Pros: 1500VA is about as large as you can in "consumer" gear LCD front panel more helpful than you might think, but can be turned off No fan (AFAICT)

Cons: Socket layout is poor

Overall Review: Bought this to replace an old 950VA APC unit that had served me well, but the second set of batteries in it had failed, and the fan had become the loudest thing in the room. We get outages here dozens of times a year, at anything from a couple of minutes to 6+ hours, so not having a UPS just isn't really an option. It's powering a small set of networking gear (modem, router, switch, NAS) and a fairly hungry gaming PC. Estimated runtime is about 70 mins under non-gaming load, which is more than enough to shut everything down if the PC's in use. What's more interesting is the runtime for just the networking gear, if the PC's off or asleep: about 4 hours. I'd still like more of course, but that's enough to give me a good chance of not having anything die while I'm out or asleep. The panel is very useful for checking the state of things without needing to run yet another piece of badly-written bloatware, though obviously you need the software if you want automatic shutdown. The socket layout on the back is, unfortunately, simple and bad. Although 2 sockets are spaced for power bricks, all the powered sockets are one on side, so if you have just a couple of bricks with the power coming out to the side (and you inevitably will have at least one) you'll end up with maybe 4 usable outlets, and not have enough to actually power everything. A checkerboard is probably too hard to pull off, but an L shape isn't and would be worth considering. Realistically, if you're powering more than at most 1 or 2 wall-wart items with this, you'll need to put them all on a power strip instead and connect that. I have to add a comment about USB because someone made the suggestion that the data line be USB-C or wifi instead, and I thought other non-technical people might somehow also think that wasn't a terrible idea. USB-C is for power and speed, neither of which this needs at all, so wasting one of those "valuable" ports on something like this is not what you want to do. wifi is an even worse idea. Both of them also massively increase the cost of a unit.

Pros: Much better for an HTPC or casual use than a hard drive, good value.

Cons: I've bought two of these in the last few months: one for an HTPC, and one for a low-power system, both very light use. One of the drives failed a couple of weeks ago with no warning, completely: as in the drive is no longer even BIOS-recognised by either that machine or my desktop. This is a much worse scenario than a DOA drive, but also much harder to test for, so I'm not going to slam Mushkin for it. We'll see how the RMA process goes.

Pros: * Performance is absolutely excellent. * Enclosure would be attractive if not for the large obnoxious company logo on it.

Cons: * Most importantly, the "drive sleep" doesn't work. Because of that, even if the drive is only being used occasionally it's *constantly* spinning, generating a hum that resounds through the case and also heating the case and slowly cooking the drive. * As others have said, the permanent shutoff in response to power loss is utterly braindead.

Overall Review: I bought this to provide high-capacity storage to a Pi running as a NAS. I knew about the power loss handling, and while that's too stupid for words it's not really a problem for this usage, so I'm not docking it any eggs for that. The performance is *superb* - I have an old WD Black HDD in it, and the enclosure delivered average reads of 160+ MB/s with peaks touching 200, and average writes ~140 MB/s with peaks ~175. Genuinely impressive. However, the bridge chip is clearly failing to suspend the drive when it's idle, and since this is a high-performance drive that means it's just sitting there spinning at 7200RPM 24x7. As a result the enclosure also stays very warm even when the drive hasn't been used for hours. (And obviously, it's also wasting several KWh of electricity each month as a result). The hum from that constant rotation is readily audible anywhere in the room, since the enclosure has literally no vibration dampening except for a 1" pad (which is placed on the opposite face to the connectors, and thus minimally useful for that anyway). The SATA connector itself is taking most of the stress from the drive's weight, which is not a great idea since a 3.5" HDD is far from lightweight, but is probably just about okay. The bridge chip is also blocking explicit suspend commands from getting to the drive, so you can't even work around the power management problems that way - though doing so would be impractical anyway, other than possibly overnight. So, basically this is great if you want to have fast high-capacity external storage for a few hours a day, and are willing and able to *physically cut the power to the drive* when you aren't using it. It would also be fine if you were using it for a system that was active 24x7, since the drive will be anyway. For any other scenario though, it's a very poor choice. You will literally be more than halving the lifetime of the drive, wasting electricity, and - if you're in the same room as it - slowly being driven mad by the resultant humming. If not for the lack of care w.r.t power management this would be great. But since that's as bad as it is, this is unfortunately only barely adequate at best.

Pros: * Tracking is great, on almost anything* Batteries last forever

Cons: * Unifying receiver has no Linux support. DO YOUR JOB, Logitech.* Reception can be iffy without wide clear LOS* Might be too large for petite women* Might be too heavy for twitch games

Overall Review: I just keep buying these for every machine: PC, laptop, HTPC, as well as buying them for machines I build for friends / family. There's just nothing even half as good overall.The only thing to be aware of is that this uses real AAs, not a custom rechargeable the size of a penny. The means the batteries last years rather than hours, but it does add a LOT of weight. For me, that beats having to constantly plug it back in to recharge, but if I was still playing competitive FPSs this would be much too heavy for a high-sens playstyle.

Pros: It's MX4 - a slightly-above-average paste, perfectly adequate for all "normal" use cases, and I mean that in a positive sense. If you're attempting XOC you should know enough not to be using mid-grades already. If you're not, this is what you want.

Overall Review: @Robert: 4g IS a LOT of paste. If you think otherwise, you're either using WAY too much of it or you're building 8 machines at a time! :) Check GamersNexus or other competent tech sites (Linus, Jayz2cents, i.e. *not* The Verge etc) on YouTube for video assistance.

Pros: Fan shipped promptly. Technically works. Better raw thermals than the Intel HSF. Proper mounting system.

Cons: Loud at its lowest speed: louder than the Intel HSF it replaced was at *maximum*. DEAFENING at full speed. (And I'm not joking: it took half an hour for my ears to recover).

Overall Review: Bought to replace an Intel HSF that was failing. 84W CPU and mATX mobo&case made a tower overkill and impractical. Chosen predominantly for having a proper mounting system, as the machine gets moved every once in a while and pushpin mounts are too unreliable. But it's SO LOUD. Even if this is going in a server in a dediacted room, it would STILL be too loud. For a desktop machine, it was beyond intolerable. I forced it down to 25% in BIOS (though it actually runs at 50% minimum) and it's okay there - not great, but okay - but haven't dared stress the machine since out of fear of that noise. Fan speed also out of spec even for the standard 10% we give fans, at +12%, though I'm sure that would have been fine if the fan wasn't defective. Recommended: No. The Intel HSF is the lowest bar there is, and this was even worse than that. :( Mine was obviously a dud, since even a no-name Chinese brand wouldn't sell something this bad deliberately, but yours may well be too. Have contacted Thermaltake for an RMA: we'll see what happens. But this is a CPU fan: it's not like it's an optional component. So unless they cross-ship, I'm looking at well over a week either without a machine or with the failing Intel fan back in. (To say nothing of all the hours wasted removing and installing fans). -- Following up: as stated, I contacted the seller 22 Nov 19, 10:50am to get it replaced. That's 10 days now, with no response at all.