Pros: Zotac H77 ITX motherboard defaulted at 1333Mhz. Manually changed to 1600Mhz. Timing was set to 9-9-9-24 automatically. Ran Memorytest86+ for whole night, no error.
Cons: NA.
Overall Review: System: Zotac H77-ITX with wifi I5-3570K Samsung 830 128GB Antec ISK110
Pros: small package just like apple product. no power block. easy to use (plug and use). low cost (1/3 cost of apple airport express)
Cons: None.
Overall Review: Just back from China and most hotels there have no wifi, just LAN. This little router just need plug in to create wifi HP. It never fails me. It feels a little plastic (not round and solid like Airport Express) but I cannot complain for twenty dollars.
Pros: Decent sound, iphone 4 compatible, has a remote, has AUX/optical in.
Cons: it is not loud as it is a personal speaker, but given its original price, I think this is con. But don't make it wrong, it is loud enough for a small if you turn up volume. It is bulky, given its functions and its volume. It won't turn on/off automatically so if I want to use iphone as a night stand + alarm clock, I have to keep it on all the time. I will check power consumption later and follow up. Power supply design is not good. it is laptop PSU style.
Overall Review: 1. It's bulky for its sound volume, but, it is a personal speaker, so I won't complain. 2. Since I mainly use it as background radio in bedroom so it is loud enough for me. 3. I can put ipad on it, but the charging current is ONLY 0.5A, so ipad won't get charged. I hope it could be more compact, has room for battery to built in so I can use my own AA rechargables.
Pros: Best console
Cons: See below
Overall Review: This is to correct what "Frost" complained about actual disk space of the 320GB HD. "Frost" complained that he only see "290GB available out of the box". To correct him, here is the fact: I can see 298GB out of the box, and 320GB is 320,000,000,000B, you need to devide it by 1024 3 times which gives you 298GB. This is true to all drives, when you buy a 4.7GB DVDR, it is 4.36GB, a 16GB USB flash drive gives you 14.9GB, a 2TB hard drive gives you 1.7XGB space. It is not MS's fault!
Pros: Large capacity at reasonable price
Cons: See below.
Overall Review: Write speed is about 9MBs, read speed is about 20-25MBs. A little slower than I expected. Overall I like it, small size with 60GB (1024 not 1000 conversion) capacity at affordable price.
Pros: Low cost Z68 MB which allows OC. eSATA connector on back panel. Has all features I am looking for. Compatible with socket 775 HSF so I can reuse my good old Ninja 2 HS for passive cooling.
Cons: None
Overall Review: System (2600K/2x4GB/SSD) power consumption is only 30W for internet surfing etc. If you are looking for more PCIe/PCI slots, SLI/CF, 1394 port, more SATA/eSATA, or you want to OC to 5Ghz, get a better MB which would double the cost.
Pros: Best hardware spec. Tomato/DD-WRT compatible. 3 external antennas. 2 USB ports.
Cons: None!
Overall Review: I flashed it to DD-WRT right after I open the box so I cannot comment on facture firmware. I later on switched to Tomato due to how easy to use it. I hope they throw 5Ghz in to make it perfect.
Pros: Plays almost all the video formats, including rmvb (yes I have a few 720p rm files), hacked firmware enables online video streaming (no netflix though).
Cons: When I stream mkv files through LAN/wifi, it chokes if bit rate is higher than 20Mbps. This is not Patriot's fault but 1073 chipset issue. I have to play videos from USB HD.
Pros: Plays almost all video files I have.
Cons: UI is not good for youtube, no netflix. Has problem to handle >20Mbps mkvs through LAN.
Overall Review: I planned to use it to stream video from NAS. But it failed to do it due to 20Mbps limitation. WD TV plus can do it. I am not sure if it is caused by the weak CPU or the poor software.
Pros: Price is right, read speed is fast.
Cons: Read speed is fast but write speed is terrible, somewhere from 7MB/s to 1MB/s. This happens to every computer so this is not USB connection problem. I have a 16GB Patriot USB flash drive which write speed is constantly at 10-12MB/s. The annoying thing is when it start writing, its speed is 7MB/s and expect 9min to finish writing for a given file, but then it would change to 150min for an while then back to 7min and then again. Total write time would be somewhere close to 30min if not longer.
Overall Review: One star for read speed and one star for price.
Pros: Has everything, HDMI, SPDIF, accepts 4 RAM sticks, good for HTPC.
