Pros: ECC memory, PCIe3, 6 SATA III + RAID, USB3, IPMI/headless/VGA, 5 FAN headers all 4 pin PWM, 2 NIC's + IPMI NIC, support for Xeon v3 CPU's. Responsive support.

Cons: Trouble with low RPM FAN's. BIOS upgrade via IPMI requires an extra $20 license. Poor documentation you have to call support.

Overall Review: Great server/workstation board. Here some info people may find useful: You can use any fan header for hooking up the CPU fan. The FAN speed is configurable via IPMI but has limitations. It assumes you are running server fans (high RPM). If you install low RPM high efficiency fans (for a server hosted in an small business office) the fan controller thinks the fans are not functioning properly and is spinning up *all* fans to max RPM. Then the fans RPM decreases because the temps were low anyway and controller thinks again that the fans are malfunctioning and spins them up to max. This will go on forever. There is no way to adjust the lower limit for the fan alert in IPMI. Support did not have any solution. The fix for me was to change all the high efficiency fans from PWM (4 pin) to 3 pin by using the fan's included adapters (Noctua). The fans still change speed with the load but because of the open feedback loop the controller stopped spinning them up to max. I should have take one start from the review for the fan issue but given the workaround I'll leave it in. BUT for someone planning to use the IPMI alerts for monitoring in a datacenter this is a deal breaker. When upgrading the BIOS and/or IPMI firmware make sure you first upgrade the BIOS and then the firmware. If not you may brick your board. If you want to use the IPMI to remotely upgrade your BIOS you need to buy a license. The part number you need is SFT-OOB-LIC. Search on Inet for it. It took more than one week to get it via email when there is not shipping involved. Add to this that this is an additional $20 instead of being included with he board. You do not have to buy IPMI software to get to the IPMI UI. Just set the IPMI NIC IP address via BIOS and then just go to http://<yourIpmiNicAddress>. If you want to get the remote console working you will have to install Java.

Pros: None

Cons: Were do I start: 1. Even after setup the driver is not installed. And so this is useless. 2. No driver signing. Common ASUS you are not a small little shop so you cannot afford a certificate. 3. Install requires reboot. Why? This is Win7 not XP. Asus, fire your contractors and get someone that knows what it is doing. 4. I could not verify this as on my computer is not working at all but people report is as unreliable. To have to plug/unplug to make it work is just not acceptable. The people with laptops may be fine (althoug most laptops these days have BT inside already). But crawling under the desk is not fun. If I want exercise I go to the club not under my desk. By today standards this is junk. It is a shame that Asus has its name on this. I guess they do not care anymore. No wonder they pushing it so much ($10 instant discount plus $5 MIR).

Overall Review: It took ages for this to arrive via DHL from CA to WA. It would have arrrived in half time with First Class mail at the same cost. This is one of the worst money spent ever. I guess 4 starts on NewEgg does not mean anything these days. IMPORTANT: before you buy make sure you look at how many people give this 1 star: %22%, and 1+2 stars: 29%!

Pros: All that you need in a server CPU and none that you do not need

Cons: None

Overall Review: Use this with a Supermicro Motherboard Ultra ATX DDR3 1600 LGA 1150 MBD-X10SLH-F-O mobo.

Pros: Up to 13 drives: 2 SSD on the bottom (with custom bracket to hold to each other), 6x 3.5 bays, 5x 3.5" bays (with a iStarUSA BPU-350SATA to convert 3x 5.25" bays into 5x 3.5" bays) Fit ATX mobo Plenty of ventilation front access to the drives small footprint for the capacity

Cons: none

Overall Review: This an excellent case for a home server or an workstation. I have the Illusion variant of this case used as a workstation. For my home server I picked this one as I wanted to replace all the fans with quiet fans for my 24x7 server. I can get 13 drives (2 are SSD's at the bottom). That is plenty of storage. Unlike other cases this has a clean simple exterior design making it compact on the outside for the inside space is offers.

Pros: Price only if you are happy with underperforming and wasting days and nights to try make it work. Listed as compatible by Gigabyte.

Cons: It runs at lower speed than advertise. Changing the settings to force it run at 1600 creates system instability. The system is not even OC. It is not a clear memory failure so I wasted a lot of time trying to see what drivers are creating issues.

Overall Review: So I'm using this with GA-X58A-UD3R, i7 950, EVGA 01G-P3-1452-TR, powered by OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ700MXSP. Even if the memory passes memtest the system running clean Win7 64bit will lock the UI for periods of time. Once it starts doing it I'll have to reboot. I get no more than 2 hours of use before it happens, usually much less. I bought OCZ because I used them before. I should not trust Gigabyte or OCZ and use something else. I should have read the reviews complaining about it. Because of all the issues and troubleshooting I also lost the rebate deadline (21 days instead of 30) so now I'm $30 less and stuck with this product.

Pros: - inside or ouside the case use - all black NOTE: in the pictures looks like some of the slots are white plastic. That is only a light reflection. They are black. The only white piece is the central prong in the USB connector. - can be used with only one cable, the one for the reader. - blue light goes whel on a HTPC - light goes off when computer is off or at sleep - light flashes when card is accessed - different icons on Explorer for easy idintification - not trying to be a USB hub/firewire/etc.

Cons: - LED light is very bright. This can be fixed easely taking the front cover off and applying some white nail color on the LED tip. You adjust the brightness using different tint or tickness. If you don't like it just wipe it off before it's fully dry or use some nail polish. Try again using another tint. I just used solid white, as translucent was not enough. - on Vista 64 you'll need to do some manual settings if you want the custom icons for the drives. See below for details.

Overall Review: The reader cable is the one that brings the LED on. I use it external to my HTPC. Goes nicelly finish, blue LED, and size, fixed to the case with double sided tape. I use a Nippon Labs 3 ft black USB cable. About Vista 64: When you connect the reader Vista will add it automatically for you and it is ready to use. The only missing thing are the custom icons for the new drives. Get teh drivers from AFT site. To install you must be logged on as an admin, run the setup as usual, install the driver even if it is not signed (Vista will prompt you about that). After all this you need to go in Control Panel\Device Manager find the reader under USB devices node, open properties, go to the driver tab, and if the driver is not Microsoft driver, use the rollback button to rollback the driver to the previous one (MS one). That's all.