Joined on 07/25/04
PERFECTION
Comments: Hotswapping SATA by hand, regardless of what the specification says, DOES NOT WORK. I've destroyed a few drives doing it, and even when I havn't, the system crashes. But this bay removes all concerns for that by cutting off power and data connections BEFORE the drive is physically disconnected. This is actuated by the power key. Please note that Windows will freeze for about 1-2 seconds when a drive is <font>I</font>nserted and enabled, but it comes back. It'll still crash if you try swapping the boot drive and aren't in a mirrored RAID situation. Physically, it's well constructed and the swap process is a smooth one. Drive mounting is a little unorthadox, read the manual if you can't figure it out yourself. Also keeps my Maxtor from reaching anywhere near what I assumed to be it's normal operating temperature. This is going to become standard equipment.
Very nice
Pros: Reasonable performance, reasonable pricetag, go for it.
Cons: HUGE. Measure your case. Expect to need something like 10.5 inches front to back.
Overall Review: The first card that I received was apparently a return that had been resealed after being destroyed by an overclocker who had damaged it while disassembling it to swap the heatsinks (and reassembled incorrectly - so I noticed before I even installed it) Newegg made good on it, and I can't blame them for what happened. If you ruin your video card, remember, resealing and returning it is fraud and you'll probably ruin someone else's build .
It's a motherboard.
Pros: Plugged it in and it went. x16 slot is in the third position so larger video cards can clear drive mounting structures in older and smaller cases (but still - measure before you buy - it cut it within millimeters on my old model Antec Sonata.
Cons: Idiotic defaults for some BIOS settings - SATA defaults to legacy IDE emulation mode, which doesn't support NCQ or anything decent and useful about SATA. Remember to flip this setting before installing your OS.
A sub-500w power supply that WORKS!?
Pros: It does every last watt it's supposed to do and more. Currently have one powering a Q8400/GTX260/multiple-HD rig and it's more than enough. This power supply (and the rest of Corsair's line, actually) is a rare breed - they can and will do exactly what's on the rating sticker and can be counted upon to do it consistently.
Cons: Had to use the lame little adapter to get a second PCI-E connector to run the video card.
Overall Review: I don't recommend pushing the limits like I mention here for amatuers. If you don't know how to do all the calculations to make sure it'll fit, don't bother trying. That said, if you have balls of steel you could probably SLI on the 520w version...
Love it
Comments: It's an amazing printer. If you don't know why, read below. My one complaint is that the driver CD that was provided doesn't function - it had no Windows-readable Filesystem (But two Macintosh filesystems). There was no other CD enclosed with mine, despite this one claiming to be "CD 1." Minor inconvenience, 5.5mb download for the drivers, more if you want the software.