Pros: This was used inside of my first ever PC build. That being said I had no experience in building PC's at the time. Everything was pretty much straight forward, and easily set up. -The liquid cooler is fantastic. I have had zero issues with it. No leaks, no cooling problems. Nada. -CPU itself has proven its reliability time after time. I have used this desktop on three different continents, and six different countries. My work requires me to move around a lot. When I'd move, I'd take everything apart and clean it, replace thermal paste when needed. -TO this day, I use it to play newer games that come out. I have zero issues. This CPU just keeps on chugging along.

Cons: -I have reinstalled Windows a few times. I have long lost my original box and service manual that came with the CPU. There was software available on a disk at the time of my purchase, which consisted of the controller to change the color of the waterblock, and a few other gimmicks. Since my clean install of Windows, I have yet to be able to find the software for download. That being said, make sure that you don't lose the disk that it comes with. You will never find it again for download.

Overall Review: I will say that this things was worth the money when I bought it. There are tons of CPU's out there now that are way better. Since I will be upgrading to a newer gaming rig, I thought I better give a nice send off review of ole trusty.

Pros: It is a nice looking machine, if that’s important to you. The IPS display looks amazing, with every game that I have ever played on it. The blacks look great, and has awesome contrast. (with one exception in the Cons) It’s extremely fast, I know that’s the main purpose of having SSD’s, but I think it’s still worth to mention. This thing blazes especially on boot up. It takes around 6-7 seconds to start up. Loading games, or any other application is a breeze. I’m not a very patient person, and I do not like to wait for things to load. So you won’t have an issue here. The GTX 970 just chews up information thrown at it, without any issues. This thing has awesome airflow, and never gets hot. I ran three games on 1080p at once just to see how it would handle, and it didn’t even flinch. The fans never even had to ramp up. Very very quiet. The air ducts are huge on it, and doesn’t take away from the looks of it. If anything, it enhances the ‘awesomeness’. The palm rest is a nice size. Seems to have a perfect amount of space that I can rest my hands, without hitting buttons. Keyboard is nice to use. The mouse track is nicely responsive. The hard drive bays are very easily assessable. Take one screw out, and pull on a tab and you’re finished. All the ports work! Something you should expect, but sometimes just doesn’t happen. USBs, HDMI out, audio ect work just fine.

Cons: Windows 8.1 enough said. I know that’s not an Asus fault, so I didn’t deduct an egg for that. At six months in now, the battery has decided to take a dump on me, and no I do not let my power adapter plugged in when it’s not necessary. Battery life was as described for about five months, and then rapidly declined. To the point now that it detects it’s there but will not take a charge. The left mouse button, does not respond very well. The physical mechanics of it seem to work, but when it’s pressed, it will miss or rather not register every six clicks or so. Not a big deal if you have a stationary place that you game, but if you’re on the go a lot it can become rather annoying. The IPS screen had some kind of white washout around the edges for the first week it was used. It did go away after that time, but was pretty irritating to see for that time. Not sure what that was about. The OS SSD was formatted very weird. They made it so that you had to have certain partitions that you probably don’t want, and could not extend the volume to your liking. With aftermarket software, it can be fixed but if you’re not computer savvy it would be an inconvenience. The audio is not very good at all. Audio comes out sounding very crackly.

Overall Review: Asus should have a replaceable battery in this thing. There is so much bloatware preinstalled on this, it isn’t funny. Just delete it as needed. Wish that you could program the Steam application button to not open Steam, in big picture mode. Makes it pretty useless to me since I think big picture mode is stupid to use, and look at. Also the game streaming button is directly above the Esc button. I have pushed this button so many times during a game, and it closes out of whatever you’re paying. Could’ve placed that in a separate location with some of the useless one you won’t use. Too many video driver updates. You’d think that wouldn’t be a problem, but Asus/NVIDIA release so many updates in rapid succession, some just don’t work properly at all and you have to revert to the old one.

Pros: None

Cons: The card will not format. It originally came formatted. I put it in my Nintendo Switch and started to download a game, everything seemed fine. After about 15-20 minutes all I get are errors, saying that there is something wrong with the card. I tried to format it on my Windows PC, Linux workstation, Pentax DSLR, and Nintendo Switch. All devices say that there is an error with the card. Whenever it's inserted into my PC it freezes it until I take it out again. DO NOT BUY. This is the second one I got that did the same thing. Filing for RMA after this review.

Overall Review: Don't buy it. Look elsewhere.

Pros: It works. There really isn't much that you can say about thermal paste, except for either 1) it works or 2) it didn't work, and destroyed your CPU. No overheating, nice temps. It has been keeping my 8 core CPU at nice temps for the past three years.

Cons: Since I need to put something in the cons. It wasn't free? - duh I wish it was made of gold dust or that I could eat it.

Overall Review: Next time make it out of moon dust.

Pros: The remote seems to work just fine for Windows 7 Pro. It does everything that it's listed to do. I like that it has a shutdown option to turn your computer off without needing to use a mouse.

Cons: There are way too many buttons. Most of the time that would not be a horrible thing, but there are buttons that I will never use and it makes the remote more bulkier than it needs to be. I don't know about most of you but I HATE using windows media center, there is a Windows media center button right below the "play" button and sometimes I tend to press it causing it to start the program, then I have to wait for it to finish loading all of my media before I can close it out. I know that's the program that this remote is designed for, but I wish the button was not dead center in the remote. The "stop" buttons isn't working anymore after about 2 weeks of using the remote.

Overall Review: I wish that I could program / disable some of the buttons that I don't need. It would be a much better remote if it was backlit.