Joined on 06/15/05
Audio-Technica ATH-M50x
Pros: Fantastic headphones, everything in the other reviews is true about the sound of these, so clear and crisp highs, deep bass but not too much, sounds in the music I never heard with other headphones. I've tested Beats Pro and Beats Studio and compared to Audio-Technica they are like garbage. I've had the Sennheiser HD-280 pro for a long time and they also have great sound, but these Audio-Technica beat the Sennheiser in sound and build quality, they cost about $50 more but it is worth it. There are probably better headphones than these but they cost a lot more than $130 that I paid for them on sale.
Cons: The only con I have is that they have a lot of pressure on my ears when wearing them for a long time and my head is not very big, maybe it's my ears because I have the same problem with most other headphones too. But I'm so happy with the sound that I'll take the pain just to be able to enjoy the sound of these :)
Overall Review: If you can get them on sale just go for it, you can't go wrong. Also you're going to need a good sound card to be able to enjoy these headphones. I personally use Creative Sound Blaster Extreme Gamer which is 5-7 years old but still great sound card, other people use Asus Xonar series, but if you have just on board sound card don't expect to hear the fantastic sound of the Audio-Technica.
I can't recommend it
Pros: It works. I read most of the reviews before I get the card so I knew it can't get the full speed of a native SATA III motherboard I just hoped I will get some increase in speed but that didn't happen. My main SSD is AData SP900 256Gb and I had 200Mb read and 160Mb write on my Sata II mb controller measured with AS-SSD benchmark, When I connected the drive to the Sata III card I had exactly the same speed - no change. Then I tested the speed with ATTO disk benchmark and the speeds were 400mb read and 390mb write. Real time copy and paste in Windows between 2 ssd drives 1.7Gb file i had average write speed of 180mb. Now I have another SSD in my laptop which is Samsung 830 64GB so hooked it to the SATA III card and the speed went from 255Mb Read on my Sata II mb controller to 365Mb Read on the Sata III card tested with AS-SSD benchmark I also tested it with ATTO disk benchmark and the speed is pretty much the same. So the performance of this card is not a real SATA III and weather you will get a speed increase depends on the SSD controller in your drive - My Samsung SSD performs better on this card and my Adata is slower because it has Sandforce 2200 controller although it should be faster, but the samsung controller is just better. So I just have to wait for a while before I can afford to upgrade my motherboard to a real SATA III controller.
Cons: Drivers on the CD are old. I found newer ones with Google Asmedia_sata_1.4.1(www.station-drivers.com) form 12/26/2012 . Also when I installed the card in a PCI Express X1 slot my Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card stopped working, so I moved it to an open PCI Express X16 slot and it works fine now.
Tek Republic Front Panel USB 3.0
Pros: It works, but I wouldn't buy it again
Cons: It is 3.5" and it looked like 5.25" on the picture, I have 4- 5,25" bays available and just 2- 3.5" one of them has 1 SSD and I put the hub in the second one, but if I want to put another HDD or SSD it's not possible. It'is in the description that is 3.5" but I didn't look at it, I just saw the pictures and the good reviews. The screws are not solid steel, very soft, they hold the hub, but I don't like em. Not easy to install, it took me 30 minutes for something that should take 5-10 minutes.
Overall Review: For the $7 on sale price it is not too bad if you need the front USB3 ports. If you have a case without 3.5" available bay, you can't install it.
Evga GTX 1070
Pros: Performs as expected - Rise of the Tomb Raider 111 FPS average, Batman Arkham Knight 104 FPS average,@1080P without overclocking Build quality is solid Looks nice and has a back plate Coolers work fine although I only have it for 1 day :) Price was the best for in stock at the time of purchase 419.99 and free shipping
Cons: It is not $380 MSRP as Nvidia mentioned it will be. I couldn't wait for the price to drop, maybe in 6 months it will be. Two 8 pin power connectors instead of one 8 pin and one 6 pin, but I was lucky my power supply is also EVGA so it has two 8 pin connectors, adapter cables are included in the box for whoever needs it. It is very big and heavy it barely fit in my case, so it was not easy to install, but once installed it runs fine.
Overall Review: The card is very nice and it looks better than the pictures, I liked the MSI GTX 1070 more, but this one was less expensive and with free shipping, so I don't regret choosing it. For 1080P gaming I could have gotten GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 480 which also preform great at 1080P, but I think the GTX 1070 will perform great and longer before I have to buy a new one, and the stock availability was very limited for the other cards so I just couldn't wait, also it is good to have 6 teraflops GPU power :) The Radeon RX 490 will probably have similar performance as the GTX 1070 at a lower price, so it is a shame that AMD always can't release their cards in time to compete with Nvidia. Coming from GTX 760 this card is great I hope it will last for 3 years before I have to buy another.
Mushkin 16gb
Pros: Works well, I had to set the timings manually in the BIOS because I had 2 more sticks from Adata which had timing 9-9-9-24 at 1.5V, so with auto detect Windows was crashing, but once I set it in BIOS to 11-11-11-28 everything is good and stable for a total of 32GB.
Cons: If you mix it with other memory you have to set the timings manually and perhaps the voltage because this one runs at 1.35V and my other works at 1.5V, and it will not tell you in the description or owners manual. I just knew it from experience. But the memory works without problems.
PNY USB3
Pros: AS-SSD on USB3 port Read Speed 170Mb/s Write Speed 62Mb/s, so the performance is good, I just didn't have it for a long time so I can't say how reliable it is. USB2 performance is also good Read 30Mb/s Write 27Mb/s.
Cons: Looks ugly. It's all plastic so it feels cheap. On the back of the package it says 1 year warranty USA and 2 year warranty Europe and assembled in USA, I'm born in Europe but I live in USA, so why Europe gets more warranty for a product assembled in USA?