Pros: Has a 5 year warranty (NewEgg says 3 years, but the manufacturer's product page says 5 years) comes with a spacer needed for some laptops and a bracket to fit it in a 3.5" drive bay

Cons: No problems so far

Pros: USB 1.1 works

Cons: ALi chipset has only poor quality drivers available. Requires compex procedure to get ALi USB 2 driver installed instead of Microsoft driver, but neither ALi or Microsoft driver works right at USB 2 speeds. Under Linux there are problems too: neither the USB 2 or the FireWire ports would work corectly. ALi chipset support in Linux is also poor.

Overall Review: Forget this unit or any of the other cheapies that have an ALi chipset.

Pros: Looks nice, good build quality. It looks like it would work fine if it would fit.

Cons: Doesn't fit on a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 if all four memory slots are in use. If it could be turned 90 degrees, like when used on Intel CPUs, it would fit fine, but there is only one orientation allowed with an AMD CPU and it puts the fins right into the memory slots.

Overall Review: The fins on this cooler are tall, so unless you have a very wide case you won't be able to have a fan mounted on the case side right above the CPU and also have this cooler fit.

Pros: It's a CPU, it works as advertised. Anything less and it would be defective and have to be returned.

Cons: The fan is only 80x10mm and noisy if the CPU is doing anything more than idling. So replace the heatsink/fan you say? I bought this boxed CPU because of the 3 year warranty, but the fine print on the package insert says "Use _only_ the heatsink/fan provided. Use of any other heatsink/fan will void the warranty." This restriction is repeated a couple more times in the actual warranty paragraphs. So I can have decent, quiet cooling or a warranty, but not both, and I already paid for the warranty. I swear AMD, if this thing fries within 3 years it will always, always, have had your supplied heatsink/fan on it.

Pros: Large enough for full ATX mb and 8x3.5" drives, plus 2x5.25" bays. Top front power switch, headphone and mic jacks, 2x USB 2 jacks, and eSATA jack are easy to reach if the case is on the floor. Bottom-mounted PS has removable screen over the bottom intake and PS airflow doesn't mix with rest of case. Side panels, top, and inside of front door lined with foam rubber to dampen sound reflections. Front door has magnetic latch.

Cons: No USB 3 or 1394a or audio line-in jacks, no reset button and no HD indicator LED on top front panel. Expansion cards do not fit well because rear of case is a little too far away from MB. Bottom fan location is unusable with all but the shortest power supplies. Side panels rattle unless one pries up some of the fingers along the edges. My left side panel, the one with a fan location, was bowed; it either pops in or out, and in practice ends up bowed in. 3.5" HDDs mount to metal trays with rubber grommet isolation, but 2.5" drives can only mount directly to the tray, and the trays themselves can rattle in their cage. Must have both side panels off to install drives. Front fan "filters" are merely coarse screens, and four screws must come out to remove filters. Case has 7 possible fan locations, comes with 2 fans, but only blocks off 3 of the unused locations, leaving 2 fan locations to be blocked or filled with a fan. Not possible to move front door hinge from left side to right.

Overall Review: Is this a quiet case? A 7 fan gamer case? It can't be both but it tries. If you want a gamer case with a bunch of fans spinning away there are better and prettier choices. As a quiet case it is a good start, but needs to have the unused fan locations and some gratuitous ventilation holes blocked in order to control airflow. With just a few extra touches this would be a great quiet case.

Pros: Lots of SATA ports, lots of USB ports, TI firewire, BIOS has lots of tweakability if one is into that. Comes with 80 wire PATA (IDE) cable and two locking SATA cables, one with a right-angle end. Lots of room around the CPU for cooler clearance. Manual clearly documents every connection and covers every BIOS feature.

Cons: Received version 1.0 motherboard, yet version 1.1 is out (though I can't what the difference is).

Overall Review: I installed Ubuntu Studio 9.10 and everything worked correctly. I like that fact that the BIOS includes an update method that does not rely on having Windows installed. I am using this to send audio and video through HDMI to a 50" plasma screen and it looks and sounds great.

Ordered one small item, was provided with a non-working tracking number. After 3 weeks I inquired about the tracking number and whether the item had been shipped. Baaqii responded that the item had been "lost" and asked if I wanted a replacement or a refund. I requested a replacement and the new tracking number. Never heard from them again, even after another query a week later. After 30 days I complained to Newegg and before anything could happen the item arrived in the mail. So in the end Baaqii did as promised but the lack of communication caused needless messing around.