Brandon Whitehead's Tech Blog

Here's a gallery of images from unboxing the Graphics Card. You can't quite get the scale of this card from the pictures, but for reference, my computer chassis / case is the be quiet! Pure Base 500DX . PNY GeForce RTX 5080 OC Rating ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5) Pros Price It does not feel "right" celebrating the fact that I was able to purchase this version of an RTX 5080 for the "MSRP" price of $999.99, especially considering the product launched in January of (2025), but here we are. Performance From a rendering perspective, this is an RTX 5080 that comes with a factory OC pre-applied so it performs exactly how you would expect a factory OC RTX 5080 to perform.  With 100% GPU usage using Ray Traced graphics at ~350W of power draw, temps hover ~65-68C with ~40-45% PWM for the fans under full load while staying relatively quiet! Design Neutral color scheme. B lack and white color scheme, 4 visible logos printed in white (GeForce RTX 5080 and PNY on both the ...

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...

Here we are back at it again! Check out the new listings I just put up if you're interested at all. All of these listings will be live for 30 days except this time over on Jawa  instead of eBay.

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...

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 ...

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...

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...