Pros: -The X399 platform is balls. -Attractive packaged -Has essential features

Cons: -Socket mount was excruciatingly hard to get the screws aligned for securing the CPU (the screws are something like 0.5mm too short). However, it *does* work. One just has to apply considerable force to all sides of the CPU, *evenly* (sounds easier than it is).

Overall Review: Besides the screws, this worked as expected.

Pros: Price

Cons: Failure rate, speed. See other thoughts.

Overall Review: Failure report: 1st card: Shorted out a card reader within 1 day, returned. 2nd card: Loses an average of 2 pictures due to unrecoverable CF errors per shooting session. Which two depends on various factors, but failures are typically clustered together and typically consist of black bars in the lower half of the picture. Read speed according to HD tach is 9.7 MB/sec, which is less than 1/3 of rated speed. Access time is 1.5ms on average with spikes to 2-5 ms. Please take the opportunity cost of failed pictures into consideration before purchasing.

Pros: Power on hours currently at 59980; almost time for the 60k party. That's nearly 7 years of 24/7 uninterrupted service; three system rebuilds, including a SFF that was shipped around the US multiple times in less than ... ideal conditions. Probably the longest running piece of computer hardware that's currently running in my systems.

Cons: 640GB is getting a little small.

Overall Review: Western Digital and HGST are the companies to beat in mechanical storage.

Pros: Works out of the box in windows.

Cons: Somewhat loud, considering the rest of my system is dead silent.

Overall Review: Might cause excessive vibrations if set on top of your case, depending on your case. Place accordingly.

Pros: Works, cheap, from Newegg, etc. Have not tried really pushing any overclocks or timings.

Cons: The color choice might be unattractive.

Pros: Cools well, easy to use, great for batch applying dozens of cpu cores

Cons: Consistency makes it somewhat difficult to control precisely how much is applied

Overall Review: No difference between this and "the five", aside from consistency and non-conductivity.