Pros: The card is fast and runs cool under load (never above 70 C with a slightly tweaked fan curve). eVGA's included software is very intuitive and useful for tweaking the video card to you preferences. I have an older system (i7 920 overclocked to 3.8 Ghz), and bought this to replace two 560ti cards in SLI. I can now run Battlefield 3 on Ultra (maxed out everything - 1920 x 1080 on a 55" LED HDTV) with the frame rate never dipping below 45 fps. My 560ti cards could never handle the Ultra setting at a playable level.

Cons: I suppose price may be a con, but it's the top of the line (as of this review), so I would expect it to be a bit pricey. I have no regrets with purchasing this card. Also, the card can get a little on the warm side on the stock fan curve. It doesn't overheat, but it does get near the 80 C mark in my Coolermaster 932 HAF case. A simple tweak of the fan curve using eVGA's excellent Precision software will keep the card running nice and cool. This does make the fan a bit loud under load, whereas the stock fan curve kept it relatively quiet.

Overall Review: I was surprised at how much smoother this made all my games run compared to my 560ti SLI setup. I was not absolutely sure that the 680 would give me the bump in performance I was looking for, but it certainly did. I am very happy with this purchase.

Pros: One (out of five) that I got worked nicely and had the features it was supposed to have with a nice picture.

Cons: The other four had a horrible, washed out picture with terrible contrast and laughable black levels. This did not change through viewing angle, a firmware update, or any amount of settings tweaking or software tweaking. Samsung says that these monitors have the Magic Angle feature (I use this feature at work on the Samsung monitors there), but it seems that they actually do not any longer. The one (out of five) that did have the feature was manufactured a few months before the other four.

Overall Review: I recently purchased three of these monitors on sale from my local store. Of the three, only one actually had the Magic Angle feature touted on the Samsung website for these monitors. Samsung support was no help, and actually tried to convince me that the monitor didn't "need" the Magic Angle feature and that their website did not actually say that the monitors have the feature. It's clear to me that the Samsung website for the S24B300EL states the following at the top of the page: "24" Class LED Monitor with MagicAngle". The feature is again mentioned in the "Specs" section of the webpage. The missing Magic Angle feature would not have been such a big deal had the two monitors without it matched the performance of the one that did, but this wasn't so. The two monitors without Magic Angle had a washed out picture with almost unreadable on-screen text. Contrast was non-existent, and the black levels were laughable. No change in viewing angle, software adjustment, firmware update, or settings configuration could save the monitors from the horrible display. The story gets worse when after I exchanged the two monitors lacking Magic Angle with two other S24B300ELs at the store. The new monitors suffered from the same terrible picture quality and lack of Magic Angle as those that were exchanged. Samsung support was again no help, and the final decision to return all three monitors to the store was made. Upon returning the monitors, the returns supervisor was on hand and noticed that the two monitors without the Magic Angle feature had some marks of bad workmanship (badly assembled connectors and skewed Serial Number tags) that the monitor that did feature Magic Angle did not. My wife and I suddenly found ourselves as suspects of retail fraud as the store supervisor thought the we had counter-fitted the two horrible monitors. It was only after the supervisor opened another monitor from their stock and saw the same signs of bad workmanship that he absolved us of retail fraud and allowed our refund. That's an hour of our lives, full of frustration and worry, that we will never have back. Ultimately, I think that Samsung must have changed the design of this monitor as some point down the line. The monitor that worked well had a manufacture date of July 2012, while the other four horrible monitors were manufactured in October and November 2012. I guess I just pulled a needle out the haystack in getting the good monitor when I picked up the original three. This probably was once a good monitor, as evidenced by the one good one that I did get (out of five), but now they are terrible monitors with terrible workmanship and an absolutely unacceptable picture. Buy at you own risk, and don't expect Samsung to be any help.

Pros: The motherboard looks sleek. I really like the red/black color scheme. There are nice, illuminated power and reset buttons conveniently located near the RAM slots. Also included is an lighted "clear CMOS" button on the back of the board for easy access through the case when the board is mounted. The motherboard can run two PCI 2.0 slots at 16x simultaneously...sweet.

