Pros: Small form factor. Low power consumption. 6 onboard NIC's, 2 SFP+ ports and 1 IPMI. Factory installed processor and heat sink. Plenty of fans for cooling (including installed peripheral cards). Reasonably quiet after boot. High value/ high ROI when compared to other competitive security gateway platforms.

Cons: None thus far.

Overall Review: This unit was purpose built as a pfSense firewall/router installed with most of the additional available security packages and deployed in a small business environment. I have added a 500M solid state drive, 32G of Crucial ECC RAM along with an additional 4 port Intel server NIC. The unit has more than enough capability to handle the network traffic for my company with plenty of room for expansion. It boots and loads within 3 minutes and operates as expected. Compatible 'generic' 10Gb fiber port SPF+ modules were easy to find and competitively priced. This unit was incredibly easy to set up, boot and provision going from lab to production in 2 days without a hiccup. Most of my company servers are built with Supermicro Brand products - some are 12 years old - and still operate flawlessly in a production environment. This unit appears to have the same high quality construction and features I have experienced with Supermicro's other product lines. I would highly recommend this product for use as a security gateway.

Pros: LONG lasting (MTBF), Exceptional data throughput for SATA (much higher with SAS), super warranty and energy efficient. Built for ENTERPRISE level reliability in demanding production data environments like: Transactional Databases, Email Servers, NAS/SAN Storage, Application Servers, Surveillance Storage Servers and Domain Controllers. Despite their cost they also are great for high demand workstations. Disc level encryption on selected models makes disc retirement easier and more secure.

Cons: Not enough System Admin's take the time to get on these forums and relate their 'real-world' experiences with these products.

Overall Review: I hope this review is helpful to anyone looking at this line of drives and worried about some of the posted reviews related to experience/reliability. I have several hundred of the Seagate EXOS series drives from 1Tib to 14Tib deployed on production systems which I own, rent or administer - in all types of environments from climate controlled datacenter deployments to hot and dirty network closets in industrial environments. These products shine in Mission Critical NAS/SAN Storage, High availability Transactional Databases, Corporate Video Surveillance Storage Systems, Web Server Clusters and Email Server Clusters. I also deploy them in high powered workstations where endurance is necessary and/or desired. All of this endurance/reliability does not mean these drives are not at ease in the average home computer because they work great in an 'everyday' application if you don't mind the cost of entry. The workstation where I am writing this review has a pair of 1Tib Segate Enterprise drives in RAID 1 which have been happily spinning along for 5+ years. The bottom line is this: if your data or the data of your clients is important, these discs are an exceptional choice for reliability and high ROI (return on investment). I see reviews complaining about disc failures related to the EXOS/Enterprise line, I can confidently pass on that I have experienced no such problem with this line of drives. I have NEVER had an EXOS/Enterprise drive come DOA. This doesn't mean that DOA drives don't show up, I have simply never experienced this issue. Again, these drives are targeted for ENTERPRISE level storage systems - they can and do fail like any equipment. That being said, Seagate has NEVER failed to Warranty a failed disc (within the warranty period) from the systems within my responsibility. The difference here might be - ENTERPRISE users keep backup drives on site and in stock for immediate replacement when eventual failures occur so this generally does not become a game ending issue and warranty processing wait times are non-critical. As a service to people looking at this line of drives I checked the average age of my running drives and 65% of the deployed stock has been installed in production environments for 5+ years (approximately 250 drives). I have not had an EXOS disc failure in 235 days (as of this review). I generally purchase some of my discs directly from NEWEGG when the prices are right. Never a warranty issue related to direct purchase from a Seagate authorized reseller. MY CONCLUSION/OPINION: This is an exceptional line of ENTERPRISE level products with a good warranty and superb return on investment.

Pros: EXOS discs are a SYSTEM ADMIN's DREAM! LONG lasting (MTBF), Exceptional data throughput for SATA (much higher with SAS), super warranty and energy efficient. Built for ENTERPRISE level reliability in demanding production data environments like: Transactional Databases, Email Servers, NAS/SAN Storage, Application Servers, Surveillance Storage Servers and Domain Controllers. Despite their cost they also are great for high demand workstations. Disc level encryption on selected models makes disc retirement easier and more secure.

