Category: Tech

Mrs. Shmee decided to help out my ongoing computer upgrade for Father’s Day, so she got me a new CPU fan.  It is the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo.  This fan fits a lot of chipsets, and it is reasonably priced, usually under $35, but is it any good?  Well for my purposes it was well worth the price.

It is pretty much a large light weight aluminum heat-sync with four copper pipes running through it.  It comes with one 120mm fan, but it has the brackets for one more if you decide that you need to move the air over your processor a little faster.  The mounting brackets are adjustable so that you can put it on just about any CPU made, and it was perfect for my AMD FX-8320.

It is a little tall and the fan makes it kind of fat, but my Lian-Li PC-9F case was wide enough to fit it, and my low rise G.SKILL Ares RAM didn’t bump in to it.  Though if you are going to buy one of these you definitely need to check out the dimensions of your case, and how your motherboard is laid out.

The 212 Evo is way quieter than the fan that came with the processor, and I was able to overclock the chip from 3.5GHz to 4GHz without increasing the voltage.  Even with the overclock, my CPU is running cooler than with the stock fan.  I could go probably go faster if I had a higher end motherboard, but 500MHz is nothing to sneeze at.  I torture tested the CPU and fan using Prime95 for several hours to confirm that my overclock was stable, and it passed with flying colors.  It was fun to see my chip run all eight cores flat out.

If your stock fan is not cutting it for your processer, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is a great upgrade.  It doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, but it will run quiet and even let you overclock your chip a little.  I am quite happy with mine, and I think you will like it too.

I am continuing to slowly upgrade my computer (well actually pretty much replacing it), so the next three components I got, were the motherboard, RAM, and CPU.  First up lets talk about the foundation of it all the motherboard:

Asus M5A97 LE R2.0:

After a bad experience with other board makers, I pretty much now only use Asus boards.  Their customer service is kind of lame if you ever do need to call them, but their parts are usually so good that you don’t have to anyway.  This board had exactly what I wanted: gigabit Ethernet, USB3 ports, a decent sound card, it supported the CPU I wanted, and it was cheap.  It ended up being even cheaper thanks to a rebate offer.

It has a great BIOS, which I updated as soon as it started up, that allows for complete control over all your components, and extremely easy overclocking tools.  What I liked about this thing is that it just worked the way I wanted it to out of the box.  I didn’t need to play with anything, or toggle a setting, it just got my PC up and running.

The only downer is that it didn’t have a USB3 expansion port for the front of my case, but that wasn’t a feature I wanted to spend $20 on.  I installed this three weeks ago and it has been rock solid, so if you are looking for a good low-mid level gaming board for AMD processors, you should put this on your short list.

G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB SDRAM DDR3 1866:

I don’t have a lot to say here other then this is some pretty fast RAM.  I got the Ares version of the G.SKILL RAM family due to the fact it has low rise heat syncs, so I can put whatever components I want in my computer, and I don’t have to worry about them running in to the giant RAM chips sticking out of my MoBo.  Like all DDR3 RAM chips that function above 1333 MHz, I did have select the 1866 MHz speed in my BIOS, but other then that they have been completely trouble free.  I have never had problems with G.SKILL RAM, and it looks like that is still the case.

AMD FX8320:

Everyone that builds a mid-range gaming computer these days uses the Intel i5 series processors because they are fast, and they don’t consume a lot of power.  I however am an AMD fanboy from way back, so I will take the hit in power costs, and a little hit in single threaded processing power to use an AMD chip.  If you don’t care who makes your chips you should probably use an Intel i5, but if you do get an FX-8320 you will still be very happy.

It is fast enough, it has eight cores, and it is unlocked so you can overclock it as much as you feel comfortable with.  In just playing around, I got this chip to over 4.1 GHz without too much effort.  I didn’t leave it at that speed because I still only have to stock cooler, and didn’t want to burn it up, but when I do get a better cooler I will have this chip clocked well over the 3.5 GHz stock clock speed.

And I will totally be getting a better cooler.  The stock cooler is fine when the computer isn’t working hard, but once you start doing something fun it sounds like a hoover vacuum cleaner.  I suppose they just throw in a cooler to make it a complete set, but they must know guys like me will not use them for long anyway, so why bother including something good.  Still the chip is cheap at under $150, so even with the price of a decent cooler, you still haven’t spent $200 yet, and that is a pretty good deal.

There are my three computer hardware mini reviews, and I hope you found them somewhat useful.  I still have a cooler, and a video card to go to finish this computer off, and I will let you all know how it goes!

I have been on a very slow computer rebuild train, so recently I decided to get a new case to put all my new components in.  After quite a bit of researching, I chose the Lian-Li PC-9F Black Aluminum Mid-Tower case (rolls right off the tongue).  I love Lian-Li’s simple designs and quality manufacturing, but I was worried that their cases were too far out of my budget.  Thankfully the PC-9F is under a hundred dollars at most retailers, so not super cheap, but still a third the price of their other offerings.

I was concerned that since this case is at the low end of Lian-Li’s price range that the quality wasn’t going to be as good as their more expensive models, but I was presently surprised.  The case is lightweight yet sturdy, and all the edges are rolled, so you will not be spilling a lot of blood in this case.  It also comes pre-equipped with three large fans, so unless you are running some serious hardware in this thing, your kit will stay cool.  If still want your case cooler, there is an extra port on the top that you can open up for one more fan.

Like all good cases this one is completely aluminum (with the exception of some plastic snaps), and can be put together completely without tools.  You will still want to have your screw drivers and a pair pliers handy when you build your PC.  Some areas can be hard to reach once you get your stuff in the case, and sometimes things are too hard to untighten by hand.

If you are going to build a super PC with two or more video cards, water cooling, and all sorts of extra stuff you will probably want something else because I can see this case getting a little cramped with all that extra gear in it.  Though if you are spending that kind of money on your components, you should really spend a bit more on your case.  For most gamer computer builds though, this case should be more than adequate.

I really like this case.  It has a simple clean look, and since the computer I am building isn’t anything extra special it suits my needs perfectly.  I am very happy that Lian-li built a case for the everyday computer gamer with the PC-9F, and not just the ultra high end.