Brandon Whitehead's Tech Blog

Here's a gallery of unboxing images for your viewing pleasure. MSI GeForce RTX 2070 DUKE 8G OC Small back story before we get to the review. I picked up this RTX 2070 because I thought that I needed to replace a failing GTX 1080. I had sent it in for a warranty claim but the MFG was unable to reproduce the issue I was experiencing so I started pursuing new GPUs primarily looking at GTX 1070 Ti and RTX 2070 cards. I was happy with the performance that the GTX 1080 was providing so I wanted to find something relatively equivalent in performance to it. I just couldn't stomach the cost of a significant upgrade to a RTX 2080 since I wasn't planning on purchasing a GPU at this time. I decided to finally stick with RTX 2070 family of cards since 1070 Ti card prices had begun to inflate. I purchased this card understanding that I would be unable to return it for a refund due to Newegg's return policies for some computer components. This wasn't an issue for me at the ...

Just a couple of pictures of the packaging the SSD arrived in from Amazon. I guess it really is "frustration free". Crucial MX 500 2TB SSD Rating ★★★★★ (5 out of 5) Pros Capacity (2 TB of solid state storage!!) Price (Paid about $0.10/GB [$208.99] total during an Amazon flash sale on Cyber Monday) Speed (Plenty fast for a SATA based SSD) Longevity (Not one of the new quad-level cell [QLC NAND] SSDs so it should handle more write cycles) Management software (Firmware updates/extra features/etc…) Cons None Other Thoughts I've been looking at options for getting mass storage in my ITX build and I was hopeful that a good deal on a multi terabyte capacity SSD would show up around the Black Friday/Cyber Monday season. Sure enough, Amazon put this one on sale. It was very hard to resist at that price. I looked at several 1TB options around the $120-$140 range but I wanted something with a bit more capacity without having to pay over double the cost of so...

Rating ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5) Pros 500W capacity 80 Plus Gold Relatively quiet fan (even without the zero RPM fan mode of the v1 version) Flat black cables 100% modular Cons Slightly larger SFX form factor (130mm doesn't leave much room in my FTZ01 for dealing with the cables) Other Thoughts The V2 of this power supply doesn't really have much different than it's original counterpart. The main change with the V2 version is the removal of the Semi-Passive fan mode of the v1. There were several complaints about the fan making a "grinding noise" and some buzzing as well but this issue seems to have been severely reduced with the V2 PSU. Overall this is a very nice small power supply. It is a bit larger than the standard SFX form factor so that is definitely something to keep in mind, however as a result they were able to slap on a larger 120mm fan which definitely helps keep this thing cool and quiet. This is a solid little power supply with 80plus g...

A few unboxing photos and a couple of clips of the power supply fan issue in action.The full model information is Enermax Revolution SFX 650W 80 PLUS Gold Full modular Semi-Fanless Power Supply with SFX-to-ATX PSU adapter bracket (ERV650SWT)Free Q-Boom Bluetooth Speaker inside. Enermax Revolution SFX 650W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply Rating ★☆☆☆☆ (1 out of 5) Pros Compact High capacity 80 plus gold Flat black cables Cons Fan noise is unbearable Other Thoughts TL;DR Everything else about this Power Supply is good except for one major thing. Enermax's implementation of the semi-fanless mode is absolutely terrible. After putting a load on my system, enough to cause the fan to spin up, and then going back to idle the fan constantly turns on and off generating an extremely irritating noise. The fan does this constantly until I shutdown my computer and let the power supply cool off. Then the fan will  go back to semi-fanless mode until the temperature...

Just a few unboxing photos below. Full model information is Team Elite Plus 16GB 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200) Desktop Memory Model TPRD416G2400HC1601. Team Group Elite+ Rating ★★★★★ (5 out of 5) Pros Price (Paid $109.99 per stick) Price per GB = $7.33 Low Profile Runs at advertised speed (2400MHz) without issue Cons Color Options (Not a huge con) Wish they had more "color neutral" options instead of Red and Black or Yellow and Black Other Thoughts TL;DR Not much to say about this RAM because it works exactly as expected. I downsized from an ATX sized build to a Mini-ITX one. I wanted to retain the 32GB of RAM I had so I needed two, 16GB sticks and these fit the bill. I also needed to make sure they were low profile enough to not interfere with my CPU cooler (be quiet! Shadow Rock LP). I was previously running Team Group memory (Team Group DARK DDR4 Gaming Desktop Memory, 4x8GB) without issue so I had no qualms going with this bran...