Pros: I've owned ALL of the raptor drives from 36, 74, 150, 300 to 600GB units. The specs on this drive are VERY good comapred to SSDs WHEN IN RAID 0! HD Tune Pro yields read speeds of: Minimum 147.4 MB/s Maximum 241 MB/s Adverage 216.4 MB/s Access time 7.8ms Burst rates of 146.8 MB/s This was using an LSI/3ware 9650SE controller with 256MB of cache (purchased from New Egg). While the numbers are good, the reality is that for 80% of the test, the drives performed at better than 200 MB/sec in read through-put. With 50% of the 80% being 225 MB/sec or faster! Tests using the Intel ICH 10R yield about 25% slower values. Write speeds I was unable to test, but VelociRaptor 300GB drives get: Minimum 150 MB/sec Maximum 248.9 MB/sec Average 199.5 MB/sec Access time of 9.4ms Burst rate of 155.8 MB/sec I would expect the 600GB series not to be slower. It's probably MUCH cheaper to purchase 2 - 600GB VelociRaptor drivers and a 3rd party RAID controller!

Cons: You need to use something other than built in chipset RAID controllers to get the maximum performance of out these units.

Overall Review: My test numbers were acheived using a Gigabyte GA-X568A-UD5 motherboard. The best results where with a 3Ware 9650SE 4 port RAID 0/1/5 controller. Second, were the Intel ICH 10R controllers, followed by the Marvel SATA III controllers (which sucked). [However, Gigabyte is issuing new firmware to fix this some time soon.] Since my tests almost all used SATA II controllers, it really doesn't seem to matter if you use a SATA III controller. These drives do seem to hold their own again SSDs for a fraction of the cost, and in RAID 0 you get about 1.1TB of storage for a FRACTION of the cost of an SSD. Given that SSD technology will get better over the next few years, the VelociRaptor is probably a better purchasing decision for the moment.

Pros: These suckers are NICE. Seriously. The heat sink and external build quality are fantastic. You can even say they are trendy. 8GB DDR3 XMP DIMMS that should give you reliable 32GBs of high speed RAM.

Cons: As a Quad RAM kit these are supposed to be a matched pair of tested RAM that will function without issue in the Intel x79 motherboards, among others. Unfortunately, using the XMP (1866MHz) memory profile yielded SIGNIFICANT numbers of errors under MEMTEST86+ 4.20. Interestingly, the SPD rate of this RAM is 1333MHz, and it ALSO produced errors, just far fewer in number. When compared to the XMP settings of 4 sticks of a competitors 4GB modules, running at 1800MHz, with a LOWER CAS latency, the expense of they modules just doesn't seem to justify them not working. Had I not tested the memory prior to booting the operating system, my core installation would have been corrupted and I would have been hosed. This is not what you expect from Corsair.

Overall Review: I'm running a GigaByte G1.Assassin2 X79 based 4 DIMM slot motherboard. Most X79 motherboards are known to be temperamental, and this one doesn't appear to be any different. However, since I can easily get Crucial DIMMS with CAS of 8 to run using XMP in this board, which had a default speed of 1600 using SPD... I'm a little shocked with the results here. The Dominator sticks were v3.3.x.

Pros: Pros: Makes a huge difference on a 2560x1600 monitor, especially with a working PCIE 3.0 bus (which means the latest i7 22nm process CPUs). With PCIE 3.0 enabled and an Ivy Bridge-E CPU, Metro Last Light is actually playable at 2560x1600.

Cons: If you have a Sandy Bridge-E CPU and an X79 Chipset based motherboard, this card will not default to PCIE 3.0 because NVidia has limited the speed. You need a latest revision Sandy Bridge-E or Ivy Bridge-E CPU to be able to use PCIE 3.0 with this (or any newer) NVidia GPU. Note that with a later revision Sandy Bridge-E CPU (we're talking about the 6 core CPUs here) you need to run a special program from NVidia to FORCE PCIE 3.0 support. Earlier model Sandy Bridge-E CPUs are not stable in PCIE 3.0 mode. With an Ivy Bridge-E CPU it just works. With 4k HD displays there is a serious improvement with PCIE 3.0, otherwise, it doesn't matter as much; see the "other thoughts"

Overall Review: The deal is this. All of the people in this review series that are complaining about 780GTX not working in their system are really having a problem with the BIOS on their main boards. Especially Gigabyte users, and X79 chipset users were very hard hit. If the PCIE bus was not set to LEGACY mode for the PCIE ADD-IN BIOS boot order, then you have to put ANOTHER video card in the system, change the BIOS settings, and put the 708GTX back in the computer. (I had to do this as I upgraded from an HD7970.) Recently, the BIOS updates have started to flow, but it took a while for many of the vendors to fix this.

Pros: So, the this unit has everything you'd expect. The cables for the plugin components are sturdy, and it can clearly a huge number of connections. The more interesting thing about this PSU is that while rated at 1000watts, it's barely using 550watts in my system during peak usage. What I've noticed is that the prior PSU was close to its maximum rates wattage. This means that the efficiency was not really there, and that lack of efficient power conversion from 120v to 3.3,5,12 volts was t being given off as HEAT. So, with the installation of this PSU, the temperature dropped 8 degrees in the room my gamer is in! It was simply a guess that not taxing the PSU would result in less loss of efficiency, but the lack of generation of heat was a total surprise.

Cons: None for now, we'll see how it holds up.

Pros: Supports LGA 2011 CPUs, intergrated Creative Labs X-FI sound, tons of Intel SATA II and 2 - SATA III connections, 4 Marvel based SATA III connections, Fresco USB 3.0, UFI and EFI BIOS options, and more. Overclocking features are fantasic, as are the multiple BIOSes and the ability to easily selected between them.

Cons: The biggest gripe with this motherboard is that it Gigabyte has not been updating the drivers or the Firmware. The Intel Storage firmware (OROMs) are a full revision behind with the iRST (11.5) and server revisions out of date with the RST Enterprise (3.2). Additionally, the drivers for the X-Fi sound a about 2 years out of date, but check with Creative for updates. Of course, Creative lists the embedded sound controller as "undetected." Generally, Gigabyte has done a poor job supporting this board.

Overall Review: I really want to love this board. It has everything you could want in a decent workstation. However, stability is not there, and this is likely becuase of storage firmware related issues. Running tests, I've updated the firmware to include the Intel 12.6 Storage OROM, and my machine has run stabilly ever since. It took me a YEAR to get this motherboard to run stable in a RAID 0 configuration, which it is designed to do. I've litterally had to restore the system from backups no less than 10 times. Not what you'd expect from Gigabyte. [Yes, many posts have been made about this in their support forums.]

Pros: Battery backup so that you don't loose data when the system goes offline / it completes the writes to the array upon powering up.

Cons: It appears that these battery units have an "Install by Date," and that you need to strictly look at the label on the box when you get it. Also, the BBU is USELESS if you are using the LSI FATHPATH software for SSDs. (This is the embedded firmware that "speeds up SSD performance.") The BBU can only be effectively used with traditional hard disks, as the SSD configurations from LSI generally require that you do not have the onboard write back cache enabled. [You should also make sure that the LSI contoller in question is in the LSI hardware compatibility list for both your SSDs and motherboard.]

Overall Review: Had to RMA the battery because after 10 months it had 1100mAh, as opposed to the 1500mAh it was supposed to have. LSI was great about RMAing the unit.