Pros: -AM4 Compatible; Mounts on my MSI Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard -Keeps my R5 1600X cool -Has a nice finish and looks good in my rig -Pre-applied thermal paste

Cons: -Mounting the fan needs to be easier. The thin metal retainers kept falling off as I tried to install the fan on the heat sink. A plastic retainer on the fan would be much better. Knocked an egg off for being cheap.

Overall Review: I was a bit disappointed when I installed this and learned that the fan would be taking in air from either the top of the case, or sucking it off the back of my video card. The result from either configuration means that hot air gets sucked into the cooler, and keeps temperatures up. While this is my fault for not double checking how the mounting brackets were set on the motherboard, it would be nice if the cooler was designed with a bracket that allowed omni-directional placement of either then fan or the heat sink itself.

Pros: -Attractive Design; -Plenty of SATA ports for my needs; -BIOS options have semi-descent descriptions; -BIOS user interface is not generic (It's not good, but I'll give points for trying something different);

Cons: -BIOS user interface is confusing and can be difficult to use; -Stability issues since I've bought it; -Included software is buggy and resource heavy; -Eventually became unusable for me (see other thoughts); -EZ Debug Lights (see other thoughts); -I spent over $180 for a paperweight;

Overall Review: I was initially very excited when I got the motherboard. I'm not a huge fan of the "LED ON ALL THE THINGS", but I do find the way it's used on this motherboard appealing. Plenty of expansion for the future, and I've needed it in past builds. The BIOS interface is confusing to use, but I did like how it was at least an attempt at doing something different. I think it's supposed to be mouse friendly, but I like navigating by keyboard, which this UI is not keyboard-nav friendly. Some of the options in the BIOS had descriptions as to what they do, which some motherboards do, but many don't. I liked that this one had some on some of the less popular options (Spread Spectrum for example). I've had stability issues since I've had it, but chalked it up to this being a new and developing platform. Boot ups were slow, the system (despite being new) crawled and hiccuped when opening programs. BIOS updates seemed to bring more stability to the system, but I still couldn't touch the RAM or SMT without issues. Boot times finally got to be reasonable, but then I started having black screen issues. The final straw broke when the system refused to boot past the boot logo after a restart. The EZ debug LED on the motherboard for VGA was lit, which made me think it was the video card. Three perfectly working cards later, in different PCI-e slots and it still gave me the the red LED (mind you the graphics cards are perfectly fine in other systems). It wouldn't even post, just the LED. Cold boots seemed more successful, but only after clearing the CMOS and even then it would restart after it successfully POSTed. I submitted the motherboard for RMA and after $30 for shipping, plus three weeks of waiting, and I got a motherboard. Actually, it's the EXACT same motherboard, serial number and all! They even included the SAME ISSUE I WAS HAVING! Wow, just wow. It's like they didn't do anything at all. This was my first time dipping into the MSI product pool: I've a graphics card, and motherboard. Right now, I'm livid. I really want my money back, but the best I'm going to get is a daft bot-reply to this review, "Oh, we're sorry, blah blah-blah blah blaah." TL;DR: Save yourself the frustration: Buy something else. As for me, I'm stuck with a paperweight. I'm not spending anymore money boomeranging this defective board.

Overall Review: I've had zero problems with this drive since I bought it. My only complaint would be heat, but I bought an aftermarket heat spreader that sufficiently dropped temps down about 5c-7c.

Pros: -Supports Freesync, which makes a huge difference when on older systems that can't push higher frames -Looks great -8GB VRAM helps to future proof my system -Smokes my old R9 270 in older games -Runs newer games over 60fps on a 2560x1080 Ultrawide screen -Cooler, quieter, and more power efficient than my last GPU -Driver Updates have only added performance and features

Cons: -The LEDs are only adjustable through MSI's Gamming App, which I'm not a fan of -I paid more than I would've liked (bought this as soon as it came out, which was priced nearly $300)

Overall Review: This is a great card. I got this when I was running an older Phenom II X4 system, and freesync finally made gaming on lower specs bearable. Occasional dips into the 30s or less would be noticable, but most of the time the avg FPS was within my monitors freesync range. I finally was able to become immersed in my games and not having the illusion broken by screen tearing or terrible averages. I purposely waited to review this card until recently when I upgraded to a Ryzen 5 1600X; Wow, I can see this card's true potential. Games that I could barely run are now running on high at awesome frame rates. I can run The Witcher 3 at 75fps on high where as I was only getting 37fps on low-medium settings with my rig before. The same goes for GTAV; 40fps on low settings to 80 fps on high settings. It's truely night and day; I didn't want to write a review until I could use this card at it's fullest. I'm so happy with the performance, I can forget that I overpaid a little since I purchased this. Plus, driver updates have only done this card justice. Apparently, the longer I have this card, the better it performs; I can't be mad about that.

Pros: -Native Quadcore -Can still play new games on reduced settings -Can Multitask with today's software -Stable OC at 3.8Ghz -Stable underclock of 2.5ghz @ 1.1625V

Cons: -Lack of SSE4.2 instruction set makes some games incompatible -Lack of AVX instruction set makes some software incompatible -Outperformed by low end CPUs offered today

Overall Review: This was a fantastic value and competitive chip for its time. Even with age, this CPU can still do quite a lot, but its blown away by even bottom tier CPUs offered today. This was my daily driver until I recently when I upgraded to Ryzen. After six years this was still able to handle gaming; albeit, those games were running 60fps only after reducing settings to low and usually included some frame drops down into the 20s. Obviously, I can't recommend it anymore, but it was worth recommending years ago when it was still on sale.

Pros: -Still running; -Still receiving driver updates; -Performance improving year over year; -Handles modern games on medium to high settings (depending on the game of course); -Quieter than the 6850 I owned before it;

Cons: -Runs warmer than I'd prefer; -The screen flickers on occassion;. I thought it was a driver issue, but different configurations and roll backs didn't fix it. Fiddling the HDMI or DVI cord near the card's port would affect it. Different cords didn't fix the issue.