - reliable (no issues for 3 months so far)
Cons: has a green sticker on it and it clashes with the blue motherboard that I used (like ascetics matter on a low budget build).