Pros: Nice length, nice, thick cables, and it's inexpensive
Cons: none
Overall Review: With digital video, like DVI, the signal is all or nothing. There's no such thing as a better signal because of a better cable. So what I'm getting at is that this DVI cable is every bit as good as that $60.00 one you get from Best Buy
Pros: I've never had a card that could really run a game on max settings before, but now this card is doing just that with current-generation games, and they look phenomenal. The card itself is aesthetically appealing, and has plenty of options for display cables. I spent weeks waiting for the most power for the least amount of money. I snagged this for $120 here on Newegg which was $30 off, and an additional $30 MIR, so overall I got one of these for about $90 which ain't bad.
Cons: I actually do have 3 screens connected to my PC, and the advertised "Three independent displays" falls just a little short. This requires you to use the 2 HDMI outputs on the card for this to work, and those will act like one long display. I have a weird setup with 2 LCD screens that take DVI connections down below my wide-screen HDTV on which I do my gaming. So if I want to use the 3 displays I would have to hook up a VGA cable to my HDTV, and an HDMI adapter to my lower monitor, and a dvi cable on the other monitor. Kind of inconvenient, and expensive if you don't have the cables, and VGA display on an HDTV just seems wrong. So I ended up just having to install my old shoddy video card beside this one so it could handle my multi-display needs. Also, HDMI output to my insignia 32" TV doesn't work at all. The port works, just not with my HDTV. I had to connect a DVI to HDMI cable up to display on my HDTV to get it to display correctly on m HDTV. I am disappoint.
Overall Review: If and when I buy another card and put it in SLI, my multi-display woes will mostly be resolved. It's just a shame that this company decided to market the 3 monitors as a selling feature, because it's so broken I actually had to install an ATI Radeon HD 4300 next to this beast in order to do what they advertised as an out-of-the-box feature. Also, it's silly that HDMI output would not work natively on an HDTV. But it's great for games...
Pros: DDR3, USB3.0, AM3, Crossfire, 2 PCIe 2.0 x16 slots and 2 of the smaller PCIe slos, and 2 plain ol' PCI slots. What more do you want? This thing even has some legacy support, it's got pins for parallel printer connectivity on the board, how crazy? Has anybody seen one of these since 2000? Some stuff was a tight fit, but it was handy to have SATA ports on the mobo in 2 locations, in case you've got short cables.
Cons: Zero cons.
Overall Review: Drivers worked, came on a CD, that was nice. Onboard LAN does require these drivers, so it's easier to install them with an optical drive. Nothing to worry about though if you're going wireless of course, or if you have another PC with an optical drive and a USB stick.
Pros: Buy buy buy! Remember back when DDR2 used to be cheap? And now it's expensive again. Well I'm here to tell you that DDR3 is cheap, and you should get it while you can. If you can max out your motherboard's ram for $120, DO IT. Next time you upgrade, DDR4 will probably be out, and cheap, and you'll need to get a whole new motherboard just to take advantage of it.
Cons: Not backwards-compatible with DDR2 slots? Wasn't $58?
Overall Review: It works. It's got heat-sinks, and um... it's cheap ram, get it.
Pros: This baby's got 6-cores, and they're all hard. In normal use in Win 7 x64, the processor idles between 0 and 3%. When actually used, I haven't seen it spike any higher than 20%. I haven't yet put it through it's paces, but I'm sure it'll take whatever I can throw at it.
Cons: Cooler was a little tricky to put on, but I managed.
Overall Review: I'm pretty sure one of these things was behind Skynet. Also, for those complaining about the fan being noisy, this was also the case for me for about 10 minutes, which was how long it took me to find the setting in my BIOS to allow the motherboard to regulate CPU Fan speed. Now it's quiet. :)
Pros: A lot of cables, they're of a decent length, a lot of options. Plenty o molex connections, plenty of sata connections, plenty of options for motherboard types and the connectors are of good quality. It's also 620 watts which eases my mind for when I invest in a better video card.
Cons: A lot of cables, and they're all really long. See what I did there? But seriously, cable management is tough enough, and this PSU may make the tedious task an exercise in futility. Make sure you get plenty of ties, and nimble fingers.
Overall Review: I don't know too much about power-supplies, and watts per rail and all that, so I suppose for this product my tech knowledge is only average. But I've built a few PCs.. gotta count for something. :)
Pros: provides ample power for my external 2.5" IDE drive that I keep hooked up to my Wii (drive uses 2 USB ports.) Also powers my Wii's charging station. Of course, you have to hook up the supplied power adapter to do so, but that's the nature of the beast. frees up a port on the Wii for my ethernet adapter.
Cons: It's not really a con but... It's kind of weird that there's a USB port on the top of the hub. Guess it looks kinda cool with a flash drive in it... Maybe makes sense for really large USB devices that would otherwise hinder the use of another port? Maybe?
Overall Review: It's also the cheapest powered hub I could find, and it does not disappoint.
Pros: Big, affordable, and pretty
Cons: no 3D support, but that's what makes it affordable. Could use more inputs, but you could get an HD receiver with the money you save. May have a little lag for gamers.
Overall Review: This thing is gorgeous. LG is I believe the 3rd largest maker of HDTVs, and you can tell they know what they're doing. Did I mention it's big?
Pros: Very cheap. $15 on a promotion with free S&H. Sleek design, they work, headphone jack and.. an auxiliary jack? well that's weird. The speakers have a nice long cable connecting the left to the right, so you can really spread them out if you have a multi-monitor setup like me.
