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Evan B.

Evan B.

Joined on 04/02/11

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 30
Most Favorable Review

Nice Mosfet/VRM heatsinks

Enzotech MOS-C1 C1100 Forged Copper Heatsinks only
Enzotech MOS-C1 C1100 Forged Copper Heatsinks only

Pros: Transfers heat from whatever it is attached to, prolongs life of components by allowing them to run cooler. Good thermal tape, sticks well, never had one of these little heatsinks fall off. Package includes a few extra pieces of thermal tape, in case you mess up and have to try again. Allowed me to reach higher overclocks on a motherboard that had no stock heatsink or heatpipe for cooling the mosfets/Voltage Regulation Modules. Helped me set a new world record, and yes, I'm serious.

Cons: Getting more expensive, when I first bought them they were $10, and less than $16 shipped to my door. Now they are $15 +shipping. Wish they were twenty to a pack instead of just ten. Modern motherboards need 12-15 of these (and in some cases as many as 20 if the power section of the board is really huge), so most of the time you'll need two packs just for one motherboard.

Overall Review: I liked the first set so well I went out and bought two or three more.

Most Critical Review

Cheap toolkit, really cheap

Rosewill 32-Piece Computer Tool Kit, Precision Screwdriver Bit Set with 4.5" Extension Bar, 4 Phillips Bits, 7 Flat Bits, 9 Torx Bits - RPCT-10001
Rosewill 32-Piece Computer Tool Kit, Precision Screwdriver Bit Set with 4.5" Extension Bar, 4 Phillips Bits, 7 Flat Bits, 9 Torx Bits - RPCT-10001

Pros: Bits seem to be made out of decent quality metal, and I haven't managed to round any of them off yet. Good for those projects where my regular toolkit doesn't have a bit small enough to fit those tiny screw slots. I only paid four dollars for it when it was on sale for a Black Friday deal, had I paid more than that I would have returned it.

Cons: The driver/handle is really cheaply made. Total junk really, it's like they took one from a kid's play toolkit and threw it in with this real one. The bits fall through it when you use any amount of force to press against a tough screw. If it weren't for that this would be a fairly decent tool kit.

Overall Review: Hint: use the metal extension if you are going to be loosening a tough screw, that way the bit won't slip down into the handle. The extension will slip into the handle though, and you run the risk of the bit falling out while you're working. I found it less annoying to use this way, even with the bit falling occasionally. They should have made the driver out of metal.

Very nice mid-level case

Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced - Mid Tower Computer Case with USB 3.0 and Water Cooling Support
Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced - Mid Tower Computer Case with USB 3.0 and Water Cooling Support

Pros: Exterior styling looks great. It has good looks without being too gaudy. Really love the exterior drive dock. Being a computer technician, the dock has come in handy quite a few times for backing up files quickly and easily. Good amount of interior space. Can fit large CPU coolers and long graphics cards with ease. Was able to fit a 120mm fan in my three unused 5.25" bays to provide additional CPU cooling. Can hide most wires behind motherboard tray and drive cages for unrestricted airflow and cleaner looks. I have ten fans in mine (6x intake fans, 3x exhaust fans, and one fan I attached to the drive cage to blow cool air at my graphics card), and it's nice being able to fit so many fans. Tool-less drive locks for the hard drives and optical drives are nice. Case appears to be of good quality construction, and I haven't had any problems with the workmanship or materials. No sharp edges thankfully.

Cons: Not enough room behind motherboard tray for tying down and hiding wires, when I measured it I found there was only about 0.25" of space between the motherboard tray and the lip of the case. I have a lot of wires behind the motherboard tray in mine, and it takes a lot of force to get the side panel back on (I had to lay the case on its other side and put nearly all of my weight on the panel while sliding the panel to get it to close, and this is with every wire tied down the best I could). This is with a modular power supply, so I can't imagine how one would do this with a non-modular one. This is definitely not an easy task, and rather annoying. Can't fit a 240mm radiator and 2x fans inside the case, I had to mount my fans on the outside of the case under the top plastic panel to pull air through the radiator and exhaust it out of the case. Didn't come with an adapter to attach the USB 3.0 cable to a USB 2.0 port, which was a problem since my board didn't have an onboard USB 3.0 port, I bought an adapter to make it work though.

Overall Review: Overall it's a very nice case, but I do have a few nitpicks about some areas that could be improved. I don't regret buying it though.

Good SSD

SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 500GB SATA III 32 layer 3D V-NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-75E500B/AM
SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 500GB SATA III 32 layer 3D V-NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-75E500B/AM

Pros: Fast read and write operations, resulting in fast file transfers and fast system boot-up. Used one of these for a new desktop PC build, and I get to a fully usable desktop in my OS in about 20 seconds. Liked it so well I bought a second one for a laptop I was refurbishing. With the original 5400RPM HDD it was booting up in about two minutes with a fresh OS load, with the new SSD it boots up in about thirty seconds. Runs cooler than the hard drive that came with it too, which is nice since there isn't a lot of air circulation in the drive bay of a laptop.

Cons: The TRIM functionality doesn't seem to run as often as it should, resulting in occasional slowdowns and decreases in performance. Not sure if that's a problem with my OS not liking to run TRIM on a drive this new, or a problem with the drive itself though. The Samsung Magician software has a functionality for running TRIM manually under the "Performance Optimization" tab, but it doesn't really seem to do anything on my PC when I tell it to run the optimization that actually affects the performance of the drive.

Overall Review: Would recommend this to other customers, and actually did (the person I was refurbishing a laptop for).

Decent memory

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-1866C9D-16GXM
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-1866C9D-16GXM

Pros: Seems to work well for the most part in my Z97 PC. Gives good Copy, Read, and Write speeds in benchmarks and has low latency on my PC.

Cons: Couldn't get them to run at stock speed and timings in my PC. It's either a problem with the RAM or my Memory Controller. Wasn't stable at 1866MHz with stock timings and voltage. Been building PC's for 10+ years but couldn't get this memory stable at its rated speed. I clocked it down to 1600-1800MHz to keep the system stable. Sometimes at 1600MHz (8-9-8-22 1T), and sometimes at 1800MHz (9-10-9-26 1T/2T). Might be that that memory controller in my Haswell CPU doesn't like going above 1800MHz, but not fully certain as I've not tried running any other memory above 1800MHz in this system.

Overall Review: Yes, I would recommend this RAM to others. Knowing what I know now though, if I had this purchase to do-over I would probably buy a 1600MHz 16GB kit with tighter timings instead, as my PC seems to be unable to utilize the higher frequency memory anyway but might benefit more from tighter timings.

Works well when applied properly

Prolimatech PRO-PK2-30G Nano Aluminum High-Grade Thermal Compound in 30 Gram
Prolimatech PRO-PK2-30G Nano Aluminum High-Grade Thermal Compound in 30 Gram

Pros: Large capacity, decent price when I bought it. Performs better on GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) cores on graphics cards/video cards than the paste I was using previously, which dried up much more quickly than this paste. Seems to perform slightly better than the MX-2 and MX-4 that I also use, maybe by 1-2°C. Much better than silver pastes, as it isn't conductive or capacitive.

Cons: The liquid and solid parts in the paste tend to separate, causing a watery substance to come out of the tube sometimes if the paste has been sitting unused for a while (multiple days/weeks/months).

Overall Review: Would recommend this to other people if they need a good thermal paste.