Joined on 08/26/01
It's a beast
Pros: I bought the 8350 to replace my phenom 920. Using a gigabyte mobo with 16 G of ram running linux. Using KVM to run virtual machines and this chip is a beast. I find that its not so much a memory limitation but a CPU limiataion. I had 8 VM's running and the CPU wasn't even breaking a sweat. To compare, I had a 3G 2 core AMD regor chip doing the same but the CPU would saturate with just 2 VM's running. Very happy. Cheaper than an intel solution (though Intel would have been nice) and more than meets my expectations. Great chip , great price and great performance. Keep in mind that I am not a gamer...not sure how well it perform in that regard.
Cons: none
Overall Review: Runs hot? This chip idles at 37 degrees. I noticed the OS throttles the CPU which helps to keep it cool. But even with 8 VM's running I only hit 45 degrees. I am using a cooler master 212 which is a behemoth of a cooler. The stock cooler looked weak to me but probably would work fine...
ok case
Pros: low price, comes with a fan.
Cons: I only gave it 3 eggs mostly because I installed a full sized ATX mobo. Its a tight fit. It would be much nicer if I used a mini or micro motherboard so keep that in mind if you get this case. As it is I could only use one of the 3.5 bays for a hard drive. One is unusable as there is not enough room for the power and sata connector as it will rub up against the mobo. I got around this by putting the drive in a 5.25 cage. It was a pain to route the cables from the power supply too. But only because the ATX motherboard pretty much fills the case.
Overall Review: Use a micro ATX or mini ITX and you will have enough room. A full size mobo makes for a tight fit. Otherwise this case is just OK.
linux and IOMMU
Pros: Works fine with linux mint 15 64 bit except for one small problem.
Cons: I paired this mobo with a FX8350 with 2x8 stick of RAM. The Bios is P1.70 and see's both sticks. I added GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="iommu=pt iommu=1" to grub. Ran this: check-my-memory.py - version: SJ 2013-02-22 OK, you're root ANALYSIS: Total of physical memory modules found 16384 MB in 2 memory module(s) BIOS offers 8147 MB as usable Memory seen by OS 7879 MB BIOS version 10/12/2012 CPU is PAE enabled CPU is x86_64 64-bit enabled OS is x86_64 64-bit SUMMARY: Memory difference between DIMM hardware and BIOS offering 8237 MB Memory difference between BIOS offering and memory seen by OS 268 MB Memory difference between DIMM hardware and memory seen by OS 8505 MB ADVICE: Your BIOS is not offering all of your physical memory. Try to update your BIOS, and/or enable 'memory hole remapping / hoisting' in your BIOS to get more usable memory Finally: show more detailed memory info from lshw. This can take up to 30 seconds ... description: System Memory size: 16GiB description: DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 667 MHz (1.5 ns) size: 8GiB description: DIMM Synchronous [empty] description: DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 667 MHz (1.5 ns) size: 8GiB description: DIMM Synchronous [empty] Finished And than ran this: dmesg |grep AMD-V [ 1.096361] AMD-Vi: Found IOMMU at 0000:00:00.2 cap 0x40 [ 1.096364] AMD-Vi: Interrupt remapping enabled [ 1.096600] AMD-Vi: Initialized for Passthrough Mode Linux Mint still only sees 8G of ram. I would like to see if there is a solution to this before I have to RMA the board.
Overall Review: If it wasn't for the memory issue I would give the board 5 stars.
very nice
Pros: Small, quiet, runs Freenas 8. Great value.
Cons: None that I can think of.
Overall Review: I am pleasantly surprised at the overall performance of this box. Freenas 8 with ZFS is awesome. I like how I can boot of an USB drive and the USB drive can be installed internally. I ditched the 1G of ram that came with and installed 8G (ZFS likes ram). The 250G drive it came with is useless, replaced it with 3 2T 5400rpm drives.
works for me
Pros: small form factor. has two NIC interfaces runs very well with linux
Cons: kind of pricey, but I wanted two ethernet interfaces.
Overall Review: using it with pfsense with 512M of ram. Added another NIC for the DMZ, works fine. Its been running since September without a reboot so I think the hardware is pretty stable. Will be putting clearos on it next to see how that works out.
not as small as I thought
Pros: nicely made. two large fans up front, 80 mm venting the hard drives. motherboard tray is a plus.
Cons: You can get the hard drives in there with straight sata, but you have to bend them. 90 degree sata would be better though. Lian Li should have provided them or redesigned the case to accomodate straight sata cables.
Overall Review: overall, I am happy with the case. It is very quiet, at first I thought the fans weren't running. Its that quiet.
Great computer chair
Very well made, and very comfortable. Highly recommend this chair : )