Pros: 1. Easy out of the box setup 2. Great processor support 3. ECC DIMM support 4. True Quad PICIE 16x slots 5. Great UEFI BIOS 6. Easy BIOS flash from the BIOS

Cons: 1. Poor RAID support with built in SATA If I run a RAID set I will use a LSI RAID controller anyway. My only problem was when I went to flash the BIOS I was mislead by the negative reports of how difficult it was to flash along with Asus's own poor documentation. The auto flash button did not work for me either.

Overall Review: I have had this board up and running for over 7 months. I was not an Asus fan when I purchased it but it was the only board that met all my requirements at the time. I guess you could say I am a convert now to Asus. It was easy to setup with my hexa-core i7 processor, 4 8gb sticks of RAM and Samsung EVO 256gb SSD. It has been running great ever since with Win 8 and now 8.1. I was fooled into thinking that updating the BIOS was a problem by negative reviews and Asus's own poor documentation. All I had to do was put the .cap file on a memory stick and go into the BIOS and choose to flash it from the EZ-Flash utility (advanced mode) in the BIOS interface itself. I did rename the file to P9X79EWS.cap but I don't know if that was even necessary as I had performed this step based on negative reviews prior to finding the simple way to perform the flash. BIOS flashed without incident and showed the progress on reboot. All is well and the BIOS flash, combined with turning off all the IPV6 settings for the TOE NIC, fixed my issues with Win 8 and sleep mode.

Pros: Large amount of storage, reasonably fast and cool running.

Cons: Well one out of two just failed after about 9 months. We will see how the RMA process goes. This is my second WD drive to fail recently. I have tons of media saved to the 3tb version of this drive as well, so I hope this is not indicitive of their overall quality.

Overall Review: I just had a 640gb Black series go bad after about a year and half and WD replaced it with a Blue series drive, making me not too happy. I will report back with the results of my RMA. Always backup all your data, I know I do!

Pros: I have had this board up and running with 16gb RAM, an Intel Q9650 proc, dual 150gb raptor drives in RAID 0 for the boot drive and dual 9600GT video cards running 3 monitors for over 6 years now. Great setup and it keeps on running strong. Running Windows 7.

Cons: None

Overall Review: I wish I my newer rig was this stable, maybe it's Windows 8.1, who knows.

Pros: Successfully upgraded the RAM today from 4gb to 8gb. I just replaced the one 4gb DIMM with an 8gb DIMM. There are two slots so I could go to 16gb. Not sure if I need that in a laptop and since performance is better with matched DIMMs I will probably stick with the 8gb for now. I would recommend caution opening up the back. You need a small Phillips with a very fine point. Also be careful when you take off the back, the clips that hold it on the hinge side are very small and delicate plastic. Also, be sure and disconnect the battery before performing the memory upgrade. There is actually a diagram showing how to do this inside by the battery. It's easy to find good instructions how to do this with a little googling. I am contemplating upgrading the SSD next with a larger 256gb mSATA SSD from Crucial. That will take a bit more time so it might have to wait a while

Cons: No cons, upgrading the memory was easy.

Pros: This card has been running a 9.2TB array with 7 WD RE4-GP 2TB drives (RAID 5 with a hot spare). for over a year now with not a single hiccup. Drivers and management utility have been great on W2k8 R2. It is perfect for backing up my systems and keeping a copy of all my encoded movies. Plus, it runs nice and cool.

Cons: None

Overall Review: It may not be as fast as its more robust siblings but it is fine for what I need and it runs so nice and cool. Heat is a real problem these days so lower heat and less power usage was one of my main considerations for this server.

Pros: Excellent sound quality, easy to set up and use, looks great in my entertainment center, awesome features for the price. I Love the onscreen GUI and volume control overlay. It was a cinch to hook this up to my Plasm TV, HTPC< DVR and PS3. I love the simplicity of just playing pandora over the reciever. The pass through for sound from all the inputs is awesome. I can easily loop movies on my HTPC at night with the sound going directly to the TV.

Cons: There really are no cons to speak of. I guess one minor nit might be the fact that I don't see a way to order Pandora stations alphabetically like I can on the internet UI for Pandora, but that is really a very minor inconvenience.

Overall Review: This unit is a million times better than my previous unit that I paid considerably more for. So as not to bad mouth the other brand, it will remain unnamed, suffice it to say the brand name rhymes with lenon. My previous resiver never sounded nearly as good, was way more difficult to configure and use and dies after just two years of not very hard use.