Pros: Coming from a 22" Samsung 226BW which has a broken power inverter and being forced to use my 5 year old 40" Samsung 1080p LCDTV for several months, this monitor has exceptional colors and celerity. Videos, text, all of it looks crisp and clear. Monitor is sturdy, it has good up and down movement (my chair sits lower than he table so I needed negative adjustment). Appears to have good color reproduction (not a professional so YMMV). Uses a laptop style power brick which lowers the monitor weight and makes it easier to have the cord run behind desk. The viewing angles are good and there is minimal bleed. The LED makes this awesome, it is very bright, lightweight and very thin. Uses very minimal power, especially compared to my 40" LCD tube (which runs about 150-220w I believe) and way cooler (could feel the heat off my TV).
Cons: As other said the speakers are nothing to write home about. I've been trying to setup the pass through for the head phones but haven't had much luck. Touch controls on the stand and can be hard to reach. There is some minor ghosting when gaming. Not enough to bother me, I am a gamer but it isnt enough of an issue to dock it for it (it is an IPS and some ghosting at 7ms is expected).
Overall Review: I got this on sale during the sales event. For 250 it is a good solid main monitor. Some people may not be used to the dot pich, but coming from a 40" at 1080p, this 27" is a dog send. Came shipped in the original box which was sturdy, and well designed. Will probably keep it to transport in that. NO DEAD PIXELS! Cannot stress how much that made me happy. Overall for the price I paid for this IPS monitor I am very happy with it. I would feel between my price and 275 it is a good deal. If I were to spend more I'd try to find an IPS monitor that had the same benefits as this monitor but with lower response time for little less ghosting. I'm currently also stuck on 60mhz refresh rate (though I thought I saw it support 75mhz) that may also fix the issue.
Pros: Cheap, functional, and I love the placement of the side buttons. Nice color, works well in games. I can't stand a mouse that doesn't have the forward/back buttons on the left and right side of the mouse like this one does. For browsing and playing games I perfer these buttons to any other ones.
Cons: none really, maybe extra long card?
Overall Review: Replaced my same mouse which had a problem with the single left click button. If you did a single click, half the time it would do a double click, it was maddness. Seems a bit more accurate than the last mouse I had (which was an older 7 button gray MS mouse).
Pros: Cool! I would say an awesome HSF. My temps are 30C idle, 34/35C load in Crysis. Got my E8400 running 3.6ghz stock volts. The HSF is cold to the touch even running load (like how metal feels at room temp). Fits fine in P180 case! Even with 2x120x38mm fans.
Cons: Some of the screws are hard to do if you don't have a long screw driver (which I didn't).
Overall Review: Put in my P180 case with two Scythe KRAZE 120x38mm fans and it fits wonderfully. I have the top fan sucking air in, the back fan pulling air out and the Nirvana fan pushing air out. Even with the KRAZE fans at low settings it cools at above temps. Haven't even tried turning them up to max (which is like 160CFM).
Pros: FAST! So far I am very pleased with this card. I booted up Stalker, Fear, DarkPlaces Quake RTL, CS:S, Crysis Demo, and Call of Duty 4 and they all run like a champ. I knew getting this card how it would perform but I wasn't sure how well it was going to run Crysis, and the card didn't even flinch. Fear ran at 155FPS with 8x/16x enchanced AA and softshadows @ 155FPS 1680x1050. On CS:S benchmark when I turned off AA (but left 16x AF on) I had to up the max_fps limit to 999 cuz it was hitting the 300 max. Sapphire retail box has lots of goodies, PCI-E 6-8pin adapter (didnt need), Vantage, DVD software, etc. It was packed really well in the box.
Cons: A bit more expensive than I wanted. Was hoping MSRP would be a little less expensive (can't say how much apparently because of guidlines). Runs warm but that can be remedied with Fan speed fixes.
Overall Review: It's a good card I am very pleased, last thing I would want to do with it is get a water cooling for them. I don't have any problems with 'mircostutter' or passive CF working with this card. All games ran great. Guidlines really cap some of the all around things I want to say, but I suppose this isn't an indepth review.
Comments: Bought this board when it first came out with an Athlon 64 3000+ (Newcastle). First used Atlas Precision PC2100 (266mhz) 2x256mb (2-2-2-5) because I didnt have enough to upgrade to 1gb of DDR400, always preformed wonderfully. MSI has great updating software, Live <font>u</font>pdate 3, simply click on it and you can <font>u</font>pdate bios, chipset, sata controllers, the works. You have option to <font>u</font>pdate bios on bootup (with disk) or in Windows. I havent had a problem yet updating my bios 8 or so times in Windows and is much easier. I would give 5 stars but I recently upgraded to 2.20 bios and lost my ability to change ram timings (Cosair 2x512 DDR400 2-2-3-6). Tech support was helpful over email, and gave me new beta to try out (havent yet). Also when upgrading from 9500pro to 6800gt I lost 8x AGP (stuck at 4x), havent been able to fix this forever (tried everything).
Pros: None at the moment.
Cons: Was either shipped defective (new) and I didn't notice (thought I was having issues mounting) or it went bad shortly thereafter but not before the expired time to return to Newegg (had bad mobo and that took time to get right). Pump does not work properly. Overheating galore.
Overall Review: Dealing with Enermax support has been a hassle, at least through their site. First I was asking for solutions on why my temps were so high and instead they ignored my questions and just posted "how to do an RMA", including charging me $20 for a unit that was not functioning properly new. After eventually finding out that one hot pipe and one cold pipe means your pump isnt working correctly after exhaustive process (literally google wasn't helping with searching much), I requested an advance RMA (as I don't want to go without a computer for weeks after I just purchased it). They explained the RMA process again, in which I ask once more, how do I give them the credit card information to do the advance RMA. They once again just stated send us the unit and we will send you one back. This is on top of the fact of several back in forth where sentences don't even make grammatical sense such as this gem. "Try don't tighten up the spring screws of all four corners are secured. " It is like I'm working through google translate. This product seems like it should be the best cooler for TR, but as of right now I would take a less effective cooler from Corsair (whose products I've used and while they have failed twice over many years of use, their customer support has been leaps and bounds better) than a d*** paper weight I have now. Update 2nd unit failed for what I am guessing is the same issue as the first one. These units were shipped with defects causing a corrosion and buildup in the heat transfer plate. Took mine apart and it was the same as you can find on the internet. Gunked up and everything. Looks like the both the paint inside chipped off and the silicon pad that covers the fins on the heat transfer plate correded off and built up around the tranfer plate. This is why you start getting run away CPU temps even when idle. I would never buy an Enermax Product because of this shoddy worksmanship. It was one thing to get one of these new. It was another to make me pay $20 to get a new one, with the SAME ISSUE.