Joined on 05/19/04
A stunning case
Pros: Having been a Lian-Li fanboy for half a decade, I decided to try this Antec case for a media center I built. I purchased it because it was on sale. I was *stunned* by the quality. Instead of being performance-focused like the Lian-Li giant-heatsink-in-a-case, the Antec was set up like a luxury auto - with fans already built in, with speed controls for each of them, and hard drive cages that felt like German engineering.
Cons: None that I could find. If you're into overclocking, the plastic case might turn you off. It's a little small on the depth side - I was barely able to fit a 9600 GT video card into the case with two hard drive in the front cage. It took some finagling, but it fit.
Overall Review: Love this case. It's also quite handsome.
Overkill in a good way
Pros: This mainboard has so many features it's ridiculous. If you're an extreme overclocker, or just a regular user wanting a stable system, this board has something for you. ASUS makes quality products and backs them up. If I have an issue three years down the line with this mainboard, I am a phone call away from a replacement. ASUS spares no effort to make their customers happy.
Cons: Pricey. There's really no reason for this board to be so expensive. It certainly has a strong feature set that no one will use 100% of. Also, it doesn't come with a complete set of headers for things like USB, ESATA, or additional Firewire ports. At this pricepoint it should come with every header, Wireless-N and then some.
Overall Review: The system build went together flawlessly and booted the first time with no issues. The RAM was set up perfectly, the drives were all found in the order I connected them, and the system burned in for two weeks without a single issue. This is why I won't buy anything but ASUS now.
Cheap. Fast. Great.
Pros: This drive is lightning fast compared to a PATA drive (but not so much compared to another SATA3 drive!). Also, it's stupidly cheap and makes a great OS drive.
Cons: Small capacity by today's standards.
Overall Review: This drive worked great as an OS/Apps drive. If you had a couple, you could work out something where you were mirroring the drives, I guess.
Nice mainboard for cheap.
Pros: This is a fantastic mainboard for the price. 1600MHz support, PCI-E slots, and a decent complement of features. I put a C2D E8400 into it, and it fired right up with no issues. Later versions of BIOS seem to have fixed earlier instability issues.
Cons: This board is not an overclocker. It's also no good for memory with other-than-standard timing - my OCZ 4-4-4-15 RAM runs great, but I don't have the option of changing the timings. That said, it runs like a champ at stock settings.
Overall Review: Cheap, cheap, cheap - and stable.
Nice work, SS.
Pros: It's silent. I can't hear it. That's the way I want it. No power glitches sent to the computer mainboard or peripherals. That's the way it's supposed to work. My point: it works, flawlessly. I haven't put a voltmeter on the rails or anything, but it's stable enough to leave my media machine on for days at a time.
Cons: Pricey. It was a little more expensive than what I wanted to pay. For the watts, it should be under $50; but the extra quality was worth it.
Blistering
Pros: Blazing card - just short of GTX performance for half the cost. Included games are a nice bonus too - who does that anymore? I will double this card up for SLI soon.
Cons: Uses power cable. One of the bundled games (King Kong) uses StarForce copy protection and was installed before I realized it. They should disclose that (or better yet, put in a different game).