Brandon Whitehead's Tech Blog

Quick gallery of unboxing images and the stand arm/mount attached to my monitor before we hop into the review. VIVO STAND-V101H Rating ★★★★★ (5 out of 5) Pros Easy assembly Good build quality Securely holds 20+lb monitor (AOC U4308V) without issue Included 200x100 VESA mount bracket is nice (for my use case especially!) Easy adjustment of height, spring tension and monitor position Built in cable routing Cons None Other Thoughts Full Review I bought this arm/mount to replace a dual 32" (inch) monitor arm/mount I was using. I moved my secondary 32" (inch) monitor onto its included stand and I wanted something that would be tall enough and could handle the weight of a heavy 43" (inch) 4K monitor (the AOC U4380V). The monitor I wanted to mount supports 200x100 VESA so I liked that VIVO included an adapter in the box. With the included adapter, the overall price was comparable and in some cases cheaper than other options which required buying an a...

This is the last fitness wearable/smartwatch post in a while. I swear this time! Before getting to the meat of this review, check out the gallery of images below. Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music Rating ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5) Pros Build and Design Lightweight and unobtrusive Universal 20mm quick release watch bands Waterproof (5 ATM) Battery Lasted about 4 full days on a 90% charge even with 1hr and 20mins of GPS usage Charges very quickly Display Always on without significant battery drain Customizable Easily readable in sunlight and in darkness with the backlight Training Configuration Ability to create and schedule custom workout plans Automatic rep counting (inconsistent but it's there and will hopefully get better) Metrics 24/7 wrist based heart rate tracking with stress level tracking Very detailed tracking information. Garmin really does provide some of the most detailed information when it comes to fitness and wellbeing tracking.  GPS and al...

Check out this small gallery of unboxing images before we jump into the review. Rating ★★★☆ (3 out of 5) Pros Build/Design Metal and glass construction with some plastic 5 ATM water resistance Vibrant screen Rotating bezel still has a very satisfying tactile feel The blue color is nice on the watch itself and the band is eye catching Customization Tons of watch faces to choose from Widget customization App layout customization Fitness app Integrations Under Armour app suite integration is nice. This includes installing the apps directly on the device. Cons Battery Life With continuous HR enabled, about 60% of the battery was drained in 24 hours so it doesn't fare much better than the Gear Fit2 Pro did When the watch seems to not "sync" with my phone for a while the battery dies extremely quickly Sometimes an app somehow is continuing to run in the "background" and chews through battery like a mower cutting grass Functiona...

Recap If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out part 1 of this story for more details:  https://tech.brandonwhitehead.com/2019/01/why-i-switched-to-using-2-desktop.html A quick summary of part 1 is that I switched to using 2 desktop computers because when I had everything on 1 computer I was without a usable computer for several weeks while troubleshooting. To prevent that from happening in the future I decided to pick up a secondary PC to use primarily for light duty tasks. Originally I picked up a Intel NUC8i5BEH with the hope that it would be the perfect fit for my needs. It was a good fit until I experienced several issues with using a USB device KVM/hardware switch which forced me to return the NUC. Part 2 Returning the NUC I ended up returning the NUC for a couple of reasons. Whatever USB controller they were using had a major compatibility issue with USB device switchers even when I purchased and tried utilizing a  native USB 2.0 accessor...

Back again with another Razer product review, check out this gallery of unboxing images below... Rating ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5) Pros Physical characteristics Build quality The keyboard feels very solid and the material choice (mostly hard plastics) is sufficient Size The design is very compact with not a lot of "wasted space" for the frame of the keyboard. Wrist wrest  By far THE BEST included wrist wrest I've seen. It is soft but still firm enough to supply plenty of comfortable wrist support Lighting The lighting is very vibrant, customizable and clear Design The design is very clean and definitely not anything I would consider to be "gamery" in my opinion. The overall aesthetic is really muted and tastefully executed in my opinion Switches The Razer Orange switches are quite comparable to cherry mx browns in my opinion. This makes for a great typing experience as well as a great gaming experience. Software Razer synapse 3...

Razer... you either love them or hate them it seems. I've personally never used Razer products in the past so this mouse has been my first experience with them and I have to say that I am quite pleased with my purchase. Before we hop into the review, check out this gallery of unboxing images. Rating ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5) Pros Shape/Design Very reminiscent of the G502 from Logitech except a little bit wider which is more comfortable for my large hands Pretty clean design with all the essential buttons and no extras Scroll Wheel Very satisfying feeling and I love the fact that you can adjust the tension of the scroll wheel Click feel All of the mouse buttons (aside from the scroll wheel) have a satisfying click to them, including the DPI clutch button Sensor/Tracking The tracking is very smooth and doesn't have any acceleration from what I can tell Software The software has a lot of features and allows you to highly customize the mouse. I will most ...

After recently downsizing back to Mini-ITX, I hit a snag when it came to my current CPU and its thermal performance. To cool my i7-7700K, I utilized the be quiet! Shadow Rock LP that I had purchased for my 2015 Mini-ITX build. In 2015 that build contained an i5-6600K and the Shadow Rock LP had no problem keeping that cool. Unfortunately, the i7-7700K is a notoriously hot running CPU and the Shadow Rock LP simply couldn't keep up. Especially with the limited airflow of the FTZ01. I was thermal throttling even at stock speeds. Putting the CPU under heavy AVX loads like HandBrake encoding made that very apparent. Not to mention the fan noise from the cooler running at 100% to keep things cool became rather annoying. Prior to downsizing to ITX I initially had the i7-7700K under a be quiet! Dark Rock TF cooler which performed well at keeping the i7-7700K under check. With the i7-7700K, the only way to truly wrangle in the temperatures (especially if overclocking and without modifi...

Introduction I never thought that I would want to have two Desktop PCs for myself. I had traditionally used one Desktop PC to "do it all". Afterall, that's one of the benefits of a PC to begin with. You can spec it for entertainment, work and other usages all within 1 device. Prior to acquiring 2 Desktop PCs, I had a Gaming PC, a personal laptop and a work laptop. I don't really count the personal laptop because it is about 8-9 years old (as of this article's publishing date) and not very usable anymore. For the work laptop, I try to strictly keep everything work related on that since the equipment is provided by my organization. I don't like to use it for personal things as much as I can. So realistically, I had one usable computer for home. My gaming/primary PC was used as my "swiss army knife" where it could game, host VMs and do more. As we all know though, a swiss army knife can only do so much without showcasing its shortcomings. That is unle...

Quick gallery of images before getting to the review ADATA XPG SX8200 SSD Rating ★★★★★ (5 out of 5) Pros Performance Price  Paid $49.99+tax for it Management software  Mine works but has an interesting bug. It shows my SSD as being at 65,263 Degrees Celsius for its current operating temperature #FIRE Included heatsink is nice  Although, I'm not using it Cons 240GB version has a little bit slower performance than the higher capacity versions of this drive but I doubt it's truly noticeable Other Thoughts I bought this to replace my previous M.2 NVMe boot drive (a 1TB HP EX920) on my gaming PC. I migrated the 1TB SSD to an Intel NUC so I needed a new boot drive for my gaming PC. I no longer needed 1TB of space so I started looking at 240-256GB capacity drives. Newegg/ADATA happened to put this 240GB drive on sale so I immediately grabbed it after reading some very positive reviews of this drive. Compared to a lot of the other options, this ...