Joined on 06/06/09
Easy to build in. Great Design
Pros: Lots of removable panels Solid build quality Very unique wood accents
Cons: Running 360 rad in front will limit large video cards
Overall Review: Very happy with the looks and air flow from the Fractal North. I have the Black / mesh and I've had my build running in it for about 2 weeks now. I really like the way the mesh side panel diffuses the RGB in the case and the wood matches the natural wood tones that I'm going for as I remodel my office. The temps stay nice and low with my ROG Strix 3090 never getting too hot. The temps actually stay lower than my PC011 I had before, I think mostly due to the mesh side panel. Don't get too thick of a front radiator if you have a large GPU, there is about 1cm of clearance for my Strix 3090 and I'd say this radiator is roughly 30mm thick. Very easy to build in, with great cable management lanes for a mid-tower case. I see myself running in this case for years to come. Absolutely love it. Build: Ryzen 9 5900X ASUS Crosshair VIII Dark Hero ASUS ROG Strix 3090 OC Corsair Vengeance 32gb @ 3600mhz Phaanteks Glacier One 360 MPH Super Flower Leadex Platinum SE 1000W
Poor thermal design
Pros: Great price Fast enough
Cons: Poor Thermal design Poor thermal pads
Overall Review: I've ran this in my Ryzen 9 5900X, RTX 3090 build for the last year or so in a 32GB (4x8 GB) setup. Ran perfect with no issues until last month when my PC started hard crashing due to memory module failures. After investigating the sticks, the thermal pads and heatsinks were falling off and barely attached on a few sticks of the RAM. In fact the heatsinks have nothing physically connecting them to hold them on the RAM other than adhesive on the thermal pads which can wear out fairly quickly. This is a fairly large design flaw in my book. You can fix it with new thermal pads or buying aftermarket heatsinks, but at that point why not just buy a better set of RAM? Decent choice if you are in a pinch, but I would recommend spending an extra $50 and getting some better designed RAM.
Started Out Great, But Then.... A Bad SATA Cable
Pros: Decent price Lots of modular connections Lots of modular cables Very Quiet
Cons: Had a bad SATA cable in the bunch, which was causing major issues with the power supply.
Overall Review: This PSU was great at first, but after about 4 days of running on my server I noticed it was extremely hot to the touch and components were failing throughout the morning. I powered off the server due to PSU heat concerns, especially considering the server was only pulling about 500w total power from the wall. I'm very concerned damage may have been caused to my components, but I don't have a spare PSU laying around to test. Update: Components are good. After some trouble shooting I found out whenever one of the SATA cables was plugged in it was causing all of the issues above. Going to get ahold of Super Flower for a replacement. Would give it 3 1/2 stars if possible.
Worked Great
Pros: Worked out of the box. Easy installation. Performance for price is great.
Cons: Software could be better. No USB-C header. Limited IO
Overall Review: I have had no issues with this board at all. Installed it and booted right up. I was replacing an older i5 6600K and ASUS Z170 board, with a Ryzen 5 3600 due to bottle-necks is some games with my GTX 1080. Paired well with my Patriot Viper DDR4 4000 RAM. Only real complaint is no USB-C header on the board, but I'm just going to add an expansion card down the road. Seeing much better performance on Insurgency: Sandstorm and COD: Modern Warfare with no overclocking yet. Giving this a 5 Star since the price and performance far outweighs the few cons. Note: Older Corsair liquid coolers do not come with the AM4 bracket so you will have to order one to use with this board and AM4 CPUs.
Very Nice
Pros: Easy to set up. Very bright and accurate colors. Thin bezels.
Cons: Stand lets the monitor wobble a little too much.
Overall Review: I'm really happy with this ultra-wide so far. It has worked flawlessly and made my coding classes easier with the extra work space. My only complaint is the stand, it lets the monitor wobble a little more than I would like, but that's just nitpicking. 4 1/2 Eggs for me.
Quiet and FAST
Pros: Super quiet and run EXTREMELY cool. Been pushing it on the The Witcher 3 a lot already.
Cons: NONE
Overall Review: Buy it now.