Cons: for the price there's nothing speakable to complain about. They are cheap speakers, so they will probably sound a little cheap. No sub, not surround, I don't really know what else to mention, they aren't bad, but they aren't good.
Overall Review: If you need new speakers and don't have a lot of cash, pick it up when it has free shipping. It's worth $15, but not much more.
Pros: The LCD screen has an excellent viewable range. 4 thermometers and independent fan speed controllers is nice, and it reads cards well. The device is entirely plastic, yet still seems sturdy enough. It works and it looks good.
Cons: 11 cables makes cable-management a pain in the neck. The LEDs in the knobs are so bright it's actually almost too bright to look at when you're inserting your media cards. The manual does really need improvement, as most of the stuff covered about the device you can pretty much figure out on your own, but the small things, like inserting your SD cards upside-down that deserve to be mentioned somewhere. Installing the screws was very tough, they're like wood-screws because they actually bite into the plastic as you go, but requires a tiny screwdriver.
Overall Review: So installation of this device was very straightforward -- There;s your power cable, your sata cable (for eSata) and your USB cable for all media cards, and then you have four thermometers and four fan cables. 11 cables total. Wow. Also of note is that each fan controller can control one fan only. It would have been great if one of those fan controllers accommodated the fans that are designed to draw power from a PSU. No such luck.
Pros: Super cheap, and it works.
Cons: Tad noisy at times
Overall Review: I replaced the fan in the back with an LED fan for fun.
Pros: I bought this card because it's a dedicated graphics card, used PCI Express 2.0 X16. I got a way better product than I thought I would. This was initially going to be a temporary card just to get me through. I did not expect it to be able to play Fallout 3 on medium settings with a solid 30-50 fps. Fallout 3 isn't new by any stretch, but it's not an old game.
Cons: Doesn't play FO3 on max settings? Wasn't free? On med. settings in FO 3, there are very few parts of the game where slowdown was encountered.
Overall Review: I wouldn't be surprised if 2 of these on crossfire outperformed a single 60 dollar card...
Pros: the PCI card works just fine
Cons: The antenna is underperforming. I'm getting poor reception from 30 feet away from the router. My Laptop, 5 feet further away is getting better signal strength.
Overall Review: Upgraded the stock antenna with a $20.00 antenna and I'm seeing better results, but it's still not as good as my laptop's.
Pros: Dual core processor, comes with a heat sink and fan, works about how you would expect it to.
Cons: none to speak of.
Overall Review: It's not the fastest thing out there, but I'm not complaining. I'll replace it eventually, but for a temporary processor I got more than I needed. I haven't tried overclocking it at all yet.
Pros: Plenty of SATA connections, probably more that anyone will ever really need. I haven't used the onboard video, but I think the HDMI is a plus. Onboard audio holds up just fine in every game I've played.
Cons: Only one IDE connection, 2 with the right cable. This can make placement of your drives a higher priority than proper spacing and cooling for the drives.
Overall Review: I bought this board for a cheap temporary board, but I think I got more than I bargained for. I will definitely reuse this board after it's been replaced with a full ATX board.
Pros: Got a good deal on it, 10 bucks off and free shipping. Arrived in 3 days. Looks very sharp, and the included CD has some neat calibration tools for the monitor, perfect for my mother to use, who I bought the monitor for. Came with both a DVI and VGA cable. Supports high resolutions, and the screen looks pretty huge.
Cons: The base is very glossy, and probably prone to prints, but who really touches their monitor that often?
Pros: Inexpensive, comes with a couple LED fans, window, temp reader and fan controls. Plenty of front drive bays
Cons: The face feels cheap, buttons sound "clinky", the front LEDs are very bright and can become very annoying. Cooling is "okay". The PCI slot covers aren't fastened using screws, they bend/break off and not easily, leaving a bent rear panel and sharp edges. No front audio ports, and front USB ports feel cheap, and easily bendable. The front can mount some fans, but their effectiveness is nill because the mesh front has a solid plastic back, essentially negating any airflow benefit the mesh front would have provided. Power buttons are behind the cheap door.
Overall Review: I'll admit that it looks snazzy at first, but it starts to look gaudy after a while. Buy an Antec 300 instead. It doesn't have all of the features, but it feels like a much higher quality case for about the same money.
Pros: Cool, not as loud as one might expect from a case with a mesh front. Front fans install extremely easily. LED fans will show up nicely. Installation is a breeze, solid construction. Bottom mounted PSU is nice. A case for people who like to mod, or for people who are tired of neon lights and just want a computer to look like a computer.
Cons: No firewire ports or eSata. Not important to me but to some it is... No external 3.5" bays. Exterior is prone to fingerprints. Fans on high settings are audible, but the case is cool with them on low.
Overall Review: Cons are obviously at a minimum when "fingerprints" make the list.
Pros: The price. Also, the heat-sinks are low-profile enough to not interfere with my CPU cooler which is very nice.
Cons: could still be cheaper though. 2x4GB sticks ought to only cost 40 at MOST, and this is just straddling that line, but this isn't corsair or kingston, or any other big name brand. This is the brand you go with because you know all ram is mostly the same, more or less, and you're strapped for cash.
Overall Review: Hopefully more manufacturers will knock it off with the crazy prices on ram soon. This is getting ridiculous.