Leaderboard

Hey, sorry for not replying back earlier. I had my A-levels going on so I was busy. So I eventually went ahead with the Sony XB500 and I'd like to give back my feedback on it. I've had it for almost 2 months now and I'm very happy with my purchase. Design and Build Quality As soon as you open it, one can't help but notice the massive ear cups on this thing, not to mention the sheer comfort they provide! The cushions are king size and putting them around the ear is like putting two pillows. They're very cushy and the seemingly leather padding used feels well made and premium. The construction of this headphone is fully out of plastic, there's no use of metal to be seen anywhere. That said, the head band is very sturdy and flexible enough, and should last for years with proper usage. The headband is adjustable although they can't be folded so its not very portable. There's a little padding on the underside of the headband and a leather like mesh on top. The headphone uses a flat cable which feels extremely well made and is very resistant to tangling. However, the cable is only around 1.2m which shouldn't be a problem if you use a laptop but I can definitely see it causing problems for PC users, particularly if the CPU tower is far. Sound Quality Just to make it clear, I am in no way an audiophile so my judgment on these headphones is probably won't be the most accurate. However, it should help the average user should he decide to buy these headphones. I allowed the headphones to break in for around 2 days before testing it. On first listening, it was clearly that these headphones pack HUGE bass in it (I was surprised the bass even rivaled that of Beats Studio owned by my friend!). These are like a dream come true for bass heads. While the bass is amazing, the mids and highs clearly suffered as they sounded somewhat recessed. I tweaked the EQ based on some of the suggested settings on head-fi. The result was a much tighter bass with well pronounced mids and highs, noticeable improvement over stock settings. I probably won't recommend these if you don't plan on using some sort of an equalizer unless you're into the bass only. I also noticed that these headphones respond quite well to equalizers so you can fine tune it to your liking. My main use for these was for movies and games and they certainly do them justice. The sound stage is very good, and virtual sound features (Like Creative's CMSS 3D, Dolby surround) work impressively well. Explosions in movies and games would rumble your head, and tiny details are easily picked up. As for music, I don't listen much to it so I can't give an accurate image but whatever I heard sounded alright to me. Noise Isolation The XB500 does a good job of blocking ambient noise, and with music playing you'll barely be able to hear what's going around you. They do however leak sound if used at high volumes, around 30-40% on my laptop, and around 60-65% when I use the mobile. The sound leakage seems to come mainly from 3 holes on both sides of the backplate. These are I assume to improve the bass as covering it with duct tape reduced the bass a little (and eliminated a great deal of the noises that were leaking).

Yes, that's the 270WM vbios. Are DP/HDMI working?

have a look what else is new

Hi Aikimox, I can answer both of your questions I've tried to upgrade the CPU and LCD screen with an user bjorm. And we wrote a topic on our Polish forum nhl.pl. Here is the link: http://www.nhl.pl/index.php?showtopic=67159&st=0&start=0, and here bjorm tried a more complicated way of upgrading the screen in 2560p: http://www.nhl.pl/index.php?showtopic=67439&pid=680789&st=0entry680789. In short: 1) switching CPU to Sandy Bridge i7-2630qm gave us some nice performance gain, and the temps were not bad. Totally idle after booting up the system were smaller than 40 degrees. Maximum temp was 85 after the 3dmark06 test, which is very CPU-demanding. In Crysis 3, combined with eGPU gtx660 OC, CPU never reached 80 degrees. Of course, using iGPU only in 3dm11 or some Prime95 benchmarks may get the CPU to higher values, maybe over 95 degrees. BUT switching to Sandy CPU f*cked up my motherboard! I don't know, maybe it was faulty.I needed to use my awesome warranty. I think that using i7 Ivy CPU should cause no problems. So, I rather don't recommend Sandy CPU for 2570p. 2) We failed to switch LCD to x220 IPS. It has got the incompatible wiring and screws placed somewhere else. You may find a way to make it more compatible, but we failed for sure.