Cons: I've been through two of these boards now, both of them with the same deal-breaking issue. The boards would not post after changing ANY setting(s) in the BIOS. I verified that the issues were not caused by my components in that they came out of working Gigabyte motherboard setup. They worked fine again in the Gigabyte board after the RMAs (more on this in "Other Thoughts")

Overall Review: This board ended up wasting about 3 weeks of my time after two proved to be defective. Newegg was great with the RMAs and waived the restocking fee and even gave me a free UPS label to send the second board back for a refund. Asus support did answer the phone consistently after waiting only about five minutes on average. They quickly identified the issue to be irreparable and recommended RMA. I ended up with an MSI Big Bang Xpower board and everything is working great with a decent overclock on an i7 920 (2.67 to 3.8). I liked my Gigabyte board, but I needed more room from the PCI 2.0 slots for an extra video card. That board put the two cards right on top of one another, causing heating issues.

Pros: I bought this card so that I could connect my home theater PC audio to my home theater receiver with just an optical audio cable (as can be done with gaming consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PS3). To that end, mission accomplished. I get digital surround sound from my home theater PC through my 5.1 home theater audio system. Excellent. The card was a great deal through Newegg's daily Shell Shocker and provides much better, clearer and more powerful audio than my onboard audio could ever dream. My games sound great through this card.

Cons: The software that drives this card is a bit of a pain. While the card can (and does) take audio signals from sources such as games and encodes them to a digital signal (such as Dolby Digital 5.1), I had to dig through the software options to enable the functionality. Further, the software is laggy and takes a while to respond to changes (you click on a setting, it chugs for a few seconds until it finally complies). Also, I dislike that Creative went with the multi-use connector for the optical out. The connector does have the capability to accept an RCA cable or an optical cable, but the RCA capability forces the use of a mini optical cable or adapter to get the optical functionality. Those cable have become fairly uncommon and somewhat difficult to find (at retail stores, anyway).

Overall Review: If you plan on connecting this card to your home theater PC, you may want to pick up some mini optical to standard optical adapters as the cables that come with the card are only about 4 ft long. Also, don't expect to just install the card and have it outputting digital sound through the optical out. That function must be enabled through the software, which really isn't a big deal. Once it's all set up, though, the card is great other than it's laggy software.

Pros: I've owned this keyboard for about 3 months now and can easily say that it's the best I've ever owned. Each key press provides audible, tactile feedback that simply feels great. The backlit keys perform as expected, allowing me to find keys in my often dark home theater. The keyboard has a sleek, glossy (fingerprint magnet) look with a heavy, sturdy feel to it. I like that there is a fully powered USB pass-through on the side of the keyboard as it provides a quick means to plug in a flash drive or other USB device with full functionality. While I won't say that the keyboard has entirely changed the way I play games and that I'm now "pwning N00bs left and right" I will say that my typing is faster and easily more accurate. After using this keyboard, it has become absolute torture to use the spongy Dell keyboard provided to me at work.

Cons: This thing is a bit pricey for a keyboard, but hey, it's mechanical and backlit. Also, the secondary function is not backlit on some of the keys.

Overall Review: I have had no trouble with the font type on this keyboard as other users have. The font is a bit different, but it has never caused be any problems or aggravation. Also, the key spacing is quite comfortable to me, but some have had issues with this. I have smaller hands, so I can't comment on how this may be to someone with larger hands. I can say that my larger-handed friends have not complained or had any problems using the keyboard. Further, I have not experienced the issue of a key sticking on another key when pressed. My experience has been that each key acts independently on each press every time. Finally, there is the issue with the loudness of the keyboard. The keyboard is mechanical meaning it has actual mechanical switches for each and every key on the keyboard. These types of switches inherently make and audible "click" when actuated, therefore making the keyboard "loud" when typing. This behavior should be expected when purchasing a mechanical keyboard.