Pros: Great value for the dollar. Extremely quiet. 20+4 mobo power plug for greater compatability. SATA power as well as standard molex. Power connectors are long.

Cons: 18A on a single +12V rail. The +12 rail becomes critical for any power users or those systems requiring more HDs, CD/DVDs, and water cooling systems. My system is a Barton 2500 at stock speeds plugged into the aging but reliable ASUS A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 BFG 6800 GS video, SoundBlaster Audigy 2, 2GB Corsair XMS, 1 x PATA Maxtor DiamondMax 9 120GB, 2 x SATA Maxtor DiamondMax 9 in RAID 0, 3.5 floppy, 1 x Lite-On CDRW/DVD-ROM Combo, 1 X Plextor 740A DVD-RW, and Kingwin AWC-1 liquid cooling system. This configuration was the "break-point" for this PS. While cool, system would spin up and run flawlessly, however as the PSU warmed (thereby degrading efficiency) the system would begin to suffer the various errors/problems assocaited with a PSU, including spontaneous reboots, video memory artifacing, corrupted HD reads/writes, etc. Upon disconnecting optical drives, system stabilized and ran flawlessly.

Overall Review: Outstanding power supply if you are building a standard configuration workstation. Keep an eye on your +12 rail load and you'll have no problems.

Pros: Does what it is supposed to do, and does it well. Ergonomically identical to the original TrackMan.

Cons: none.

Overall Review: Although I am not a fan of trackballs, the TrackMan is the best of the bunch. My wife has arthritis resulting in problems with the movements required of a typical mouse. The Trackman is the perfect solution. She has used a Trackman for years, but software has driven her to upgrade to a model with a thumbwheel.

Pros: Dual core CPU for very reasonable price. Excellent overclocking ability with stock cooler.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: I have been a die-hard AMD fan for more than a decade. However, I could not pass on the value and performace of this CPU. My first Intel CPU in more than six years, and I could not be more pleased with it.

Pros: I was pleased to find two USB headers, allowing for installation of front panel USB reader, as well as a 3.5" multi-card reader. The motherboard installed very easily. Good overclock features in BIOS.

Cons: No onboard RAID as in the higher end ASUS boards. Only one onboard NIC.

Overall Review: I have been using ASUS mobos exclusively for several years. Now that Intel is producing an economical and practical CPU to challenge AMD's value, I needed a motherboard with an Intel friendly chipset. I did not wish to spend in excess of two hundred dollars for motherboards with a plethora of neat, but unnecessary features. Then I found the P5L-VM. This motherboard had all of the basic features I needed, and was priced under a hundred dollars.

Pros: Inexpensive. Excellent starter kit for modders that are thinking of taking that step to liquid cooling. Kit includes cooling blocks for a video card (with retaining brackets that will serve most video cards), and a CPU (retaining brackets to cover Intel and AMD mainstream CPUs). Ample hosing to run through most cases. Very quiet.

Cons: Bleeding off the excess air during the initial filling is painful, and potentially hazardous to your components. With patience and attention to detail you will have no problems - just a lot of repetittive putzing until you get it complete. If you are in a rush, you can easily leak liquid into your case (which will follow the hosing into the critical and vulnerable areas) with predicible results. Be careful and all will be well.

Overall Review: The reservoir fits into a 5.25 bay and sticks out far enough to impede cases with doors from closing.

Comments: I have built three systems using this board, and all run well and stable. Installation went smoothly, and various memory sticks (crucial, kingston, "generic") performed without difficulty. I matched this mobo with a Pioneer 116 DVD-ROM drive and Sonic's MyDVD to allow for movie watching at the workstation. The system had some problems - specifically the playback was choppy, varying from momentary freeze-up of playback to visibly accelerated scenes. After troubleshooting, the problem was discovered to be the onboard sound. Disabling onboard sound and installing a budget sound card cleared the problem right up and DVD playback is very smooth. Onboard video is great for 2D, and fair 3D for games and applications that do not require extreme framerates (i.e. deathmatch fps). Overall good value for a student system, mom and dad's web surfing station, or any other application where stability is more important than blinding performance.