Cons: Not enough System Admin's take the time to get on these forums and relate their 'real-world' experiences with these products.

Overall Review: I hope this review is helpful to anyone looking at this line of drives and worried about some of the posted reviews related to experience/reliability. I have several hundred of the Seagate EXOS series drives from 1Tib to 14Tib deployed on production systems which I own, rent or administer - in all types of environments from climate controlled datacenter deployments to hot and dirty network closets in industrial environments. These products shine in Mission Critical NAS/SAN Storage, High availability Transactional Databases, Corporate Video Surveillance Storage Systems, Web Server Clusters and Email Server Clusters. I also deploy them in high powered workstations where endurance is necessary and/or desired. All of this endurance/reliability does not mean these drives are not at ease in the average home computer because they work great in an 'everyday' application if you don't mind the cost of entry. The workstation where I am writing this review has a pair of 1Tib Segate Enterprise drives in RAID 1 which have been happily spinning along for 5+ years. The bottom line is this: if your data or the data of your clients is important, these discs are an exceptional choice for reliability and high ROI (return on investment). I see reviews complaining about disc failures related to the EXOS/Enterprise line, I can confidently pass on that I have experienced no such problem with this line of drives. I have NEVER had an EXOS/Enterprise drive come DOA. This doesn't mean that DOA drives don't show up, I have simply never experienced this issue. Again, these drives are targeted for ENTERPRISE level storage systems - they can and do fail like any equipment. That being said, Seagate has NEVER failed to Warranty a failed disc (within the warranty period) from the systems within my responsibility. The difference here might be - ENTERPRISE users keep backup drives on site and in stock for immediate replacement when eventual failures occur so this generally does not become a game ending issue and warranty processing wait times are non-critical. As a service to people looking at this line of drives I checked the average age of my running drives and 65% of the deployed stock has been installed in production environments for 5+ years (approximately 250 drives). I have not had an EXOS disc failure in 235 days (as of this review). I generally purchase some of my discs directly from NEWEGG when the prices are right. Never a warranty issue related to direct purchase from a Seagate authorized reseller. MY CONCLUSION/OPINION: This is an exceptional line of ENTERPRISE level products with a good warranty and superb return on investment.

Pros: Fast! Second (replaced) unit works as advertised on PCI-e Gen 2&3 installations. Works very well on x99 chip sets which came on a Supermicro board and an ASUS board. The unit is equally as responsive as an SSD drive placed on the same system where it is currently installed. I have not tested the unit for max read/write IOPs.

Cons: Standard review answer: Cost. The product is was relatively new at the time of purchase/review and had limited information available to assist with determining system compatibility (especially regarding legacy system compatibility). My limited cross-platform testing seems to indicate the storage device may not function properly in a PCI-e, Gen 1 socket. Not much information currently exists regarding the functionality of this SSD device across different PCI-e generations. My advise is...if you plan to install this on any motherboard which does not specifically support PCI-e Gen 2 or 3, use caution and test prior to putting the unit into production. Other owners may have had different experiences installing on Gen 1 interfaces.

Overall Review: The first unit arrived as promised and was installed in a workstation using a PCI-e Gen 2 slot. Drivers were installed, the 'disk' initialized and properly formatted. Windows was able to read and write to the disk and the information was accessible from the disk. Within 24 hours the vm drive/file copy - which had been placed on the disk - began to degrade and no longer functioned as a virtual hard drive file causing the virtual instance of the associated virtual machine to fault and fail. I reloaded the drivers (from Intel) and re-formatted the storage device. I placed the same tested and functioning copy of the vm drive/file back onto the disk and monitored the associated virtual machine instance. Within 2 hours it began to fault and failed sometime in hour 3. Thankfully this is a test environment and no data was lost and no network downtime was created. I checked the indicator lights on the board of the SSD which indicated it was 'functional'. The unit was VERY hot and I could not hold on to it long enough to remove it until it cooled off. I contacted Newegg and the SSD was replaced. The new unit was shipped and received within a week and replaced in the same system and on the same PCI-e interface. All the same steps were followed and the drive has been in operation for more than two weeks without an issue. The new unit runs cool enough to touch but is still warm. Thank you Newegg for a speedy and hassle free exchange. UPDATE 1/2020 Unit is still in operation and works as well as the day it was installed in the workstation. 3 Virtual machines operate daily off of the card and it provides plenty of speed to run all three simultaneously.

