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Jacob P.

Jacob P.

Joined on 06/27/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 7
Most Favorable Review

First HTPC Build

SILVERSTONE Grandia Series GD05B-USB3.0 Aluminum / 0.8mm SECC  micro-ATX / Mini-DTX / Mini-ITX MB, 1x5.25", 2x3.5"+1x2.5"HDD or 1x3.5"+2x2.5"HDD, 3x120mm golf bladed fan, 11" expansion card capable HTPC Case with 2X USB3.0 ports (Black)
SILVERSTONE Grandia Series GD05B-USB3.0 Aluminum / 0.8mm SECC micro-ATX / Mini-DTX / Mini-ITX MB, 1x5.25", 2x3.5"+1x2.5"HDD or 1x3.5"+2x2.5"HDD, 3x120mm golf bladed fan, 11" expansion card capable HTPC Case with 2X USB3.0 ports (Black)

Pros: 1. Great quality and craftsmanship; looks great. 2. Comes with 3 120mm fans and fan filters! 3. USB 3.0 on front panel. 4. Audio out and Microphone in jacks on front panel. 5. Fits my home theater stand which only had an available height of 6 inches!

Cons: 1. As others have stated the fan filters require you to completely remove the fans to clean them. I'm not sure how much I will enjoy this considering I will probably have to remove other parts just to remove the fans. 2. Exterior of the case is excellent; however, the interior is lacking. They did not coat the interior with any paint or protective coating to prevent corrosion. 3. You need to be cautious when purchasing parts due to length and height restrictions. Not sure how much of a con this is because if you are building an HTPC you are already aware of the fact that you have limited space. However, you will need to meause such things as the PSU, CPU and heatsink + fan height, GPU length and height, RAM height (tall RAM heatsinks). Just be aware of these factors before you purchase this case or your parts.

Overall Review: The Pros far outweigh the Cons, but I just want to make sure consumers understand what they need to be aware of before purchasing this product. Here are some tips for this case: 1. Make sure you use the stock CPU heatsink + fan unless you have the money to spend on an after market low profile unit. 2. Don't buy RAM with tall heatsinks. See my build below for what I used. 3. With proper planning and measuring you should have no problem fitting your components into this case. 4. My home thearter stand only had an available height of 6 inches. This case is below the 6 inch mark, but just barely. I removed the soft pads found under the "feet" of the case to gain another 2mm of height. The case now fits my stand with no problems. 5. This case WILL FIT GPU PCB cards with an overall length of 11 inches. 6. This case WILL FIT GPU PCB cards with an overall height of 4.4 inches. ** This case will also fit cards that have the 6 or 8 pin PCI-E Power Adapters on the top. It is a VERY tight fit. However, here is the work-around: If your 6 or 8 pin PCI-E Power Adapter cables are stiff; use a hair dryer to heat up the cables. Doing this permitted me to mold the cables almost flush with the 6 or 8 pin PCI-E Power Adapter inputs. This gave me just enough room to put the case back together with no issues. My build: ============= Silverstone Grandia Series GD05B-USB3.0 Asus Maximus V Gene Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz(3.8GHz Turbo) EVGA Superclocked GeForce GTX 780 EVGA SuperNOVA NEX750B Bronze Samsung 840 Series MZ-7TD120BW 120GB SATA III SSD Western Digital Black 1TB G.Skill Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC 12800) F3-1600C9D-16GAR Pioneer Black 15X Internal Blu-Ray

Keeps on going and going and going

EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card 512-P3-N871-AR
EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card 512-P3-N871-AR

Pros: I have owned this card for 4+ years. This card is like the energizer bunny. It just keeps going and going and going and going... The card was easy to install. My mobo recognized it right away. I never needed to return the card or access the EVGA warranty. Although I did purchase this from EVGA because they had the best and longest warranty. The card has run everything that I have thrown at it over the years from the Quake and Doom series to the most current FPS like Battlefield 3. Currently running Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, RIFT, and Battlefield 3 on a regular basis. Of course not on the highest settings. I run most of these games on mid to high level settings. I rarely have problems with frames per second. I have never needed to overclock this card; however, I may do a little overclocking to the card since it's on its way out. I do run Adobe CS4 on my computer with 4GB of RAM on Windows 32bit. The only slow down I experience is when I am opening a large photo or image in Photoshop. The load times seem a little bit long, but I chalk this up to the fact that I'm running on a 32bit platform with only 4GB of RAM and a 2.66 standard quad core processor with no overclocking.

Cons: Few cons: 1. Fan is loud under load (sounds like a jet engine whirl) 2. Takes up 2 slots 3. Long PCB (not recommended for Micro or Mini ATX cases)

Overall Review: The cons are VERY easily forgotten considering how well this card has performed over the years. With the upcoming release of Battlefield 4 and Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn on the horizon I am planning on phasing this card out and replacing it with an EVGA 02G-P4-2663-KR GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 2GB. I hope this replacement card can live up to its predecessor and give me many years of reliable usage. Thank you EVGA for producing a great product and providing great warranty options. Thank you Newegg.com for the fast shipment and great pricing.

Great buy

Seagate BarraCuda 7200.9 ST3160812AS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate BarraCuda 7200.9 ST3160812AS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Price, price, price! SATA is awesome! The speed of this drive is remarkable, and it's alot quieter than my old WD IDE drive.

Cons: Had to figure out how to enable SATA on my mobo. =P

Great Price

LITE-ON Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache ATAPI/E-IDE DVD Burner Extra Bezel Set included
LITE-ON Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache ATAPI/E-IDE DVD Burner Extra Bezel Set included

Pros: Price! Can't beat the price. Dual Layer plus it comes with some descent software.

Cons: None.

Must buy!

Seagate BarraCuda 7200.9 ST3160812AS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate BarraCuda 7200.9 ST3160812AS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: What can I say that hasn't already been said. It's a great drive for a great price and it's SATA! Buy it.

Cons: None really unless you don't like a fast hard drive.

This is it!

CORSAIR 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model VS1GBKIT400
CORSAIR 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model VS1GBKIT400

Comments: Buy this if you're on a budget and need great RAM! Kudos to Newegg and FedEx for getting this to me in 3 days from the time I ordered it! Plug and Play, no problems, works great and the price is AWESOME! 5 EGGS!