Joined on 06/21/01
Just what I needed
Pros: Low power consumption Good specs
Cons: I have had no issues
Overall Review: I've had mine since June 2011 and it's still going strong. My kill-a-wat showed it pulling 4w with an average load.
Made for massively-cooled builds
Pros: It's nice, the side-panel controls are where I want them, has attachments for a huge amount of cooling and 2.5" disks. The 200mm fan is nice.
Cons: Loud. A 2500k/7950 build that was a bit annoying inside a thick, front-to-back-cooled case is loud (closed-cell headphones can't mask it) in this case due to 5 sides being perforated metal. 3 3.5" slots is more than I need, but this case has room for 9. I'm unsure if I'm complaining about wasted space or lack of cages. The drive cage should be able to hold the disk rails when it's taken out of the case. Drive cage should be mounted sideways.
Overall Review: Not a tough case. The window shouldn't cover the bottom-front of the case, which is where the wiring is not straight-forward to hide.
Best stable performance
Pros: 3200@CAS14 is theoretically 5.04% slower than 2400@CAS10; but this is stable and 25% less expensive.
Cons: None.
Overall Review: My BIOS had to be configured. The JEDEC/XMP setting wasn't correct. My userbenchmark dot com rating is 105% without any tweaking. Z170 on asrock extreme4 uATX.
Ouch, bad support, bad BIOS
Pros: Good feature set
Cons: As other reviewers said, the BIOS doesn't support any currently-sold processors. Mine came with 1.1 and I require 1.6. That's how out-of-date the BIOS is; roughly 2 years. My contact to ASRock has been ignored so far.
On 2nd RMA
Pros: Fast when it works. Short card so its PCB won't droop. Noise is tolerable.
Cons: Crashes, unusable for even 1080p/60hz 3D rendering.
Overall Review: Running GPU-Z shows what you might expect, TDP is >80%, GPU is ~65C +- 3% (2C), and voltage is 1.2v. Gigabyte says they tested it and it ran for 4 days after my RMA. However, the card is well under max temp spec and there's no artifacting, so I doubt this is is related to anything Nvidia designed.
Very nice considering the form-factor
Pros: - Small - Well-designed - Discrete graphics - Correct outputs - 802.11N - Plays HD video without trouble
Cons: - Mini optical output is on the front All other common HTPC cables run out the back (as they should). If this weren't an issue, I wouldn't have to keep the front case door open all the time. - Base bends easily. It bends back into shape easily too!
Overall Review: - No mini-SPDIF(TOSLINK)-to-SPDIF(TOSLINK) converter is supplied, a lot of people will need them. My rig is 4GB, 320GB, Logitech mini-Dinovo keyboard. It runs very well. It will play counterstrike at the lowest resolutions. No problems with any console emulators I've tried (I haven't tested for N64). I can't think of a better GPU platform than ION in this form-factor. I specifically sought an ION box for this task.
Good experience
I received everything as-promised. Quick shipping and good packaging.