Pros: E3 stepping. Absolutely zero thermal issues even with high clock and Vcore. Stock HSF is more than enough for 2.4GHZ @ 1.475V. I'm prime95 stable at 289*9 = 2.6 ghz

Cons: 9x multiplier means you will be running an external clock close to 300MHz so a quality motherboard will be needed that has a PCI lock and plenty of memory dividers and HT multiplier must be droppable. "Bottom of the barrel" chips are a gamble as far as what speed you may reach; making RAM very hard to choose before a build. It may be worth while to save a few bucks on a motherboard and opt for a more expencive san diego processor.

Overall Review: Binned by AMD as the most flaky 90mm A64 chips meaning they will take much higher voltage to operate at higher clocks. The over-rated Asus SLI-deluxe only goes to 1.55V which got me to 2.6 GHz. As these are taken from the bottom of the A64 barrel, they are all vastly different, but most people can get between 2.5-2.7 GHz with a full featured MOBO. Water cooling is not needed because risky breakdown voltage is reached before thermal problems occur.

Pros: Price 16M buffer

Cons: LOUD!! Crashes constantly Slower than a lot of 7200rpm/8M drives

Overall Review: I've owned this drive four months now. At first, I was only slightly dissapointed because it was very loud and was not any faster than an 8Mb drive. Now, it is crashing on me all the time. Even when i throw it into a RAID1 array it still crashes all the time and the array needs rebuilt. I'm going to try to send it back. The interface also has problems with the AMD nforce4 controller.

Pros: Moddable. Best features for 939 overclocking.

Cons: NForce4 chipset has lots of problems with SATA being very unreliable (go to a hard drive site like maxtor to read more). As far as K8 solutions go, I would choose VIA for stability and reliability.

Overall Review: I own 2 of these and are pleased with their performance abilities. This will mod to SLI, but it requires soldering or using conductive tape around the chipset core. (must remove heatsink, etc.) Some have gotten this to work with a #2 pensil but I doubt this is a good solution. Recently, either NVidia or DFI has made modding more difficult by adding adhesive around the blank pads. This means special percision (dremil) tools must now be used to mod and it is well worth it to actually buy SLI rather than drilling around your chipset core. If you absoolutely need to do a high overclock (over 275 or so) this is a great choice, other wise, there are more stable solutions outside of the NF4 line.

Pros: Best you can buy retail. Compound is easier to spread evenly than others.

Cons: Completly absurd for cpu or vga applications. Stains really bad.

Overall Review: This product would be far less popular if people would sit down and do the math before purchasing. Even in theory, if you would properly apply the stock stuff (let's say it is a third as good, better if it is an aftermarket cooler) then take square meters to cm^2 and you are still talking about a one tenth of one percent difference when combined with even the best (~.17) coolers out today. A difference that will never be noticed and is not worth paying for IMHO. Using this compared to a common free compound is like comparing chains rated at 150 and 350 pounds to lift a 25 pound box.

Pros: -Good enough for any GPU. -No need to take to the lab, thermal resistance (sink to air) is probably lower than many cpu coolers. -The price is right for the copper version. -Installation is extremely easy. -Fits on just about anything.

Cons: -Overkill for many popular gpus on the market. -The product line does not offer a cheaper product (the alcu cost more no newegg). -Heavy sink can dammage unprotected gpu cores. -Does not come with fanmate, but rather a choice between 5v and 12v (or 7 if you have a good PSU). -The power adapter for the fan does not have an aux plug and occupies a full spot on the ps rail. -Does not fasten as securly or as balanced as the large stock coolers. -Takes up an extra pci slot which is a HUGE problem if you are running a fancy PCIe 4x raid card and have one 4x slot. (The benefits of this sink will not outweigh the benefits of a fully externally processed raid 5 array.)

Overall Review: I am an electrical engineer with some emphasis on thermal systems and can state that this product will do the trick for any current GPU on the market and that means even the 6800 ultra extreme. (unless the gtx 512 outsed it for heat, I doubt it) I baught this b/c my 6600gt fan went bad and i was giving the PC away. I wanted something that was quiet and durable. I would love to see an aluminum verson around ten bucks less since this thing is vastly unnecessary. Sad thing is that no other alternatives exist that I could find. In conclusion, this product is not perfect, but it is likely the smartest choice for any current GPU.

Comments: this card spanks a refrence gtx at most commly used resolutions and is very comparable to the gtx even at 1600x1200 4x/8x, of course you can order the gtx faster than refrence though. I consider myself a huge FPS gamer ever since tauing around HLDM back in the day and this is the most impressive thing i have ever seen. My only big fuss is that this card is by far the loudest piece of my system as i built a quiet system from the ground up and missed this little detail, but im still more than satisfied.