Brandon Whitehead's Tech Blog

Before we dive into the review, check out this gallery of unboxing and installation images. ID COOLING FROSTFLOW X 280 Rating ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5) TL;DR For the price point and the performance this cooler offers, I am beyond satisfied with my purchase and definitely recommend this cooler for anyone looking to get a no-frills, high performance, 280mm AIO without having to break the bank. Pros Price Paid $49.99 (pre-tax) Performance 280mm Radiator vs a 240mm radiator = More surface area and larger fans that can run at lower RPMs to achieve the same level of cooling performance Works well being setup as a front intake push configuration It keeps my i7-11700K temperatures in check even under extreme synthetic load (230-250w sustained at 4.5GHz all core) with temps staying between 90-93c. Under a more reasonable load (125-150w), temps hover around the mid 50's! Under idle, temps hover around 30C or below. Fans The included 140mm fans come with a highly compact and convenient dai...

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...

Hello everyone! Listed below will be a few Newegg reviews that I've recently submitted for some products I've been testing. I figured it would be easier to just include links to these vs double posting the information. Hope you find them useful! Toshiba X300 5TB Performance Desktop and Gaming Hard Drive 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive Retail Packaging HDWE150XZSTA Too noisy for me but performs wonderfully https://www.newegg.com/Product/SingleProductReview.aspx?displaytype=share&reviewgroupid=6588885 Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake Quad-Core 4.2 GHz LGA 1151 91W BX80677I77700K Desktop Processor It's an i7, it's my first one and it works great  https://www.newegg.com/Product/SingleProductReview.aspx?displaytype=share&reviewgroupid=525527 Dell Gaming S2417DG YNY1D 23.8-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor with G-SYNC A Cheap Yet Premium Gaming Monitor  https://www.newegg.com/Product/SingleProductReview.aspx?displaytyp...