Pros: Solid motherboard for installing multiple graphics cards. Easy to setup and install. Uses super-fast 8 core AMD processors. Very stable and reliable.

Cons: Original motherboard arrived with a defective PCI-E x16 port.

Overall Review: This review is as much for ASUS and their great products as it is for Newegg who completely took care of an issue which could have been easily attributed to misuse by a customer. My original motherboard arrived with a PCI-e slot which was not well affixed to the motherboard and came loose and pulled away from the board as I installed one of my graphics cards. I have never seen or heard of this malfunction before so I contacted Newegg to speak with a customer service representative about the problem. I was treated with respect by a very friendly and respectful customer service person and an RMA was immediately issued and the motherboard returned. Newegg replaced the motherboard and shipped me the replacement immediately without any issue which put a giant smile on my face. The new motherboard works as expected and arrived without any defects. Thank you Newegg for always putting your customers first. As always - fantastic experience all around!

Pros: 1. Great value related to the initial investment (high ROI). 2. Web based administration. (No absolute need to know or use CLI for implementation or management.) 3. Included UTM services for first year. 4. Included VPN capabilities with easy client provisioning. 5. Wireless LAN control and provisioning. (2 native AP licensees and options for purchase of licenses for additional AP's.) 6. Good technical support if required. 7. Options for automatic firmware download and updates - for base unit along with managed AP's. 8. Plenty of onboard NIC ports for flexibility and expandability. 9. Powerful policy based routing, firewall and NAT rules using object oriented conventions. 10. Policy based and Group based ability to easily deploy and manage 'layered' AP functionality with multiple SSID's on multiple vLANS over multiple AP's. 11. The unit has a lightweight DHCP service which can be deployed independently for each LAN or vLAN segment.

Cons: I have not discovered many cons related to these units based on the one I own or the ones I have installed for customers. One downside might be the lack of a large community of users with online posts about solutions and experiences with the product line. Another downside would be a noted difference between the advertised throughput of the unit in 'real' situations which is generally half of the advertised rate on the Zyxel product specifications. (With all UTM functions/options applied). The suggestion I would make is: buy or spec a unit with a higher advertised bandwidth than you calculate/believe is necessary. The initial configuration of a vLAN based 'layered' Wireless AP network is not immediately 'obvious' but can be figured out using a trial and error approach.

Overall Review: I have personally owned and managed this product for 3 years using it in a production/small business environment. The price of the UTM yearly license maintenance is extremely reasonable and can be purchased from a Zyxel channel partner or directly from Zyxel. The anti-spam and anti-virus abilities of the UTM suite seem very capable and are reasonably configurable to meet the needs of your network or organization. Application filtering and content filtering work well and are highly configurable - especially considering the price point of the base unit and UTM features. Once configured, the unit needs very little user attention and I have personally experienced uptimes longer than 13 months before needing to access the unit for maintenance or restart the OS. The initial configuration can be time consuming and (as with all commercial grade firewalls) has a steep learning curve. Zyxel seems to keep their documentation related to their products updated along with firmware upgrades. Web based administration is easy to use and reliable. The unit can also be managed by SSL using a Zyxel CLI. The unit has the ability to be managed from an off-site location which is helpful for installers and administrators. Configuring a vLAN layered Wireless network is not initially simple but once you have a grasp of the basics related to AP management and deployment there appears to be few limits on the deployment of a multi-functional, multi-SSID, multi-channel and well secured wireless networks. Adding additional AP's and extending an established wireless network becomes extremely straightforward and cost effective using any one of Zyexl's selection of available wireless AP's. I have deployed the USG110 on several of my customers networks with excellent results. My experience suggests it is feasible to program and deploy this product at a customer site with the confidence of knowing it will not need constant 'call-back' management. I have also been able to design and implement high functioning, powerful network solutions for customers with limited IT budges. In my experience Zyxel offers very competent tech support for its products and is quick to escalate issues to higher tiers when necessary. I have only contacted them on a few occasions and received excellent support and solutions. I would definitely feel confident recommending this product for a home or small business power users who want high levels of functionality and reliability at a lower initial/total cost of ownership when compared to similar offerings from other companies.