Pros: Installed on an Asus ROG Gene and has been going 24/7 for 14 months at 4.6 Ghz overclock. Rock solid performance and stable on a H100i liquid cooler. Temps never exceed mid 40 C. Coming off many AMD builds, this thing smokes AMD in every way. Update: 7 years later, this little guy still runs like a champ. I'd say it is one of the all time greatest gaming processors ever made. I've had it up to 4.8 Ghz rock stable, but 4.6 to 4.7 day in a day out for 7 years and still going strong is just incredible. in 2020, the whole 1155 platform is starting to show signs of age and will not run AAA titles as well as some newer platforms, but I am still very happy with it.

Cons: None

Pros: Looks great, arguably the best looking DDR4 ram out there Fantastic Samsung B-Die Beautiful clocking and timing potential No issues with G.Skill software Collectors box (pro and con)

Cons: Don't touch it with bare fingers - wear gloves Expensive? Hard to find in stock Collectors box - what sense does it make if you have no ram to display?

Overall Review: I have been waiting for this to come back into stock and wanted the Collectors Edition, since it was a direct replacement for a set of four F4-320016Q-32GTRS Royal (16-18-18-38) and I put the old ones in the collectors case. The 3200 set was great, but had difficulty with both overclocking and tighter timings on my Motherboard. For reference, I have an ASRock B550M Steel Legend running a 5800X. The setup is rock solid and the MB has been great. The F4-3600C16Q set I received (16-16-16-36) is pretty amazing. This ram is not on the QVL for my motherboard and most B550 chipset have trouble running 4 sticks at anything above 3200 M/T speeds. I have been able to turn down the timings to 14-14-14-32 at 1.35 V at 3200 no problem. I also tweaked some of the other timings a bit (tRC = 46, tRFC = 374) . I then started boosting the speed and am able to run these same timings at 3533 M/T at 1.44 Volts at 1T Command Rate while keeping the Infinity Fabric at 1:1. For those on the X570 platform, you may be able to do even better. This PC is a work/gaming machine, so I am not going for bleeding edge, but rather performance and aesthetics, so I have not bothered pumping greater than 1.45 Volts into the ram, but needless to say, I am happy with the performance and the PC in general is "snappier". I didn't gain much in gaming benchmarks, but that is limited by my RTX 3060 at the moment. Regarding the Collectors Box - it is nice but cardboard. Also, unless you have an old set of ram to install, what purpose does it serve? I planned to keep my older set and display, but for most people, you can just buy the ram and install in your rig. G.Skill makes great ram, and I would not hesitate to buy from them again.

Pros: Just finished an overclocking run on this chip, 18.5 x 226 = 4.2Ghz @ 1.375V. Rock stable with Prime95 on the two cores and only hit 52 degrees C. (Disclaimer: I am using a Corsair H50 water cooler) Setup on Gigabyte GA880-GM-UD2H, 550W Antec True Power PSU, Kingston 2 x 2GB Hyper-X 1333 @ 1512 MHZ 8-8-8-20. All of this took only slight voltage increases and fiddling with the frequencies. By far the easiest overclock ever and hats off to Gigabyte for the excellent board and bios. AMD Cool 'n Quiet works very well with this setup. I did unlock the other two cores, and they are rock stable up to 4.0Ghz so far. I haven't tried them all at 4.2Ghz. For normal every day use, I have backed the system down to 18.5 x 216 = 4.0Ghz with very little extra voltage. System idles at 32 degrees C and 49 degrees under full load (Prime95 and Furmark on the GPU).

Cons: None. For the price vs performance and overclockability you cannot go wrong.

Overall Review: Additional hardware: Three SATA drives, one optical, XFX HD5770 (reference) video card. For those that are interested in power consumption, here are my thoughts. I measured the total system draw for several conditions: 1. Bone stock at idle: 130Watts Full load CPU & GPU: 279Watts 2. Overclocked 4.2GHz CPU, 5770 @ 1000/1400 idle: 148Watts Full load CPU & GPU: 346Watts 3. Overclocked 4.0GHz CPU, 5770 @ 950/1300 idle: 139Watts Full load CPU & GPU: 300Watts Unlocking the additional 2 core would require approximately 40 - 50 more Watts under load. If you are shopping for a PSU, and want to run this chip and a decent video card (single), a good quality PSU in the 550 - 650W range is fine. Extreme overclocking with Crossfire or SLI will require a 650 - 750W PSU. BTW, the Gigabyte board is very stable and responsive. First time I have used them (previously stuck with ASUS & Abit) and I am happy with it.