Joined on 01/08/13
Solid 2U case at a great price
Pros: This is a very solid case. I am using a number of these for a small renderfarm. Once I figured them out, I found them easy to work with. Airflow is good.
Cons: a bit ugly, if that matters to you. The drive bays are awkward. I'm using M.2 drives so this is not an issue for me.
Overall Review: You need a PSU with front to back airflow (IE Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D Green 380W). Swap out the cheap fans for nice quiet ones like the Noctua 80mm fans. The most difficult thing about building in this form factor is cooling. I went through a number of options and settled on the BeQuiet Shadowrock LP and swapped out the for a slim 15mm deep fan.
Perfect case for my use - I now have three of them
Pros: - spacious - very easy to work with - all the drive bays are easily removable - good airflow - looks great - I dig it
Cons: - I would love it if there were space for another front mounted fan.
Overall Review: I'm a media pro and have a small render farm in my studio. I had been using Norco cases up to this point. They're not available any longer, so I ordered this case. It was very easy to work with, has tons of room and looks great. All the standoffs fit well. I will order again when I do my next build. EDIT: I now have 3 of these now and absolutely love them. They are very easy to work with, there is zero weirdness, and there is just tons of space if you're using ATX or mATX boards. Airflow is great. I just moved a PC from a mini tower to this case and my temps dropped by 20 degrees (** I use the Nocuta U9S in this case which is a step up from the L12S) I will continue to use this case for new installs moving forward.
Good Motherboard - PCI Lanes Bifrucation is unclear
Pros: - Nice mATX motherboard for the price. - Bios is well laid out and easy to use
Cons: - very difficult to figure out how the PCI bus is bifrucated. It SEEMS the first M.2 slot shares width with the first PCI slot. The second and third M.2 slots seem to be chipset based. I am using two m.2 drives now and am getting x16 in pcie slot 1 and x4 in the other pci x16 slot. - The second x16 pci slot is electrically an x4 slot.
Overall Review: I like Asus motherboards and this on is no exception. It is very economical and is running perfectly for my use-case. I do wish that they were more clear about how the PCI bus badwidth is distributed.
Great features, solid board
Pros: Onboard 10gigE, Thunderbolt.
Cons: Required bios flash to work with my ram
Overall Review: I am using this in a video production machine for cg, editing and colour correction. I chose this board for the on board 10gigE, Thunderbolt and M.2 slots. I wanted to be able to run my GPU at full 16x without PCIe bifurcation. When I initially built the machine, it would not post. After some research, I learned that it required a bios update in order to use crucial brand ram. Asus makes bios flashing super easy, and once this was done, everything worked well. I did initially run this with XMP. It ran fine with 128gb ram (4 sticks). I did get a BSD at one point and have since turned XMP off along with asus's "enhancements" and it has been running solidly for a couple weeks now. The 10gigE works great with my SAN - solid 800mb/s down and 400mb/s up. (NAS is a raid 1 so writes are slower) The onboard thunderbolt allows me to run an sdi video interface without tying up PCI lanes. It has 4 m.2 slots which operate at full speed and don't share bandwidth with the PCI e slot lanes. I'm getting 5000mb/s out of all of them. It's a good board and a step up from my old 9900k machine.
Fast, very good value drive
Pros: - its fast - its very reasonably priced - i understand that this drive is best with shorter queues, but looking a this m.2 drive vs my 1tb Intel 750 on a u.2 interface, the HP is about 10-40% faster using CrystalDiskMark 6.
Cons: - none at this point. I cannot vouch for the longevity of this drive but, a few days in, I am impressed.
Overall Review: - I would recommend this drive. I'm using it as a system drive and plan on purchasing another for fast media storage. I work in video and use NVMe to house conformed media for colour correction - usually as DPX files so speed is important.
Good cooler, needs slim fan to fit in low profile case
Pros: Nice cooler, easy to install, keeps things cool.
Cons: The supplied fan is 25mm thick. In order to fit in a slim case (IE 2U rack case), you need a 15mm fan. REVISION: I have actually found that, when push comes to shove, this cooler does not work well in a low profile case. I have replaced these with the big shunkens.
Long shipping period.
It took quite some time for the item to arrive - over three weeks. I ended up buying another one from another vendor and it shipped in a day. Small quibble, but the color of the hub was not black as ordered, it was aluminum.