Pros: - Good Performance for 5400 - Quiet - Cool - Flawless RAID Support - Price (~$80) is a steal for 2TB. Best $/GB ratio you can get is from this drive

Cons: - 5400 RPM. Use it as a backup/mass storage device. Not as an application drive. Get a WD Black, Spinpoint F3, or SSD for your main drive. - Samsung sold its HDD arm to Seagate, so these great drives won't last much longer :(.

Overall Review: Running a 6 drive HTPC/Home Server Backup solution. I use a SSD for the main drive and 5 HDDs for the data. I bought 2 of these around 8 months ago and they run great. SpeedFan shows great performance and no bad sectors/issues. When I heard Samsung was selling to Seagate I had to buy 3 more to replace my other drives and top off my system before they exist no more. The only drive I own that has ever shown warnings in SpeedFan is my Seagate (still works, but I don't trust it to use for critical storage anymore). Google did a study a long time ago with their data centers and they said all HDD manufacturers have the similar failure rates, but we all have our favorites and dislikes. I like Sammy/WD and despise Seagate, so this merger basically leaves me with WDs slightly overpriced drives. A little bit of a downer, but I stay loyal to those who have treated me well.

Pros: None.

Cons: My company uses these on some of their older laptops to give them multi display capability and I must say after 2 months of I literally just did my company a favor and threw it in the trash. For one, the video on the monitor it is supporting is beyond choppy. The only application I can run in it without annoying me is Outlook since I won't notice it taking an extra second when a new email comes in. However, the lag isn't that big of an issue. The issue belongs with the provided software and hotkeys which don't actually work. Well, they work but it is beyond terrible. For one, the hotkeys are hard coded in and even though there is a menu with a "disable" feature, it doesn't actually disable them. Because of this, I manage to hit one of them by mistake and all of my windows magically center, cascade, and maximize (not actually maximize but the program literally just re sizes the window) all onto one monitor. I then spend the next 5 minutes trying to put my windows back the right way.

Overall Review: I got in touch with Startech support about the hotkey issue. I eventually mapped them all to Shift+Esc since I don't use that key combination (and since the Disable button doesn't work) and they simply linked me to a new set of software that was supposed to fix it. Well it didn't actually fix it, it made it worse. In the new version, you can't even change the preset hotkeys (you can in the menus but it doesn't actually do anything about them). So now I have to restart my computer another 12x to revert to a "less broken" version.

Pros: Works great. Speeds using ATTO are ~400 R/W. Still playing with it and may need a firmware update (have been installing a lot of stuff though so I haven't gotten around to checking that. See Other Thoughts.

Cons: Included conversion bracket doesn't play well with the tool-less slots in my HAF-X (it works fine but the drive is pushed more towards the front as opposed to the back so it took a little bit of effort to get the SATA/power connector plugged in). Not sure if it's a bad sensor or if I just never noticed it on my old SSD, but Speccy shows it the other day at 125C which I find to be insanely hot (I didn't actually break open the case to see though).

Overall Review: I know a lot of people have had BSOD issues with the new SATA III SF controllers. I put a lot of time into waiting/researching to find a good SSD to finally invest in. I'm a Corsair fan but I always keep an open mind on these investments when even the hint of BSOD comes up in reviews/comments. I've read terrible things about the OCZ versions as well as very inconsistent cases with the Corsair GT's. I was going to get a Mushkin Chronos (supposedly it's speeds weren't great but the stability was superb which is what I wanted) but it sold out when I finally went to purchase and the Force 3 was my second option. I also know that supposedly there are issues with X58 as well as AMD chipsets so I'd figure I'd give as much info as possible to help out potential buyers. I'm using an ASUS M4A89TD PRO/USB3 board and it works great in AHCI mode (using SB850 controller). I actually installed it while in IDE mode and it didn't complain when I swapped.

Pros: I was looking for a basic budget case that came included with 2 fans (typical front intake rear exhaust) and this was one of the few for a solid price. On top of that, the insides are coated black which is really only done of more expensive cases and gives a great look to it (even the motherboard riser stubs are black!). The tool-less bays are quite nice and there are quite a lot of them for easy expansion.

Cons: - Top Mounted PSU

Overall Review: Can't really dock an egg for the PSU location, it is a budget case. Only other one I would recommend (if you don't mind the side bulge) is the XClio with the fan ports along the side for a little bit more.

Pros: Has alternating PCI Express Slots allowing 7 slot back panel expansion Tri-Fire. Has LED error codes to tell you what's wrong.

Cons: Bought 3: - 1st DOA - 2nd died within 2 days after plugging in a new power supply. - 3rd probably not far behind. LED Display sits at 00. Not even bios boot. Never capable of posting with all three PCI Express slots filled. BIOS has yet to be updated by ASRock.

Overall Review: I bought three of these boards since they are reasonably priced and have their PCI Express slots alternating with the last one 2 slots above the bottom of the board. This allows you to run a Tri-Fire setup on a cheaper 7 slot expansion back panel case as a large dual card won't come in contact with the bottom of the case. If you want something for this reason, pay the extra $10 and get the Gigabyte. I will still only stick with ASUS though for my personal boards.

Pros: Great little single core processor. The wattage is insanely low and if you're running a discrete graphics card (like you should) to offload video processing, these will literally soak up negligible power and produce minimal heat. Good alternative for those who want to save on an AMD board over an Intel board (Old 775 Celeron will run about the same price but the board will cost much more).

Cons: None that aren't obvious. It's a single core but it's the cheapest on the market when you take into consideration the motherboard cost.