Pros: I had a stock heatsink and fan from an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T. It ran loud, hot and fast. So loud that it distracted from television viewing, and when the backups ran it sounded like a jet taking off. I started looking at fans, but could hardly imagine spending almost as much for the fan as I did for the CPU + fan. If you are thinking this, just stop. Stop. Buy this fan and don't look back.

When I turned on the system I literally believed I didn't have it plugged in. I had to put my hand in the case to feel the wind moving. It was that quiet The temperature of the motherboard dropped from around 60C with the original fan down to 32C, even when compiling or doing video encoding which loads up the CPU.

Cons: I had a problem because the motherboard I have did not have the metal AMD backing plate this fan requires. Luckily I had an old AMD2 motherboard that I was able to swap with it. Make sure you have one before you start taking things down.

I recently upgraded to my new favorite case, an Antec Three Hundred. It is good I did because there is no way that this huge fan and heatsink would have fit in my previous mid-sized case. This thing is huge; make sure you pull out a ruler and measure the dimensions inside the case with the motherboard installed.

Pros: I replaced a multi-purpose home server (email, file, xbmc, etc.) with a few smaller uni-purpose boxes. I run Linux, so I usually have issues with niche hardware. I picked this box specifically because it didn't have integrated wifi (got burned on a zbox with no external antenna) and had an Nvidia graphics chipset.

I got Debian Wheezy loaded on it, plugged in an external wifi b/g/n usb adapter and hooked it up to the tv. Picture perfect, fast streaming from a certain competitor's streaming video service, great for Google Hangout video conferences with the grandparents, and it plays all our high-def content via XBMC with no trouble at all.

Cons: Like others have mentioned, it runs a little hot and the external power brick looks a little cheaply made. I keep it out in the room rather than packed onto a media center shelf to avoid overheating.