Pros: When I was looking at M.2 drives I didn't have a ton of money, but I wanted something that's good in quality, speed, size and price. I looked at Intel's new M.2 which also has a great price, but what steered me away was it's a TLC drive and it doesn't have a heat sink. I do a lot of data transferring and I want something that would hold up under that, the Plextor is MLC and MLC drives tend to be better with data transferring and stability. Well Newegg had the 512 model on sale with a heat sink and a promo code to top it off so I said I'll go for it. So far I have no regrets at all. I'm using a Gigabyte UD3 Z170 which has 2 M.2 slots so I didn't have to worry about a video card getting in the way when installing it. My motherboard recognized it upon boot up and it was easy to install an OS on and fast too. Boot times were reduced, programs load almost twice as fast as they did with my Sandisk Ultra II and contrary to what some people say the drive doesn't seem to get hot and bottleneck from long transfers.

Cons: If you have only one M.2 port you may have an issue installing the drive if you have a discrete video card blocking that slot. It's not as fast the Samsung 950s or 960s, but price per performance it's fast enough for me. A lot of people say to run M.2s in a Raid 0, but for every M.2 drive you use you're also consuming more PCI Express bandwidth and two of these in Raid wouldn't be cost effective because even PCI Express 3.0x4 has it's limitations. If you're looking for something with great storage capacity and you don't do long large file transfers then you're better off going for the Intel because it too has a 5 year warranty like the Plextor. Update 11/10/16 Some issues and tips to share I encountered. 1. If you have 2 M.2 ports good odds one of them is bound to the SATA ports. I encountered this when I installed my drive in the wrong port and it will disable 4 SATA ports so unless you plan on running 2 of these in a RAID 0 you'll lose 4 SATA port for running 1 of these drive and 5 SATA port for running 2 of these in a RAID 0 if you have 2. Since I'm running 1 drive I used the port designated to the PCIE slots so I didn't lose any SATA ports. Not all motherboards have 2 M.2 ports and even the ones that only have 1 port that port isn't guarantied to use the PCIE bandwidth and may only use the SATA bandwidth so check with your motherboard before installing this M.2 drive. 2. To run this as a boot drive and set up 2 or more separate drives in RAID you probably will encounter an issue with the M.2 drive not even posting after setting up a RAID array. The best way to do this is to setup a UEFI USB Windows drive with your current motherboard RAID/AHCI drivers, boot into BIOS, Setting will be setup mode, windows 8/10 mode, CSM disabled, SATA status RAID, save your setting, then restart your system and go back into BIOS. Now go to Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology, setup whatever RAID you want ,create a volume, after that save your setting and reset. Now go into your boot menu(my would be pressing F12), you should see your Windows UEFI USB drive so select that drive and boot from it. Once in Windows setup before you install your OS use you custom settings, hit load drivers, search your USB drive for your RAID/AHCI drivers, select that folder and after it's installed your M.2 driver should show up. From there press new, format the drive, format your RAID drives as well, install the OS on the M.2 and your good to go. 3. So Far this drive pretty much only support Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 that I know of. there could be a way to run it on Windows 7, nut we'll have to wait for possible BIOS updates and drives to come out. 4. For this drive being out almost two months there's still no software nor firmware updates yet. This is the most disappointing thing about this M.2 drive, please get in the ball Plextor so your competition doesn't leave you in the dusk.

Overall Review: Overall I get close the Samsung's performance at closer to the Intel's price. Here's my specs Intel I7 6700K 16GB G-Skill DDR4 2133 EVGA SSC GTX 970 Corsair H100i Coller Fractal Design R4 Full Tower Gigabyte UD3 Z170 WD HDD 1TB Black Edition Sandisk Ultral II 480 Crystal Disk Mark results: * MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s] * KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2475.204 MB/s Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1278.288 MB/s Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 804.515 MB/s [196414.8 IOPS] Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 610.922 MB/s [149150.9 IOPS] Sequential Read (T= 1) : 1778.968 MB/s Sequential Write (T= 1) : 1339.483 MB/s Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 40.887 MB/s [ 9982.2 IOPS] Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 170.107 MB/s [ 41530.0 IOPS] Test : 1024 MiB [C: 6.3% (29.9/476.9 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec] Date : 2016/10/05 0:07:11 OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 10586] (x64). I hope this review helps some people because not many people have done a review of the M.2. It's a great M.2 for price to performance ratio.

