Joined on 11/26/10
it works, but...
Pros: Fast, no coil whine, very quiet, 61C after 15 minutes of Furmark, and still quiet. Haven't tried with OC. No complaints about the noise or glitches after a week of ownership.
Cons: - do yourself a favor before buying, read up on 2x8 pin PCIe power. If you have a 1-2 yr old PSU, you may simply not have the connectors to power this card! Seriously, read up or you may end up buying a new PSU or ordering extra cables online. - 2 or maybe 2.5 slot card. Fitting it into a mid-tower case with bottom mounted PSU was not easy (HAF 912) - doesn't blow the hot air out, so it may increase the temperature inside your case
Overall Review: This is the fastest single chip videocard I've ever touched. It is ridiculously fast! However... if you try to program it yourself (shaders or OpenCL), expect to reinstall the drivers and read the forums ad infinitum. You'll find that AMD's drivers, tools, docs, and compilers leave a lot to be desired. Not a problem for most people, but it makes me think that people are losing a few FPS while gaming because game developers couldn't figure out how to use this hardware. This said, after I managed to connect all the cables and figure out the power and the driver issues, everything I throw at it (Furmark, Civ 5, SC II) runs great, no issues whatsoever. Cool, quiet, no coil whine, superfast!!! Yet, if you want the peace of mind, go with the other company. If you enjoy messing around with computer hardware, get this one.
Pros: I love my computer being nearly silent, and this seemed to be the only CPU cooler that is both quiet and cools well enough. I can attest to the fact that Noctua delivers. I've got, like, 64C or something with prime95, and it is whisper quiet. Now I'm in love Noctua coolers and fans. I don't think I've ever seen anything better.
Cons: The only cons are that it is bulky, so you can't install high-profile RAM with it, and that it is hard to clean the fan that's stuck in the middle, but oh well, given that it cools better than my girlfriend's water cooler and it is much quieter, it really isn't a problem that I care about.
nice case
Pros: Looks good Quiet Lots of space inside A nice case for cable management
Cons: Here's why I took off an egg. You're gonna have to remove the front cover if you want to install a DVD drive, and the top cover if you want to install a fan on top. To say that these covers are excruciatingly hard to remove is to say nothing. It is nearly impossible to remove them. NZXT clearly didn't put any thought whatsoever into designing these specific parts of the case. To be fair, maybe it is just my luck and my cases are somehow damaged, but I've got two of these, so it seems to be a design flaw rather than random bad luck.
Fine for Windows, tricky with Linux
Pros: - Works just fine with Windows 7, no complaints (read the Cons if you're on Linux). - The connectors seem to be nicely laid-out for cable management. - This was one of the easiest boards to install that I've ever seen. - Don't read too much into my Linux-related cons below, none of this happens if you're on Windows.
Cons: As of 9/23/2013... There's a ton of problems with the board that you'll see if you're on Linux for whatever reason, including but not limited to the following - SATA ports are flimsy, so you may get lots of ATA errors and hardware resets (windows hides these, but silently slows down if it happens); - the BIOS is one of the most counter-intuitive things I've ever seen, so expect to put a little effort into finding things in there; - SATA ports on the board get in the way of installing large graphics cards (SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 7970 was tricky to install); - on-board HDMI Audio is not yet supported by most distros (though I've read on the news that Intel is working on it); - ASMedia SATA controller just doesn't work with most distros; try not to plug anything into these; - something is wrong with CPU C States support, at least with Haswell 4771. Not sure what exactly yet, but if it goes into a power-saving mode, it may not come back; Basically, either you need a very fresh kernel (try arch, gentoo, etc.), or it may not work (ubuntu, centos, etc.) At least, not out of the box. None of this is the manufacturer's fault, since I guess it is a product for Windows, and I had no problems there (other than the SATA slowdown and my 7970 card not fitting in/scratching SATA ports due to the layout).
Overall Review: If you enjoy messing with computer hardware, you should totally get this motherboard. If you don't care about any of this and just want something that works, look elsewhere. I will recommend this board to friends who run Windows. The rest of you, have fun! Funny, but I will not be returning or replacing this product, even given the flimsiness of the SATA ports and cables. I've also learned so much about computer hardware trying to get it to work that I actually have to thank ASRock for it! (btw, I'm not being sarcastic at all.)
Get it.
Pros: I hope this helps you if you're not a gamer, but an office worker or a programmer like me. If you're used to standard dell/hp/other office mine and looking for a replacement, buy this one. - It is about the same weight and size as your standard office mouse, so you and everyone else will feel right at home with it - the tracking is excellent; it works on a mouse pad (Qck Steel or a noname $1 one), desk, on a magazine, etc. - the coating on the top feels like some sort of rubber, pleasant to touch - the precision/polling rate is way beyond anything you're gonna need for office applications, but it feels very nice; I'm making less pointing errors and my wrist is less tired (with claw grip) Recently, I went through a pile of mice from all kinds of vendors (apple/dell/hp/roccat and what not), and I can finally say that I found the mouse that's pretty much everything that I and all my co-workers need. Work is pleasant again. Thanks, Razer!
Cons: - the drivers; just forget it, this is the worst mouse driver I've ever seen - I've been getting 404s trying to download it, some cloud service is asking for your e-mail before you install it, etc. - adjusting the sensitivity in Win7 x64's settings does not work until you reboot - changing the switches at the bottom causes some reinitialization or something, so it takes about half a second for the mouse to adjust; still five eggs because you'll never ever have to do it anyways
Overall Review: It is not that expensive to throw it away if you don't like it, so, why not try it? If you have small hands, work at the office all day, and play WoW/SC2 occasionally, give it a shot.
it just works
Pros: reasonably easy to install, relatively inexpensive, and it just works
Cons: - the BIOS seems to recognize my 9-9-9-xxx memory as 7-7-7-xxx memory (which may or may not be a bad thing, since it works just fine) - I can't figure out why my rear audio connections do not work
Overall Review: I hope this helps someone to make their choice. I am not a PC-hardware pro, but more of a mathematician. I wanted a new i7 computer to replace my old Core 2 Quad for large matrix calculations, but was worried about buying something that will not work due to some incompatibility with something, or end up being too hard to install. This motherboard turned out to be easy to install, everything worked right out of the box, and the performance (together with i7-950) is so far excellent. So, if you're like me, and are worried about your lack of computer skills when putting together a new computer, I would recommend this motherboard. 1 - it worked for me (but your mileage may vary), 2 - it won't be outdated right away, so you can add more stuff to your PC later, and 3 - if it doesn't work, you've just spent $200, not $500, which makes me feel even better about this product. (p.s. - the BIOS settings look like this MB was made for overclocking, but I haven't tried)