Another rubbish review from T*ms

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:37 am

Terrible reviews from T*ms Hardware Guide are nothing new to me any more, but this is just laughable.

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/200509191/index.html

More of a system review than a case review, not to mention the (so called) reviewer is an amateur system builder, take a look at the final photo of the system.!!!

HDD's in the upper bays, not the lower bays, appaling wiring, and whats that I see, a standard A64 cooler, and a evil cooler on the Graphics Card. The reviewer doesnt have the faintest idea of the purpose of this case, its supposed to be QUIET.

The only thing i can give the review credit for is mentioning Antec's instructions......... or maybe they are fine and the reviewer is illiterate.???

Andy

JonV · Post by **JonV** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:57 am

andyb wrote:The only thing i can give the review credit for is mentioning Antec's instructions......... or maybe they are fine and the reviewer is illiterate.???

He's right about the instructions. They're a few written lines for each step in the build procedure, with no illustrations whatsoever, and not even any real detail in the text. Not that anyone familiar with system building would have any difficulties, but beginners would definitely benefit from more.

That said, you're right, it's a terrible review - if taken as a review. Reading the intro it sounds more like some sort of blog entry about this guy's upgrade experiences...

YegaDoyai · Post by **YegaDoyai** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:48 am

Yeah, it did sound like it was actually his first build from scratch. Certainly it did not inspire confidence in his opinion. I found that I did not need any instuctions for building the computer and it is far easier than alot of the older cases I've worked on. Still, each to thier own I guess. Also I can't help but feel that he actually thought the case was difficult to work with. The only trouble most folk have is where to route the cables or general dimension issues. Guess he's not a fan.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 8:18 am

Oh, for God's sake, save your criticism for when it's justified. If it looks like a system review, it's because ... it IS a system review!

Look at the category it's been put in: "PCs & How To".

and read the summary:

Summary:
So you want a faster gaming machine? A do-it-yourself upgrade isn't always easy. Here is one tale about what it's like to fit an ATI Radeon X800 XL card and an AMD Athlon 64 4000 into an Antec P180 case-that had a happy ending after much aggravation.

This isn't a case review, it's a DIY report of an upgrade. Yes, the "reviewer" seemed to have a difficult time with the case, but he doesn't intend to review it — he's just reporting his exeperiences. Save your criticism for when they actually review the case.

mrochester · Post by **mrochester** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 10:58 am

This isn't a case review, it's a DIY report of an upgrade. Yes, the "reviewer" seemed to have a difficult time with the case, but he doesn't intend to review it — he's just reporting his exeperiences. Save your criticism for when they actually review the case.

He's a bit of a dumb-ass system builder at least for buying an A64 4000+ and then complaining about his inability to run 2 instaces of his game instead of buying a dual-core 3800+ for the same money.

StarfishChris · Post by **StarfishChris** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:21 pm

Well, it is THG... the guy didn't even realise about the 12v plug! Does nobody even glance at the motherboard manual if they think it's the problem?

I was going to make a joke about new reviews including Futuremark's latest benchmark, 'Idiotmark', but it's quite redundant. </rant> Sorry, just hate illogical reviews.

mprezd · Post by **mprezd** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:46 pm

mrochester wrote:
This isn't a case review, it's a DIY report of an upgrade. Yes, the "reviewer" seemed to have a difficult time with the case, but he doesn't intend to review it — he's just reporting his exeperiences. Save your criticism for when they actually review the case.
He's a bit of a dumb-ass system builder at least for buying an A64 4000+ and then complaining about his inability to run 2 instaces of his game instead of buying a dual-core 3800+ for the same money.

I think in some ways this is quite a good 'review' as maybe it will put a few first timers off buying a case like the P180 as while I thought it wasn't too bad to build, I could see why a number of people would have problems.

vine-au · Post by **vine-au** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:50 pm

I had to sign up at the THG forums just so I could vent my anger/frustration at such a lame review! (if it can even be called that).
My biggest issue was that Andy's (the reviewer) incompetance and blundering would lead people to the conclusion that the P180 is a bad case, which it is most definately NOT (i'm the proud owner of one

)
cmon Tom's - pull your act together! this was just sloppy

Devonavar wrote:This isn't a case review, it's a DIY report of an upgrade. Yes, the "reviewer" seemed to have a difficult time with the case, but he doesn't intend to review it — he's just reporting his exeperiences. Save your criticism for when they actually review the case.

Well if it's not a case review then perhaps he should remove "P180" from the title and simply call it "Andy wastes some money and can't play Everquest anymore (boohoo)"
I also found a DIY guide over at ExtremeTech written by Andy on how to play 6 Everquest characters with 3 computers. I wont post a link because I believe he's already stolen too many minutes of our lives...

CoolGav · Post by **CoolGav** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:58 am

My favourite...

Even with a Thermaltake XP-90 heatsink and fan, the heat coming from the case was insane.

