Pros: Futuristic looks, touch screen, possibility to adjust fans’ RPM threshold, and again…..REALLY GOOD LOOKING PIECE OF EQUIPMENT.

Cons: Unfortunately the first order came with a defect on the fan4 connector: no power running through it whatsoever. So I returned it to Newegg who sent me another unit a couple of days later. Same identical problem. I thought I must have made a mistake somewhere, however....Volt testers do not lie. I reconnected everything all over again, and everything worked on the first 3 fan connectors but nothing on fan4. I connected the very fans that were working on the fan1, 2 and 3 connector on the fan4 connector, and I got nothing again. I called AeroCool who (after asking me exactly what happened and how I trouble shot it) immediately sent me a Fed-Ex label and offered to send me a brand new unit after making sure it worked. Tech support has been in touch with me since the day I shipped the unit back and they have been extremely helpful. Looking forward to the new unit to make my Coller Master Cosmos look even meaner!

Overall Review: Kudos to AeroCool tech support/customer serivce.

Pros: The hard drives are easy to slide in and out. And that about covers the Pros.

Cons: Sit tight folks; because this is both irritating and funny at the same time. First off let me state that I'm a Sr. Systems and network analyst and system builder with over 5,000 custom-built servers and high-end computers under my belt. During my almost 30-year career I've run across many good products and a few that really got me wondering "who the heck came up with such a bad design?” Well, this ORICO 9528RU3 belongs to the ladder category. I setup this unit to run nightly backups on a customer’s server back in January 2015. 2 weeks ago (7 months after purchase) the customer calls me to report a very loud noise coming from the server’s backup enclosure. As I suspected the fan was the culprit. I blew compressed air on it from every accessible angle and then fired the unit up again: no luck. So I take a look at the back panel of this thing thinking “I can probably just remove the fan, dump a new one in and be done with it”. Boy was I wrong! Removing the fan requires disassembling the entire unit all the way to (and including) the main board. Since I could not see myself charging a full hour worth of labor to remove a cheap fan, I contacted Orico’s customer service via email (since their phone number is from Hong Kong). I gave them a detailed descrption of the issue, and then waited…and waited…and waited again. After 8 days I got tired of waiting, so I contacted Newegg to see if they had a different way of getting a hold of them and get them to honor the warranty. The days after I contacted Newegg, Orico suddenly decided to reply to my email (it must be magic). They stated that they would not replace the item under warranty if only the fan was busted. Needless to say I emailed back giving them a piece of my mind. The genius from Orico told me that I could EASILY replace the fan myself!!! I could not believe what I had just read! So for the heck of it I took it upon myself, without charging my customer, to try and get to the fan before even thinking of replacing it, and these are the actions that you are going to have to follow if you made the mistake of buying this unit: (1) remove all the visible screws ALL AROUND THE ENCLOSURE. (2) Try to slide the housing out so that you can access the internal mechanisms. (3) Realize that there’s got to be more screws hidden somewhere because the housing won’t come off. (4) Search for the additional hidden screws. (5) Find that one screw is hidden underneath the sticker that shows the RAID configuration for the PINs, which means you have to take a picture of that sticker and then peel it off. Needless to say the peeling doesn’t work as well as you would think: it tears in bits and pieces as you try to slowly pull it out in one piece. (6) try to slide the housing again and find out that there must be more hidden screws. (7) Peel the rubber pads off the 4 stands and find 4 more screws hidden underneath them. (8) Removed all 4 stands and pull housing out. *** continues in "other thoughts" below

Overall Review: (9) The housing is flimsy and bends easily, so careful not to apply too much force or you won’t get this thing back on later. (10) Slide internal frame away from back-plate which will require disconnecting a tiny 6-pin connector and tiny hands the size of a Chinese baby because it’s located in the ¼” space between the main board and the back-plate. (11) Get rid of the Chinese baby and finally slide the frame out. (12) Realize that you will not get to the fan until you completely remove the main board from the back-plate by removing 6 more screws and then gently disconnect the up-right portion of the main-board from the horizontal portion of the main board. (13) Congratulations!!! You are now able to access and replace the fan!!! Now it’s up to you to find the right size, shape and connector to make it compatible with this gigantic piece of junk that the Taiwanese market has gifted us with. I did take pictures which unfortunately I cannot share on Neweeg, but I really wish I could to show to all of you fellow IT pros. Newegg’s customer service is the one that really made the difference here; Ms. Vickie Sanora took the situation in her own hands and took care of the issue herself despite the unit being 7 months old and far beyond the Newegg warranty period. Kudos to Newegg and Vickie for providing such great customer service.