Pros: Works well with SSD and laptop HDD drives. Easy to install drives in this unit. Light weight. Fair price(but not great). USB 3.0, 2.0 and 1.1 usable.

Cons: This unit is made of plastic so it's durability is questionable. When fitting a laptop HDD drive into this unit it didn't fit at the one end very well and I had problems closing this unit up because of that. The USB cord is built in so unless you have an extension USB cord it's limited on what you can SAFELY plug this unit into.

Overall Review: Since I have an extension USB cord, it's easy to install and remove drives I find it to be usable. If I buy another USB enclosure I'll fork more money and get a much better one next time. It does the job, but if you pay a little more I feel there are much better options for the price.

Pros: It's a good game that now has a great cable series on HBO. The graphics are stunning, the dialogue is good, it's has a good story and the gameplay is solid.

Cons: Be warned though if you have a GPU with less than 8gb of VRAM you will run into issues playing at higher resolutions and textures. I got this game with an RX 6800 so at 1440p I don't have these issues even at ultra quality, but lower VRAM GPUs most likely will even with the patches for 8gb Nvidia GPUs because the textures don't load in properly.

Overall Review: It a good game if you have a powerful PC to run it, if not I'd advise to turn down your settings.

Pros: Pros, 1. 16gb of VRAM. 2. 128mb of Infinity cache. 3. A great triple fan cooling solution that keeps this GPU cool. 4. Relatively quiet performance. 5. No noticeable coil whine. 6. Comes with a antisag bracket. 7. Good overclocking and undervolting headroom. 8. Plays about any modern triple A title at 1440p and a lot of modern triple A title at 4k(but not all). 9. I got this on sale for 450 with a free copy of TLOU included so the price was great. 10. For pure rasterization performance this GPU beats out the RTX 3070 and RTX 3070 TI in most titles. Ironically this GPU for rasterization keeps up with the new RTX 4070 fairly well and offers a good value when compared, but it's still beaten by the RTX 4070. 11. The AMD Adrenalin software so modern and easy to use. 12. Unlike a lot of people I haven't had really any driver issues, IMO I think AMD really improved their drivers a lot from the past few years. 13. FSR at 4k quality IMO competes well with DLSS and is very usable with this GPU. 14. It's fairly energy efficient.

Cons: Cons to be fair, 1. The driver of course aren't as good nor updated as much as Nvidia. 2. It doesn't have modern features like DLSS 3.0 frame generation(much less any DLSS), AVI encoding and the newest generation of Ray Tracing. 3. It does worse than Nvidia in Ray Tracing, productivity applications on average and DLSS is a better far more adopted upscaler than FSR. 4. Nvidia tends to be a little more energy efficient especially with their new RTX 4000 series. 5. This is a big GPU so make sure you have enough room and airflow in your case. 6. Don't cheap out on a power supply, I'd recommend personally 750+ Gold. If your power supply is too low and not so good with it's protections you risk crashes and power spikes that can do damage. 7. Lastly this GPU should be pair with a decent CPU(R7 5800X3D or a I5 13600KF for example) and good RAM(32gb DDR 3600 CL16 minimum IMO) for get the most performance out it. Now if you're playing at 1440p or above the CPU shouldn't need to be as strong. Just saying :).

Overall Review: With everything said and done listing the pros and cons overall I find this for my wants and needs to be a great GPU. Now if I wanted the eye candy of DLSS, the better Ray Tracing, Path Tracing, AVI encoding, the NVENC encoder, I was into game streaming or did a lor of video rendering with productivity applications I'd be a lot more inclined to go with Nvidia. Since I'm just a gamer that cares mostly about value, pure rasterized performance and the ability to run games in the future I went with AMD because they offered double the VRAM at a much lower cost than Nvidia was willing to do. A lot of modern games are using more VRAM texture packs and Ray Tracing, what good is a slightly more power GPU if it doesn't have the VRAM to store those texture packs and the Ray Tracing data? Upscaling and fake frames can only do so much.

