Pros: Easy to install Drivers were simple to find Works fine for expanding my SATA ports

Cons: I wouldn't put any faith whatsoever in any hardware RAID capabilities - if you think you're going to find something that will do RAID 5 properly for less than a hundred dollars, you're living in a dream world.

Overall Review: I use this to allow more disks on my server (the intel ICHxxR chipsets all only allow for 6 ports) and use software RAID on the server. If you're out of SATA ports, I highly recommend this - if you're looking for hardware RAID, again, this is not going to make you happy.

Pros: Cheap - $210 with a quad core opteron (prices change, of course) Stable - No problems even with 100 hours of uptime (and counting)

Cons: RIDICULOUS setup issues (see other thoughts) Server board - no sound, no worthwhile video

Overall Review: First, the utilities CD did not work on Server 2008 x64 - this lead to issues with my 1.5TB drives until I figured out the problem was the nForce drivers. Of course, THAT only was a problem after I got the OS installed. On the first few tries, I couldn't get the installer past loading files. After that, I tried booting up a linux installation I had on another drive - it booted, but reported ACPI issues. I switched back to the server 2008 CD, still no luck. At this point I was afraid it was driver issues (as experienced by others with my processor and this board). I went out and bought a $25 AM2 socket processor, and with it, I installed the OS. Curiously, after switching processors again, I managed to boot Server 2008, after 20 hours of trying. This lead me to the nforce issues... Definitely a "budget" board though - no amazing features, but with the issues passed, I'm very happy with the performance.

Pros: *Very solid *Easy to open case without tools *SSI-EEB allows for high end workstation builds

Cons: *Top-mounted power supply is puzzling for such a high end workstation case *Hotswap bays separate from case *Cable management slightly awkward for SAS/SATA cables with drives loaded into cages

Overall Review: Certainly an effective case for anyone building a workstation that requires SSI spec boards (most dual socket systems). Very roomy 4U size along with EEB tolerance allows for very large GPUs if necessary. Cost is somewhat extravagant given that some bells and whistles aren't included.

Pros: It works

Cons: None

Overall Review: 2GB DIMM size means you won't be maxing out many motherboards with these, but you may be able to reach the limit on unregistered RAM on a lower end board. No issues in a workstation that keeps 24/7 uptime.

Pros: *Inexpensive *Screws down *Runs quiet enough to

Cons: None

Overall Review: Currently keeping an Opteron 6128 to 53C under very light load, and usually rises to ~56 or so under a 20% load. While the workstation is not intended to stress test the heatsink, I would be surprised if it was unable to cool the processor under a much heavier workload.

Pros: *Runs fine with sub-$30 G34 cooler *Manages 5+ VMs (Ubuntu/CentOS/Windows 7) without problem *Cost effective; ~$35/core

Cons: *Low clock speed makes it ineffective for single-threaded applications

Overall Review: Presently, this chip is running in a workstation hosting VMs for cluster-based application development. Runs with no issues on both standard desktop tasks and virtualized loads. In comparison to another Xeon based workstation running 2x 5520s, no significant performance hit is noticeable (neither machine, especially the xeon build, would be anywhere near maxed under this load) Currently running at 53C, with a listed temperature tolerance of 55-66C on the AMD site. Cooler is a 60MM dyantron heatsink w/ fan available on Newegg.