Pros: Love the cube design so I can hide my lack of cable management skills in the back compartment. I just shoved it all in there and closed the side panel. The build looks clean through the window. This build is for my sister and her kids, and I bought this solely because of the PSU air intake being on the side. I don't know if she will have it on the carpet or a dusty desktop, but I'm assured the PSU will get clean, filtered air from the side. It is very flexible for whatever type of build you are doing. Clean, unique, aesthetic looks great. Separate baggies for included hardware was a nice touch.
Cons: No front air intake filters (minus 3/4 egg). My build is a simple group of air cooled parts. I have two 120 fans on the front that I wish had filters. Can use either two 3.5 inch drives in the drive cage, OR use the lower cable routing pass through, but not both. Have to pick only one. I picked the drives in the cage - would have been nice to be able to use both. (minus 1/4 egg)
Overall Review: I put in an optical drive, so that means taking out the front top 120 LED fan that is included. I turned the other top fan over to blow air in. I added a fan for a total of four x 120: two on the front blowing in and one on the top blowing in and the one on the back exhausting out. Hopefully I've got a nice positive pressure airflow. I just need to add filters on the front intake fans for a low dust positive pressure build. I caught this on a sale. I would buy it again at the sale price.
Pros: Crucial is a trusted brand. Passed Memtest 30 minutes each stick. Caught it on a sale.
Cons: I only buy memory with heat sinks, not for the temps, but for ease of installation - I like the extra area the heat spreaders provide for my fingers and thumbs to push down on, instead of a thin PCB digging in. I didn't examine the picture close enough, and discovered when I opened it that the heat sink is a wannabe: it is only a thin piece stuck to the sides, and NOT covering the top. Minus one egg.
Overall Review: I would not buy again based on my personal preference explained in the cons. Other than that, it's all good.
Pros: *Wireless keyboard and mouse *Small, VESA mounting to back of monitor/TV *Windows 7 with MCE and 64-bit if you want to put in 4 gigs of memory and have the system use it all *Dual Core *ION Graphics *HDMI & VGA out *6 USB ports *e-SATA
Cons: small hard drive laggy/slow in MCE runs hot wireless is almost worthless no OS disc for clean install
Overall Review: I bought this to have in my bedroom with a 32 inch flat screen and use as a DVR for over the air broadcasts. Media Center works great, but is s-l-o-w, the whole thing just feels underpowered. I put a 640 gb hard drive in to load it up with shows. I don't know if it was breaking the seal on the heatsink or what, and I never checked temps before changing the HDD, but it runs very hot. My laptop does just fine with the wireless in the bedroom, but this thing - nada. I thought this would be a great idea, but it's turned out to be not so great. For the money I paid for it, I wouldn't do it again. I bought it with a plan B in mind of replacing my wife's facebook computer in the office. That desktop on the office floor will have some more powerful upgrades made to it, and it will go into the bedroom. No more underpowered computers!
Pros: Good PSU included, easy build, plenty of parts supplied, good looks
Cons: Front USB ports are tight - have to push your hand up against the front to pull it out. Seems to be loosening up with use.
Overall Review: First build. I wanted something that looked good in an office. The good quality PSU being included made it easier to put together a parts list for a newbie. I got this for seventy five bux and free shipping. I would definetly get this again for the same price. I would not pay a hundred bux plus shipping for this.
Pros: Works great
Cons: none
Overall Review: first build - love AMD bang for the buck
Pros: works - good performance blue light matches my case power light
Cons: No performance issues.
Overall Review: I really don't like that the shiny tray front doesn't match the matte of the rest of the face plate. It looks bad to my eye, but that's just me. I gave it to my parents in a build for Christmas, so I didn't have to look at it anymore.
Pros: Works. Heatsink.
Cons: none
Overall Review: My favorite color is blue. Blue heatsink with machined parts looks and feels so awesome. This must be how women feel about jewelry.
Pros: Works, good performance
Cons: head parking noise sounds clunky and louder than I'd like.
Overall Review: used in a build for my parents and it doesn't sit near them, so it's all good
Pros: Cooler operation - barely warm to the touch, performance seemed really good - last computer I had to compare this to was a Dell Dimension 2350 with a 30 gig 5400 drive.
Cons: Clunky noise. I think it was the heads parking off the disk all the time. The seek noise was a different and very quiet sound, but with the case the drive was in, the clunking sounded like a rock tumbler was in the distance.
Overall Review: The performance was great. Would have been awesome if the head parking noise was as quiet as the seek sound. I decided I didn't want to hear it anymore and I sold it to a buddy. He put it in an external enclosure to use for backing up his pics and data, and he says he can't even hear it.
Pros: works, 785 chipset, HDMI, blue
Cons: placement for dual channel RAM is confusing, still not sure if I did it right. Never figured out the HDMI over/underscan issue, either.
Overall Review: This was my first build in mid october 09 l used it for a basic internet box with ubuntu 9.04. I never even bothered with the Asus utilities DVD, everything just worked out of the box. At Christmas time, I repurposed it for a DVR in combo with a 40" Sony Bravia for my parents (in their 70's) and installed Windows 7. Again, everything was fine, no problems other than the over/underscan black around the desktop image. I just chose the "-2 " selection in the TV menu to fill the whole screen, and that was good enough for them. They use just the speakers on the TV, and there were no problems with the HDMI audio.
Pros: Maxed out a Dell Dimension 2350 - breathed new life into it. After a month and a half both sticks still work as expected.
Cons: none
Pros: Cheap Filters dust
Cons: The pre-punched holes don't line up with the holes on a standard fan. They are bigger. I had to cut in towards the center and really modify them to get them to lay flat.
Overall Review: Cheap solution, if you don't mind doing your own modifications.