Pros: Where do I start? well, it's an ASUS. Unbeatable performance and stability. Tons of possible configurations, handles overclocking like no other brands, looks phenomenal, built tough and looks wicked in any side windows case. I've owned it since September 2014 and it's been nothing short of outstanding.

Cons: I'd like to use the "Cons" section to warn the potential customers of this board about the insanity of some of the reviews below mine. People with little or no knowledge of high-end hardware SHOULD NOT buy high-end equipment such as this one, and more importantly SHOULD NOT write reviews based on their incompetence. If this board doesn't work for you, it's because you don't know how to configure it. PERIOD! If you think the SATA connectors are in the wrong spot, it's because LIKE MANY WANNABES you don't know how to custom-build a system without having to wrestle wires everywhere. I upgraded the new BIOS to version 1401 2 weeks ago and it's rock solid. My system is overclocked to 4725 MHz and it doesn't even break a sweat. Once again: if you aren't a pro STOP WASTING EVERYONE'S TIME by writing non-sense aimed solely to alleviate your frustration. Unless you received a DOA you really have nothing to complain about.

Overall Review: I am a Sr. Systems and network analyst and have been a system builder for over 20 years. I have well over 3,000 machines under my belt and that's why I can't stand it when ignorance dares to speak up. Not only do I use this board on my main system, but I've custom-built and sold 16 machines since September 2014 with this very board. I've received nothing but stellar feedback from my customers. Do you think it's a coincidence? I highly doubt it.

Pros: When it works, it's fast.

Cons: Unreliable!!!!! I ordered 2 of these units 1 month apart for 2 high-end custom-built systems. The first one started failing 6 days after the system was delivered (I should specify that I keep my custom-builds in test for 48 hours before I deliver them). No sign of instability at all during the test. 6 days later the system started freezing up randomly (not restarting itself) and showed pink horizontal stripes on the screens. The system became totally unresponsive forcing the user to manually shut down. The fact that I could never see it happen didn’t help of course, so I had to rely on the user’s description of the issue and try to troubleshoot “in the dark”. The symptoms were quite similar to those of a failing VGA card. Replaced VGA card first.... didn't make any difference. I turned my attention to the SSD; first I changed SATA3 port and cable; no dice. Then I put it on a SATA2 port with a new SATA2 cable; no difference. Then considering the oddity of the situation I cloned the SSD (which was a challenge since the drive kept freezing up during the cloning procedure), dumped the clone onto a Corsair SSD drive, fired up the system and the problem magically disappeared. The second system I built with this unit 1 month later failed after 48 hours but with a completely different error: the motherboard (ASUS P8Z77-M) would not even detect the drive anymore. I jiggled data and power cable repeatedly with the same result. Then all of a sudden after 8-10 restarts the SSD would get detected and the system would start. If I restarted Windows I would go back to square 1 with a "No bootable device found". After changing ports and cables I tried to get my own server to detect the SSD; it detected it only 1time out of 5 restarts. Newegg sent me a new identical SSD for this one and thank goodness it's been working since; however as a professional, 2 bad units out of 3 is something I don't want to deal with ever again. If you're willing to gamble this unit is fairly inexpensive and works fast, but is it really worth all of this time, frustration and 2 unhappy customers?

