Evolution.
(Banned)
- 3,722
Welcome to my review on the following products:
AeroCool SilverLine AeroPower SL450 450 Watt Power Supply
and
XFX NVidia GeForce 6800XT 256MB Video Card w/ Dual DVI and S-Video TV Out
First up, the power supply:
The AeroCool SilverLine series comes in 3 power ratings, 350W, 450W, and 550W. For my rig, I purchased the 450W model, and I was not disappointed.
First off, when you open the box you'll notice how beautiful this thing is. It has a black mirrored finish with silver fans and silver fan cages. It already looks A+ Class, you would think. Plus you'll see the overabundance of wires and connectors that would be plenty sufficient for any rig.
Then you see...well...you don't see...a manual. Oh well though. If you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't have tried ordering it to do it yourself anyways!
I didn't have a utility for testing the rail voltages, but they all seem very stable.
Hooking the power supply up is a snap. Just slide out your old one, if applicable, and put this one in it's place, screw it in, and then hook up all of the connectors. It comes with a 20 pin motherboard connector, but it has an extra 4 pin adapter attatched right next ot it. Convenient. You don't even have to buy a new power supply if you upgrade from a 20 pin to 24 pin motherboard (or vice versa)!
After hooking it up, I powered up my system, and everything worked fine. I let it run for a few minutes, then shut it down to continue installation of other products. Also, after extended use, this power supply stays cooler than most components of your rig!
Overall Rating: 10/10...Flawless power supply, sleek design, runs cool.
-----
Next: XFX GeForce 6800XT 256MB Video Card
At $141 dollars, you can't go wrong with this card if your still in the AGP-ages.
The box it came in was very appealing. A nice graphical design showed that the manufacturer wanted to make a good presentation. The box contained the installation manual, driver CD (including 4 demo games, Adobe reader, drivers, overclocking utility, and a few other goodies), power cable (molex 4 pin), DVI to Analog adapter, and S-Video Cable as well as an XFX Product catalog.
After taking everything from the box, I unpacked the video card from it's sturdy plastic encasing, and looked it over to make sure there were no physical hardware flaws, and there weren't any.
The card was very long, longer than I expected. It was alot longer than the 9550 Radeon card it was replacing, but it still fit (with 1-2 inches to spare) in my small eMachines case.
The installation, physically, was easy. It fit straight into the AGP slot, and the case slot cover fit perfectly as well.
The DVI to Analog adapter is a bit tricky to screw into the DVI slot though, but it works nontheless. It took a bit of adjusting it to get a pictureo n my screen, but after a few minutes, the display worked.
After popping the driver cd in at startup, my computer booted, opened the CD menu, and I installed the drivers (which are more current than the current drivers on the NVidia site). They installed, I rebooted (defaulting in 640x480, 16 bit) and set my settings to 1280x1024/32 bit at 70 HZ refresh rate. It worked fine.
The 4 demos on the CD are pre-2000, so you probably won't get much fun out of them, as they don't use the cards potential whatsoever.
The overclocking "tool" is just a PDF file telling you how to acess the overclock utility in the NVidia control panel.
After acessing the control panel, I let it auto-overclock to 430 MHZ/1.16 GHz. I then increased it to a maximum of 433 MHZ / 1.17 GHz (the max is for the core only, I left the memory at 1.17GHz for the sake of low temperatures on the RAM chips). It runs at a cool 65*C at 433/1.17GHz under load and at idle on stock cooling.
Overall Rating: 9/10...The DVI-to-Analog adapter is a bit sketchy, and the card is long, but it's still runs great and is very overclockable.
AeroCool SilverLine AeroPower SL450 450 Watt Power Supply
and
XFX NVidia GeForce 6800XT 256MB Video Card w/ Dual DVI and S-Video TV Out
First up, the power supply:
The AeroCool SilverLine series comes in 3 power ratings, 350W, 450W, and 550W. For my rig, I purchased the 450W model, and I was not disappointed.
First off, when you open the box you'll notice how beautiful this thing is. It has a black mirrored finish with silver fans and silver fan cages. It already looks A+ Class, you would think. Plus you'll see the overabundance of wires and connectors that would be plenty sufficient for any rig.
Then you see...well...you don't see...a manual. Oh well though. If you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't have tried ordering it to do it yourself anyways!
I didn't have a utility for testing the rail voltages, but they all seem very stable.
Hooking the power supply up is a snap. Just slide out your old one, if applicable, and put this one in it's place, screw it in, and then hook up all of the connectors. It comes with a 20 pin motherboard connector, but it has an extra 4 pin adapter attatched right next ot it. Convenient. You don't even have to buy a new power supply if you upgrade from a 20 pin to 24 pin motherboard (or vice versa)!
After hooking it up, I powered up my system, and everything worked fine. I let it run for a few minutes, then shut it down to continue installation of other products. Also, after extended use, this power supply stays cooler than most components of your rig!
Overall Rating: 10/10...Flawless power supply, sleek design, runs cool.
-----
Next: XFX GeForce 6800XT 256MB Video Card
At $141 dollars, you can't go wrong with this card if your still in the AGP-ages.
The box it came in was very appealing. A nice graphical design showed that the manufacturer wanted to make a good presentation. The box contained the installation manual, driver CD (including 4 demo games, Adobe reader, drivers, overclocking utility, and a few other goodies), power cable (molex 4 pin), DVI to Analog adapter, and S-Video Cable as well as an XFX Product catalog.
After taking everything from the box, I unpacked the video card from it's sturdy plastic encasing, and looked it over to make sure there were no physical hardware flaws, and there weren't any.
The card was very long, longer than I expected. It was alot longer than the 9550 Radeon card it was replacing, but it still fit (with 1-2 inches to spare) in my small eMachines case.
The installation, physically, was easy. It fit straight into the AGP slot, and the case slot cover fit perfectly as well.
The DVI to Analog adapter is a bit tricky to screw into the DVI slot though, but it works nontheless. It took a bit of adjusting it to get a pictureo n my screen, but after a few minutes, the display worked.
After popping the driver cd in at startup, my computer booted, opened the CD menu, and I installed the drivers (which are more current than the current drivers on the NVidia site). They installed, I rebooted (defaulting in 640x480, 16 bit) and set my settings to 1280x1024/32 bit at 70 HZ refresh rate. It worked fine.
The 4 demos on the CD are pre-2000, so you probably won't get much fun out of them, as they don't use the cards potential whatsoever.
The overclocking "tool" is just a PDF file telling you how to acess the overclock utility in the NVidia control panel.
After acessing the control panel, I let it auto-overclock to 430 MHZ/1.16 GHz. I then increased it to a maximum of 433 MHZ / 1.17 GHz (the max is for the core only, I left the memory at 1.17GHz for the sake of low temperatures on the RAM chips). It runs at a cool 65*C at 433/1.17GHz under load and at idle on stock cooling.
Overall Rating: 9/10...The DVI-to-Analog adapter is a bit sketchy, and the card is long, but it's still runs great and is very overclockable.
