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Nathan G.

Nathan G.

Joined on 03/25/07

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 6
Most Favorable Review

Very nice little surprise

Antec ISK 300-65 Black Steel Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case 65W Power Supply
Antec ISK 300-65 Black Steel Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case 65W Power Supply

Pros: Very well built itx case, excellent ventilation*, and silent PSU.

Cons: I wish the 65w PSU was closer to 90w, but what I'm running in it won't give the 65w much trouble.

Overall Review: *Swapped out the tri-cool fan for a pair of Enermax 80mm silent fans (N82E16811999199). Keeps my Zotac Atom Ion dual core system cool and silent.

Most Critical Review

Reliable? Nope

Seagate BarraCuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate BarraCuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Started off great, ran cool, ran fast, everything seemed nice.

Cons: Seemed nice, up until 8 months later. I rebooted my machine and accidently left an Ubuntu live DVD in my drive. Didn't think any of it until the Ubuntu desktop booted and a large red SMART screen came up stating I had several hundred bad sectors and I should immediately back up and replace the drive. Surprised to say the least, I quickly rebooted back into Vista to see. Vista made no outward notification of the bad sectors, but when I started digging through the eventviewer, sure enough. There were hundreds of "Bad Sector on disk..." errors. So I checked my other machine, bought a pair of these at the time, and it had nearly a hundred bad sector errors in the eventviewer. RMAing is equally frustrating. Seagate will only accept specific packing material, foam rubber lined packing. And each drive has to be shipped seperately...or I can just pay $20 per drive to have them send new drives and packing. Annoying that I have to spend $40 to replace them, maybe the new ones will w

Awesome little board...

Intel BOXD510MO Intel Atom D510 Intel NM10 Mini ITX Motherboard / CPU Combo
Intel BOXD510MO Intel Atom D510 Intel NM10 Mini ITX Motherboard / CPU Combo

Pros: Powerful little board with little foot print for space and power. Running perfectly as my XBMC front end.

Cons: Initially had some issues with the Sparkle PCI 8400GS 256mb card I bought. I though the card was DOA as it didn't work in the PCI slot but an older 6200 worked just fine. Turned out the BIOS that shipped with the D510 was in need of updating, in a recent update it fixed an issue with PCI Graphic cards that have an internal PCI to PCI bridge, which the 8400GS ones do. After the BIOS update, bam, working perfectly since.

MSI GeForce 210 512MB DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Low Profile Ready Graphics Card N210-MD512H
MSI GeForce 210 512MB DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Low Profile Ready Graphics Card N210-MD512H

Pros: Awesome with XBMC, fully supports the advanced functions of VDAPU (linux) for perfect 1080p playback. The GPU does all the decoding. Also if you check out some reviews, this card idle takes about 6W of power and under full load is close to 15W. Very very low!

Cons: It's horrible with gaming

Overall Review: Yes, horrible with gaming, but really, it didn't matter to me. If I wanted an inexpensive gaming card, the ATI 4650 is the way to go. But it wasn't what I needed.

Excellent board!

ZOTAC IONITX-D-E Intel Atom 330 Dual Core 1.6 GHz 441 NVIDIA ION Mini ITX Motherboard / CPU Combo
ZOTAC IONITX-D-E Intel Atom 330 Dual Core 1.6 GHz 441 NVIDIA ION Mini ITX Motherboard / CPU Combo

Pros: I love this motherboard/cpu. My wife wanted a new "green" and quite computer. Paired this up with the Antec ISK-300-65 (replaced the 80mm with a pair of very very quiet enermax 80mms). Works perfectly for general desktop work and runs older games flawlessly. My wife still loves Neverwinter Nights 1. :)

Cons: You pay a bit of a premium over the standard intel dual core atom, nearly $100 more. But you get a better video card, a 3rd sata port, and onboard wifi. Could be considered a con.

Incredible drive...

Pioneer Slot Loading CD/DVD Burner 8X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 6X DVD+R DL 8X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 8X DVD-ROM 24X CD-R 24X CD-RW 24X CD-ROM Black Slim SATA Model DVR-TS08
Pioneer Slot Loading CD/DVD Burner 8X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 6X DVD+R DL 8X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 8X DVD-ROM 24X CD-R 24X CD-RW 24X CD-ROM Black Slim SATA Model DVR-TS08

Pros: Slim DVDRW drive with slot loading and Pioneer! Pioneer drives are one of the few I'll trust these days and this one has not disappointed.

Cons: Had to buy slim power/sata cable to use it, but newegg has had the cable in stock for a while now. N82E16812270183

Overall Review: Love the drive, if I needed another slim drive this would be the one.