Pros: A year of use without a single outage.

Cons: Depending on your case, you might have a hard time reaching some of the lower plug-ins. The two best solutions are to manage your cables better or grow tinier hands.

Overall Review: Probably more wattage than I need, but when it comes to my PSU I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Pros: Wonderful board that made for a super easy installation. I primarily deal with older machines, so this was my first time experiencing UEFI. ASRock’s UEFI interface is extremely intuitive to understand and made updating the board super simple.

Cons: It has side-mounted SATA, which, combined with a small case, can make it pretty tricky to plug everything in tightly.

Overall Review: Be mindful that this isn’t at precise ATX size. It’s actually a hair smaller. It will likely fit just fine, but check your case’s layout beforehand or you’ll be strapping this in with duct tape. (Note: Please don’t strap this in with duct tape.)

Pros: After a year of constant use it is still going strong.

Cons: None.

Pros: Excellent speed and no problems with Photoshop, Flash, Lightroom, or gaming. Going to work and using our old single-core machines is a drag after having this beast at home.

Cons: Their heat sink will probably be fine for light use, but I had a 15-20c drop in temp after installing something more heavy duty, so I definitely recommend purchasing a different cooler. Why buy a $280+ chip and protect it with some plastic?

Overall Review: While some people might want the best and fastest they can get, I don’t see the need to overclock. It goes so fast that anything else is superfluous.

Pros: Ran everything I threw at it on high settings for several months with no complaints. I eventually moved it to a different machine and upgraded to an EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW. While I noticed some textual improvement while gaming, I was surprised that there really wasn't a huge difference. Given the price gap, it definitely wasn't worth the upgrade for so marginal a shift.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Downloading EVGA Precision will let you adjust the fan speed to react to changes in interior temperature.

Pros: Does exactly what they say. A year of use and I haven't had any parity-related errors or needed to reseat them despite a few moves.

Cons: None.