Overall Review: I've been custom building servers, laptops and high-end computers for 29 years now; I have well over 5,000 builds under my belt and this kind of issue is not something I am willing to put up with. The hours of troubleshooting and repair involved in addition to the customer's unhappiness really ticked me off. Fortunately my customers have been with me for so many years that they know this type of issue is beyond my control; the problem is that I expect the products that I recommend to live up to their name and reputation. This one OBVIOUSLY DOESN’T. Mushkin people: get it together. I don’t know what kind of nerve you have to put such and under-developed product on the market and expect customers to be your guinea-pig! As far as I’m concerned you’ve lost not only my company as a customer, but most people who will read this review.

Pros: Good cable management; nice tool-free installation mechanism for 5.25" drives; good air flow and predisposition for quite a few extra fans (if needed); aggressvie/futuristic look. Overall it's a nice case for the price.

Cons: If I really have to be picky, maybe a little flimsy, but it didn't bother me in the least.

Overall Review: I was a little leery about this case when I read Generalkillmoe’s review (just a couple of reviews below mine), because I was ordering parts for a customer, and I wanted to make sure I would deliver not only a fast and reliable machine, but also a very quiet one. Generalkillmoe complained about the loudness of this chassis, but looking at the specs I couldn’t quite figure out how a chassis with only one 120mm fan could be loud. So I trusted my thinking and purchased it anyway. Maybe I should mention that I have been a system builder for 24 years and I have well over 3,000 custom-builts under my belt (it includes high dollar custom-built servers for the U.S. government). Outcome: there is absolutely nothing loud about this chassis; nothing whatsoever. The 120mm intake fan spins at roughly 1,600rpm and is extremely quiet (just as I thought). Generalkillmoe is obviously inexperienced and doesn’t understand that the loudness he claims to experience is coming from his CPU fan or from some other auxiliary fan that he MAY have added, but definitely NOT from this chassis. Generalkillmoe, you may want to check the settings in your BIOS, and enable Q-Fan control (if you have an ASUS board), or whatever feature your MoBo has for fan speed control. One more piece of advice: restrain yourself from writing reviews based on your limited experience. Most Newegg customers base their purchases on fellow customer’s reviews rather than the manufacturer’s specs, and reviews like yours can easily steer an IT pro in the wrong direction.

Pros: Solid board, but there are some issues (read cons and other thougts). Supermicro is usually my second choice when it comes to server boards, and they usually leave me and my customers pretty happy with the purchase. This time though....I had to deal with some really stupid stuff that cost me nearly 3 hours worth of work.

Cons: BEWARE SYSTEM BUILDERS. THERE IS AN ISSUE ON THE SATA CONTROLLER IF YOU HAVE A SATA DVD-DRIVE AND YOU ARE TRYING TO CONFIGURE A RAID ARRAY. After assembling this monster server for a customer, I finally get to the point where I push the ON button and configure the BIOS. I chose the Intel Raid controller over the Adaptec (they are both embedded in the board). I configure a RAID-5 with 5x1TB 10,000RPM HDDs. Keep in mind that from port SATA0 to SATA4 there are 5 HDDs, on port SATA6 there’s a SATA DVD drive (which of course is excluded from the array). I reboot the system, everything posts properly, but after the screen shows the INTEL raid array and the board is supposed to read the installation DVD from the DVD drive, the screen gets black and that’s as far is it would go. I spent literally hours trying to change RAID configurations from RAID5 to RAID1+0, changing RAM clock speed in case the memory had something to do with this anomaly, but nothing changed. CONTINUES ON OTHER THOUGTS

Overall Review: I then removed the INTEL array, enabled the Adaptec and started over; same issue. Then after almost 2.5 hours of resetting CMOS, changing settings and stuff, I decided to connect and external DVD drive to the board through USB port, and I got the problem solved (but I had to physically disconnect the SATA port from the internal SATA DVD drive otherwise even the external drive wouldn’t work). Come on Supermicro, get it together. ASUS and TYAN NEVER have these kind of issues (maybe others, but not something that makes you waste so much time just trying to get a stinking OS loaded). And since I’m sure you are aware of it, you could AT LEAST write on your user’s manual!! This is the kind of issue that gets IT Pros to take their business somewhere else. May I add that I've been building servers and high-performance PCs for 2 decades, and this is not something I'd want to run into again. P.S. hopefully a BIOS update will take care of this.