LOL

The heatsink wont make a difference to your 3 year old 3GHz Northwood's (hang on, they're 3.06GHz and not 3 years old quite yet) heat output. It's probably so hot because it's overclocked and overvolted.

vertigo · Post by **vertigo** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 2:36 pm

I don't think this Andy Patrizio is on the staff of THG. He talks about going to 'PC Club', whatever that is, because he knows the engineer. This sounds like a story that was sent in or something.

Anyhow, it was obviously 'from the perspective of a user', which is why this story of inexperience was chosen. Most buyers of the P180 are probably clueless rich boys, so I suppose it wasn't a bad idea.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 3:58 pm

Anybody here buy the claim that a p4 3ghz northwood pounds out his low res game better than a rev E 4000+?

yeah, me neither.

Hyperthreading some will say. Yeah right.

they get paid off by intel, always have, always will be.

Slaugh · Post by **Slaugh** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:05 pm

CoolGav wrote:My favourite...

Even with a Thermaltake XP-90 heatsink and fan, the heat coming from the case was insane.

Thermaltake XP-90? I think he meant Thermalright XP-90!

bredbored · Post by **bredbored** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 6:13 am

andyb wrote:Terrible reviews from T*ms Hardware Guide

Can we just refer to it as "Tom's Half-arsed Guide" and be done with it?

Medicated · Post by **Medicated** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 10:53 pm

vertigo wrote:I don't think this Andy Patrizio is on the staff of THG. He talks about going to 'PC Club', whatever that is, because he knows the engineer.

He's not. I went through the "Contact" and other pages on Tom's to try and give some constructive feedback to Andy about his article, but his name and email address are nowhere to be found.

Kwiet · Post by **Kwiet** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:32 am

It sounds to me that Andy does no research before buying computer parts.
His main problem with the case was the 12V connector to the motherboard... that is a power supply problem and his main hangup. The best thing Andy could do is read SPCR reviews on the case and maybe read THG about dual-core A64's!
If he read SPCR's review of the P180 and put a dual-core 3800 in the machine, he would of got it right the first time and he could of run EQ the way he wanted.
Just because you have the money to spend does not relieve you of the responsibility to do the research.

hugekebab · Post by **hugekebab** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:43 am

to be fair, you slag off his wiring but he says underneath the photo of this

"The assembled system, before I tucked the wires away."

wainwra · Post by **wainwra** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 6:23 am

I'm a newcomer here, looking to assemble a complete system from scratch, and am interested in researching it properly. I actually read that THG article before reading this forum topic. I thought you guys might be interested to hear what I made of the article.

(I have a background in computing, although mainly on the software side. I am familiar with the inside of a PC case, have made a great many purchasing decisions for PCs and PC components, and have in my time with PCs personally added or replaced most things that it is possible to add or replace. Up until now however, my most ambitious upgrade was a motherboard-cpu-ram bundle; and that was quite some time back. My forthcoming system will be completely from scratch, and I'm researching everything - assiduously!)

Wanna know how I found the THG article? I read Devon's P180 review here on SPCR and thought this sounded like the case for me. So I went over to Antec's website and did some background reading. Their "News and Reviews" section had a link to that THG article. I read it all the way through.

Clearly someone in Antec thought it was a beneficial link for them.

And I agree. After reading it, I felt more confident that buying a P180 is the right choice for me.

It was immediately clear to me the difference in quality between the THG article and the reviews on SPCR. I could also see that the author wasn't concerned about noise, and that he didn't have much more experience with building PCs than I do. (I only learned about the AUX12V plug here on SPCR).

Taking the article as I think it's intended, a first-hand account of one user's experiences, I was nonetheless able to appreciate the strengths and weeknesses in the P180. This was surely his intention! I'd say he did a great job (of writing a first-hand account) and am grateful to him.

Oh - if you guys thought THAT "review" was bad, wait til you read this one - also linked to from the Antec website. I believe it's a review by, er, by

magazine.

It contains two things I think you guys will appreciate. One is this:

The case chassis itself is made of steel and very strong and it weights heavily.

But the other is fascinating. Look at this (click to enlarge it):

I think you can see

that the CPU has a downward-facing fan on it (and boy - just look at all that hot area that it's blowing on the surrounding components!
no sign of a VGA card?
would that small red hotspot be the southbridge?
interesting how cool the front of the PC is, isnt' it?

I'd love to see a similar picture of (for instance) the P180 system as configured by Devon, with for instance the passive Ninja. It would be interesting to see if the size of the CPU hot spot is smaller (because the exhaust fan has removed the hot air before it could heat up the surrounding components) or the same size. Makes me wonder whether downward-facing fans actual make life WORSE for the components around the CPU, in fact.

Another rubbish review from T*ms

Another rubbish review from T*ms

Re: Another rubbish review from T*ms

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