Pros: 1. Performs great at 1080p and 1440p games, even most of them can do high refresh rate for competitive 1st person shooters. 2. Performs between an RTX 3070 and RTX 3070 TI for more standard rasterized games at 1080p. 3. Can do 4k at medium high and max setting on most modern triple A titles ATM. 4. Costs less than the comparable performing RTX 3070 by a decent margin. 5. I got a instant promo code that took this GPU to the same MSRP as the original RX 6700 XT yet I'm getting a better product. 6. This is the XFX QUIK319, but performs a lot like the MERC319. 7. Faster memory for better gaming and application headroom.

Cons: 1. The RX 6700 XT can be found for $30 to $50 cheaper and performs very close and can be overclocked more. 2. AMD decided to limit the overclocking potential so it's not able to compete with it's own RX 6800. 3. Doesn't have DLSS or the better NVENC encoder. 4. The Ray Tracing support isn't nearly as good as Nvidia. 5. No RGB lighting, but not a con for me. 6. Some RX 6750 XT can found at $480 without using promo codes so the prices may come down a bit. 7. Doesn't tend to do as well as Nvidia at 4k on most game titles.

Overall Review: My RTX 2070 warranty was long expired and was starting to glitch on me so I was looking for a new GPU, the issue was nothing was affordable nor in stock. The performance I get is a good bit better than RTX 2070 I had and I find it to go better with my system since I'm running an X570 motherboard with a 5900X. With new GPUs coming soon I wasn't going to fall in the trap of buying an $800 to $1200 GPU that would lose most of it's value fast. I believe I'll hang onto this GPU for a while because it more than does what I want and unlike Nvidia for the price point I got an actual useful 12gb GPU(unlike the overpriced 3060 where the VRAM makes little difference) so this should last me a few years. I don't want to risk another cryprocraze, an artificial shortage by AMD and Nvidia or inflated GPU prices because these companies know they can get away with it.

Pros: 1. Inexpensive for a 3 pack of RGB fans. 2. Great a using as case fans. 3. Comes with a controller that allows you to install a ARGB connection to your motherboard so you can synchronize all your lighting.

Cons: 1. Only 2 fan speeds that that can only be controlled from the separate controller. You lose the controller you're out of luck. 2. It's noisy on the highest speed so I'd run these fan at the lowest speed. 3. They would be horrible to use as AIO cooler fans.

Overall Review: If you're like myself and have a big case with plenty of room these are great case fan at low speed. If you're looking for extreme performance that's quieter I'd recommend buyer another brand.

I received my GPU 3 days late. If I was to buy again I would've chose the faster shipping and paid the extra money. The GPU was packaged well and I didn't have any performance issues with it. I got a QUIK319 which isn't much different than a MERC319. If you don't want to pay for the lighting the minimal extra speed which an overclock will make both GPUs equal save your money and buy the QUIK model instead.

First off the wait time to get my RAM was horrible, the shipping takes forever because this company is from China and that's where they ship from. The RAM was advertised as DDR 3600 CL16-19-19-36. When I got the box the memory timings read DDR4 3600 CL16-20-20-38, but when I put the memory in the system timing under XMP read CL18-22-22-42. Corsair from the forums I just read no longer make a CL16-19-19-36 for their Vengeance LPX line of RAM. I'm not sending this RAM back because I'd have to wait forever for a refund(if I even got one) and they want a restock fee for their mistakes, that's just horrible business practices. Please people do not order from this company and pay the extra money for a better brand of RAM like G-Skill Trident-V that's shipped from the USA.

The video worked as is and was brand so I registered it. It works great for a system that only need a basic display video card. It has HDMI, DVI and VGA ports as well as low profile brackets. The only drawbacks are I wouldn't try to game with the video card at all, it runs poor on a 4K TV and the last part has nothing to do with the video card itself, but if you order from Platinum Micro your shipping will be very slow and you'll be waiting a while.