Joined on 03/30/01
Mostly a great board
Pros: Things that made me choose this board: 10 SATA ports. Legacy support: Ports for IDE, Floppy, and PS2. Easy to use, mouse-driven bios. Was able to successfully overclock my i5-2500K from 3.3 to 4.4 with two clicks. Video ports to run my third and fourth monitor. PCI-e 3.0, USB 3.0., SATA III. Good price/feature ratio. Good reviews all over the 'net.
Cons: 1. It was a disappointment to find that the ASMedia controller that adds 4 of the SATA III 6 Gb/s ports doesn't support RAID, so of the 10 SATA ports, only two SATA III and the 4 SATA II ports allow RAID. 2. Like my previous DFI motherboard, this one has a two-digit alphanumeric display that shows both what the motherboard is currently doing, and errors codes. On the DFI board the display was located in the bottom left corner, such that I could conveniently see it through the side case fan. On this Asrock board, it's located just to the right of the second PCI-e x16 slot, where it is completely covered by the end of my second video card.
Nice drive if it would hold data.
Pros: Quiet, high GB/$ ratio, portability, size.
Cons: When I first started loading data to it, it crashed, and I had to start over with a repartition. Filled it up with around 500 gb, and all was well until last night when it crashed again. Now it shows the directory structure, but no files. Running XP's disk check just instantly pops up a box saying "Windows was unable to complete the disk check".
Overall Review: Back it goes.
Hopeless.
Pros: Bright white light.
Cons: I unfortunately bought three sets. One set fades out a few seconds after lighting; guess it has bad batteries. The other two sets will turn on if I flip the switch a couple of times, but invariably go out after about 5 minutes. Doesn't seem to be a battery problem like the first set, though, as if I flip the on/off switch off then on, they'll come back on...but only for another 5 minutes.
Overall Review: Wish I'd had time to test these right after I got them.
Speed limited by LAN.
Pros: Works well. I couldn't get the WPS setup to connect, but it was easy to connect using a computer browser via an ethernet cable. It scanned for available Wifi, let me select mine, type in the password, and worked fine after that.
Cons: Sure, it gets "300Mbps wireless n speeds", but none of your devices can make use of that max speed because the LAN ports they're connected by max out at 100Mbps. Would have made more sense if it had gigabit 1000Mbps ports.
Follow-up
Pros: Update on my prior review: The seller was very helpful, and paid to exchange for a second unit...which also didn't work on my Galaxy S3. They then discovered that in fact this unit doesn't work with the S3, so they're refunding my money and they've changed this listing to reflect the fact that it's only for the S2. So the unit may work great if you have a Samsung Galaxy S2...I have no way of knowing. But I'll give 5 eggs this time to balance the first review, and because of the responsiveness of the seller.
Cons: None that I know of.
Shouldn't be advertised as SATA III
Pros: It will transfer data.
Cons: Because this is a PCIe 1x card, it is incapable of transferring data at SATA III speeds. I plugged in a Mushkin Chronos SATA III SSD drive, and ATTO showed it getting slower read and write speeds than when I plugged the same SSD drive into a motherboard SATA II socket. You need at least a PCIe 4x card to get SATA III speeds, and this ain't it.