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David H.

David H.

Joined on 02/26/08

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 27
Most Favorable Review

Good Value

HP Laptop Pavilion AMD Turion II P520 4GB Memory 320GB HDD ATI Radeon HD 4250 14.5" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit dv5-2035dx
HP Laptop Pavilion AMD Turion II P520 4GB Memory 320GB HDD ATI Radeon HD 4250 14.5" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit dv5-2035dx

Pros: Bright Screen, HDMI, Esata, Keyboard size and response good, Case has a nice finish, it's still plastic, but feel great Fast processor at this price point ($430) 7200rmp hdd standard

Cons: BLOATWARE!!! HP recovery manager doesn't play well with solid state drives Although the finish is nice, it is a magnet for finger prints and oil.

Overall Review: Bought this as a portable work computer. I also use it for streaming video and light gaming (older games like DOD:S and BF2). I made the recovery disks using hp's utility. However, the disks don't install to my new solid state drive. I was forced to find an normal win7 home prem disk and use the key that came with my notebook. At least this way, I don't have HP's bloatware. I've read others' reviews complaining about the new touch-pad, but I don't mind it. Overall I am please with computer considering the discounted price. With a new ssd, this can be a very fast, reasonably powerful laptop. My only complain so far is HP's bloatware and Recovery Manger - minus one egg.

Most Critical Review

Lack of Quality Control

iBUYPOWER Desktop PC ARC Series NE621FX AMD FX-Series FX-6300 8GB DDR3 1TB HDD AMD Radeon R7 360 2 GB Windows 10 Home 64-Bit
iBUYPOWER Desktop PC ARC Series NE621FX AMD FX-Series FX-6300 8GB DDR3 1TB HDD AMD Radeon R7 360 2 GB Windows 10 Home 64-Bit

Pros: Good Quality Parts Good packaging Great Case Decent gaming performance (once it started) Comes with Windows recovery disk Should be a solid PC for the money, but...

Cons: Defective case fan (non-stop ticking noise). Window's would not boot. First time turning it on received "SERVICE_EXCEPTION" BSOD. Had to reinstall Windows out of the box. This was difficult because of BIOS/motherboard/RAM problems. See below BIOS would freeze whenever PC attempted to restart (after installing window's updates, software, etc). Changing the APCI option in BIOS to S1 helped, but did not eliminate the problem. Again, this was only during restarts. If I powered down the PC and turned it back on, everything work as it should. I suspect this is a BIOS, motherboard, and/or RAM issue.

Overall Review: I returned this defective unit to newegg. Waiting for a refund. It is clear that IBUYPOWER is not performing quality control checks on their products, at the very least, not this unit. If they had simply attempted to turn this machine on, they would have immediately discovered the problem with Windows. And if they attempted to restart, they should have notice the issue with BIOS freezing. Based on the hardware and price, this should be a nice computer. I really want to like this PC so I took a gamble and reordered a new unit. Hopefully it was a fluke. I will update this review once I receive the 2nd unit.

Good performance. Full speed 3200 Asus Strix B350-F

Team T-Force Night Hawk RGB 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model TF2D416G3200HC16CDC01
Team T-Force Night Hawk RGB 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model TF2D416G3200HC16CDC01

Pros: -Ram OCed to advertised speed easily. Just enable the DOCP option in BIOS. -Lighting looks great in case. -I bought a second set of 16gb for total of 32gb. They also OCed to 3200 without issue.

Cons: -RAM cost ridiculous these days. These were average price for Dec 2017.

Overall Review: -Working with OCed Ryzen 1700x. -Be sure to update BIOS. I reached 3200mhz on Asus Strix B350-F running the Dec 2017 BIOS update.

Generally a good Router

ASUS RT-AC68R Wireless-AC1900 Dual Band Gigabit Router IEEE 802.11ac, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n AiProtection with Trend Micro for Complete Network Security
ASUS RT-AC68R Wireless-AC1900 Dual Band Gigabit Router IEEE 802.11ac, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n AiProtection with Trend Micro for Complete Network Security

Pros: Dual Band. Guest Networks. Integrated Trend Mirco Security. Lots of Configuration Options.

Cons: Freezes and becomes unresponsive.

Overall Review: I own two of these routers. The first one was purchased a year ago, and it has been the best router I've personally owned. I bought a second one for my parents, but it seems to freeze and crash every 2-3 days. I am forced to hard reboot the router each time. Newegg is replacing it, so hopefully it was just a fluke. I specifically bought this router because of the Trend Mirco AiProtect feature. My parents are not tech/internet savvy. The AiProtect feature will block suspicious websites, and shutdown suspicious outbound and inbound connections. Additionally, whenever a security event occurs, the router can be configured to email an alert containing details of the event. I have been able to identify several bad apps on my parent's iPad and laptops that are behaving strangely.

12/18/2016

Randomly Pixelates and crashes

MSI Radeon RX 480 8GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support ATX Graphics Card RX 480 GAMING X 8G
MSI Radeon RX 480 8GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support ATX Graphics Card RX 480 GAMING X 8G

Pros: -Good Cooling -Solid build quality -8gb Ram -Good price to performance ratio

Cons: Randomly crashes

Overall Review: I have owned this card for 2 weeks and it has randomly crashed on 4 occasions. Display will randomly pixelate into different colors and eventually lock up the computer. I am forced to hard reboot each time. Never experienced this issue prior to installing this card. I upgraded from my old Asus Nvidia card to this RX 480. Not a good first impression from MSI or AMD. Of course since I've already submitted the UPC for the rebate, I can no longer return this defective unit.

10/22/2016

Great Card for AMD Dual Graphics

ASUS Radeon R7 240 2GB DDR3 PCI Express 3.0 Low Profile Graphics Card R7240-2GD3-L
ASUS Radeon R7 240 2GB DDR3 PCI Express 3.0 Low Profile Graphics Card R7240-2GD3-L

Pros: Low profile Pairs with AMD APU for dual graphics Memory overclock-able. 900mhz to 1066mhz (your results may vary)

Cons: None

Overall Review: First off, this is NOT a gaming video card. But, when paired with an AMD APU in dual graphics mode, the results are impressive. I put this in my living room computer for HD video and light gaming. I paired it with an AMD A10-7700K processor in dual graphics mode and it gets 70+ fps in games like Sleeping Dogs and the Batman series. Great for casual gaming, especially considering you can get both the A10-7700k and the r7 240 for about $150 on sale. In dual graphics mode, this is a decent little card. Just remember that a mid-range video card like an r7 360 (for about $110) will run circles around this card, even in dual graphics mode.