Pros: Features. I bought the 16tb locally 3 days ago and am impressed with the features for the money spent. Dual NICs, second power adapter available, RAID choices, can make multiple ISCSI luns, comes with 10 licenses of home backup software (that I am not using BTW). Not fast, but for the money the speed is more than fine. Anything faster with this space and features is way more than I want to spend. I played a bit with the included software and found it easy to setup data backups. It feels solid, and the drives are easy to swap out, no tools needed. It also sees Active Directory user accounts so I was able to carve up space for individual users on my domain.

Cons: It's not fast, but while it won't win races, it does chug along at a fast enough speed to run my domain controller and a SQL/WSUS server. For me, the biggest con isn't speed, it's heat. The fan, while quiet, doesn't do the job as well as I would like (maybe I can get something better in there), so I mounted a 120mm fan to the shelf right in front of the intakes. Not pretty, but the air flow is worth more to me than looks. While the backup software seems ok for data backup, it does not do disaster recovery- at least I don't see a way to boot to a recovery console to restore whole drives, even though the option is there to backup whole drives. And who wants to reinstall Windows when you have a backup of the whole drive. So I am sticking with Acronis. Aomei is a free alternative that also provides a disaster restore boot, if you don't want to spend more for backup software.

Overall Review: Home server is Vmware ESXI 5.5 running two 2008r2 servers, so I quickly made 4 ISCSI luns and put the two VMs and two backup locations on them (yes, have other backups on local drives). Carved up the rest for desktop backups (3 desktops, 3 laptops). Turned off the lights via the web interface as it's in the bedroom, and setup folders for AD user accounts. I am pleased that it is quiet (yea I know, that's why it runs hotter than I would like). Now I have enough space to make an entertainment server, my next project. Overall I am pleased with it, but time will tell if it holds up. It's nice to know I can hot swap a bad drive and have it auto rebuild. Will keep an eye on the heat (seems ok with the extra fan in front) but I think I got a good value.

Pros: Sigh. Good idea? Like the design. Can act as a bridge or WAP. That's about it, barely worth two stars for that.

Cons: Where do I begin? It's supposed to be a range extender, but at 10 ft from it I barely get a 'good' signal. That's no walls between, just me 10 feet away. Right now, it's about half as far from me as the main AP is, but I am connecting to the main AP! This morning (it does this regularly) it decides it does not want to WPS to the main AP and I have to go through the whole re-paring bit, complete with dragging it into the back bedroom and all the button pressing and sprinkling with pixie dust to get it to work again. I give up. I am in the market again for another AP.

Overall Review: If Dlink had delivered what they wrote on the box they would have something. But it's too weak, too finicky, oh-and did I mention that the instructions are just about worthless? Sorry Dlink, nix the WPS and call it a basic AP for really small apartments and you would have something there...

Pros: Where do I start? The keyboard is good, not like a cherry red but solid, not flimsy feeling. The screen is just drop dead gorgeous, it's a 'take your breath away' moment the first time you see it. The overall feel of the laptop is solid, but the hinges could be a little beefier feeling. Not that they are bad, but like most laptops, it never feels as solid as what I would like. Plenty of ports, lots of cooling with half the bottom slotted and mesh covered, with lots of openings at the back and sides. Not surprised, the BIOS is locked so you can't undervolt the CPU without a hacked BIOS so I am going without for now. Gaming is a pleasure, you don't feel like you are leaving something behind by gaming on it.

Cons: Where this laptop disappoints is the Gigabyte "Control Center". Well, I haven't found a way to save settings. I reboot and they are gone. I want it to come up in GAMING MODE, and it comes up in AI. My keyboard lighting is similarly reset back to WAVE which is annoying. At first, it pops up "now in content mode" or whatever, then "now in gaming mode" like it is trying to figure out what I want. There must be a better way to control the keyboard lighting and fan curve. Who wants to mess with it, only to see it all gone on a reboot. I must be missing something...

Overall Review: Great hardware. Nice 'packaging'. Eye candy everywhere. Bad controller software. Maybe I can find something else to control this beast- I've used MSI Afterburner to control my Gigabyte video cards for years, for example... Thankfully the hardware is a solid performer, maybe Gigabyte can improve their software, or I get used to the quirks...