Cons: None
Overall Review: The only thing missing is 264 decoding which you can find in G45 based MB.
Pros: DVI port. All passive. Use regular desktop DDR2 stick. IDE port for your old DVD ROM, but, read cons
Cons: Requires slim DVD ROM! Requires 2.5" HD. Price! It is much more expensive (costs 50% more) but has less features compare to the unfortunately short lived MSI Atom barebone system.
Overall Review: I am an owner of MSI Atom barebone system. That is a fantastic system for lower price ($140) but unfortunately, it soon went OOS and then deactived by Newegg. It was alive for only a few weeks. MSI system is using normal DVD drive and 3.5" HD (or 2.5" HD). The IDE connector is missing, but a CF card slot on MB is a great plus so you can enjoy the SSD at very low cost. In addition MSI has built in SD/SDHC card reader in front panel which could expand your SSD storage as a 16GB SD card costs less than $40 now and it woud cost half of that next year. There are only one thing missing in MSI system: DVI/HDMI. So what are missing on Shuttle system: 3.5" HD cage. Normal optical drive cage. CF card slot on MB. Built in SD/SDHC card reader. If you don't plan to install a (slim) DVD ROM and would use a 2.5" HD, this is a very good system with low power usage. I am running a MSI system with CF card for OS and power usage is only 20W with HD idling. This one should be comparable.
Pros: Integrated CF card slot on MB so you can use CF ONLY without a spinning HD. Small and nice case with everything inside, including optical drive and 3.5" HD. Very low noise from case fan (if HD spins down), no PSU fan! Front SD/SDHC card slot. All passive MB. Low power comsumption: 18W without a HD, 20W idle with a HD, 30W peak with full data read/write read by a Kill-A-Watt without a DVD-ROM. Works with SP2 and Linux.
Cons: In order to install the CF card, you have to open the case, the remove the front panel, then remove the HD/DVD cage, and finally remove all the screws of MB, then remove the 2 screws of VGA so you can remove MB to install it. Manual does not mention that at all. Come on MSI, you designed such a little cute system, why put the CF slot facing the edge of the case which leaves no space to install CF card?
Overall Review: No DVI/HDMI, not a cons for me as I am using it as a NAS. But some people would complain it. Using So-Dimm. Not a cons again as I got a 2GB stick for $10. For less than $200 I built the most powerful (in terms of CPU/RAM) NAS. It has 2 SATA-300 connections, gigabyte LAN, CF slot for OS. The only thing missing is RAID, but you can use soft RAID. It has 1GB - 2GB RAM, a much more powerful (compare to ARM) CPU. I really happy with this solution. Right now I am using a 8GB Lexar CF card for OS installation and bittorrent. HD is not spinning most of the time. This is a the best choice if you are looking for a NAS but intend to use it for slimserver/bittorrent/eMule and many other functions, not just file sharing. This is also a very good low cost system for your grandparents or you little kids who only need this to surf the internet. It is quiet, no moving part if you are using a CF card, low power!
Pros: I helped my coworker to build a PC with QX9650. I told him to buy this cooler from egg as it is on sale, price is good. I find it is light, very easy to install, fan is pretty quiet. It is as easy as stock Intel HSF. It does not require any trick, just push 4 legs and done! I did not overclock, so I cannot comment on that.
Cons: None. Especially at this price.
Overall Review: No back plate, push and done type for easy installation. Light weight. Good HSF if you get a OEM CPU. May not for extreme overclockers.
Pros: Runs stable, has all IO's I needed. Works fine with 2.1v rated OCZ RAM.
Cons: Reboot problem still not fixed. Latest BIOS was released last December. Come on, my Gigabyte DS3 is enjoying 12th update BIOS. Where is ABIT support?
Overall Review: My next MB? It could be a Gigabyte or ASUS, or even a ECS. They all have good support and they release BIOS to solve problems. I can hardly see why I will buy a ABIT again simply due to BIOS update issue.
Pros: Small, cute, pretty fast, good Hackintosh candidate
Cons: No power cable. No built-in wifi/BT no displayport (for 27/30 monitor) No analog audio output No usb 3.0
Overall Review: I understand NUC is designed for HTPC, but I would like to use it as smaller desktop replacement and especially for hackintosh. it is perfect for HTPC but I would like to see it has wifi/BT card (cost $8 at fleabay) built-in, usb3.0 and analog audio out. I also hope it has one DP port for 1600P graphics. But overall it is good one, only if it has those features I listed, I would get 2 more.