Pros: Really low power use for what you get. Yea it only boosts to 2.7ghz, but think about it, 8 cores, 16 threads. Perfect for a hypervisor setup, HyperV or VMWare. I am using this as my new ESXI 6.5 host. Still building it out, but have the first 3 VMs done (2 server 2016 and 1 2012r2) and running. Very stable, low power and low heat. For a small business or a 'whitebox' or home server, it's perfect. The low power is like running a 45w oven light the majority of the time. But it has the punch of those 16 threads which is working great with ESXI. It cost a bit more than my original choice (another Supermicro but not low power) but this really fit my needs better and should lower the energy bill. Plus it opens up the idea of building a smaller form factor server. The HTML IPMI is the bomb. I run it headless and can reboot and configure it from the comfort of my laptop as I sit outside enjoying the wonderful SoCal weather.

Cons: Really can't think of one. To those who talk about the extra cost of the BIOS unlock, it's not that big a deal. I have another Supermicro built out as a NAS server, and I bought it for that, just for the easy BIOS/Firmware update because it also has a built in SAS chip that I needed to flash to IT mode. But how hard is it to make a boot USB and put the BIOS update on it and run it? I updated this board without it and had no issues. Other than that, the HTML IPMI works, the Server setup works fine, I can monitor it via the web and see voltages and temps. I'm not locked out of anything I need to configure or monitor this board. So you really don't need it if you are not afraid of creating the boot USB and doing a conventional BIOS update.

Overall Review: Yes unquestionably would recommend this. Perfect for a home server. This whole board with a 512gig 970 Samsung NVME and 32gigs ram (will be ordering more) at 90% draws noticeably less power than the TDP of the CPU alone that I had been using before (an AMD rig). My old ESXI used to heat the room, in the summer it was unbearable without lots of air conditioning just to counter the heat being generated. Now the room actually gets cool at night. EDIT- UPDATE. It has now been a couple of years. I have doubled the ram from 32 to 64 gigs. It's running 6 VMs and also a PFSense router and handles it with plenty of go-juice to spare. Not so much as a bobble, it's been rock solid. The money I spent has been paid back in energy savings over the AMD system it replaced, and it sits in an almost silent cube case. I did end up adding a 4 port Intel NIC as I dedicated two nics to the router vm and two more to an ISCSI connection to my NAS which is my other Supermicro board, also rock stable. Very happy with this purchase. No it's not cheap until you factor in the savings in power every month, and the savings in frustration if trying to get by with something not designed for the task.

Pros: Price.

Cons: Out of the 4 I ordered, one was bad, failed S.M.A.R.T., and had thousands of hours already on it. The seller replaced it quick, that was great. Well, it's been two months, and another drive is failing S.M.A.R.T. So I just ordered two of something else, as I need one right away, and another as a spare as I just don't trust these. In two months, 2 out of 5 failed self-tests, bad sectors. Price was too good to be true. EDIT #2: now 6 months after purchase, and the third of 5 is now failing SMART. Thankfully I have another drive (something else) and I am copying that drive to it right now. They are also really noisy. Not talking 'bout the high pitched clack clack that is normal. A deep rumble along with the clacking sounds almost like a heavy person is trying to sneak down the hall. Thump thump thump...

Overall Review: Frankly, looking at the reviews of drives in general, it seems the norm now that a good 20% of reviews at least, and often more, are 1 egg reviews. Drives just aren't what they used to be, I guess. These drives specifically looked to be a good deal but they are just iffy. Previously I had 4 Toshiba retail-packaged desktop drives running 24/7 for almost 5 years before one quit. And 4 WD Red drives that went beyond 5 years (these are all in NAS use) and were working fine still but I replaced them out of caution with Toshiba NAS drives that are now 2 years old and just fine. EDIT AGAIN: If they don't say new, don't assume they are new, now having the third drive out of 5 fail in 6 months is scary. You cannot recondition drives. The servo is old, the bearings are old, the magnetic surface is old and worn. Nothing changes this. Blanking the SMART data on the drive so it resets to ZERO does not prep the drive for more use. While I have no specific info on these drives, the information here on Newegg does not say they are new, and I did get a drive that had not been blanked and had a lot of hours and errors logged in SMART in my original order. That one was definitely used. The drive that is failing now was made mid 2013.

Pros: Fast and it works well on the Supermicro board I am using. Price was cheaper than the 960 but the specs look as good or better. Can't complain about that. Edit: Well it's been a year and a half, and this drive has been in a home server running 24/7 rock solid all this time. Nice and fast.

Cons: Still the price on these overall need to come down more.

Overall Review: Works well and is very fast. I have 5 Samsung SSDs, 3 of them are NVMEs and the speed is really good on all.

Nothing beats getting your order as described when expected and it works without drama.

No issues with the seller or the product and I got the order very quickly.