Pros: Samsung Magician. This program is simply the most amazing program I've seen to come with an SSD. It has over-provisioning, the ability to clear 'deleted' data at will for chipsets that don't support TRIM, secure erase, a tab that shows all the Windows settings that affect SSD performance and simple configurations that quickly alter those Windows settings to get the most out of your SSD with minimal hassle. Those are all great, but the truly ingenious software bundled with Samsung Magician is RAPID Mode. When RAPID Mode was first released, it was released only for the Evo, but Samsung now offers the capability to Pro series drives. In a nutshell, it uses a self-adjusted amount of RAM to cache writes and then write them to the SSD. It's like SSD caching for a HDD, but instead, it's RAMDisk caching for an SSD. By enabling this feature, Read speeds can exceed 1000 MB/s and Write speeds can exceed 600 MB/s. It uses a maximum of 2gb of RAM, and if you have enough RAM to allow it to always use 2gb, it will perform as well as RAID 0 for reading and writing moderately large, often-used programs. Aside from the software, Samsung developed the entire package in house. The memory, the controller, the firmware, the software, everything. It's a well-built and implemented product, even without Samsung Magician and RAPID Mode, it rivals the best SSDs on the market in synthetic tests, it's made by a well-known and highly regarded company, and comes with a 5 year warranty. It's a great product but it's amazing for any computer running Windows XP or another OS that can run Samsung Magician and doesn't support TRIM, and it's also amazing for any system with 2gb of unused RAM at any given moment.

Cons: The 128gb model has lower performance than the 256+gb models. The read speed is almost negligible, but the write and IOPS are noticeably lower than the larger drives. If you plan on running 2 128gb disks in RAID 0, I'd recommend looking at benchmarks of a 256gb drive with RAPID Mode enabled. Setting up RAID 0 is a hassle for SSDs (finding the F6 driver, having a chipset that supports TRIM and RAID 0 for SSDs, the added risk of data loss, etc.) Only one SSD can have RAPID Mode enabled, if you decide to use multiple drives. I can see why this is the case, as each SSD would require its own allocation of RAM and CPU load to function, but it'd be lovely if they'd support multiple instances of RAPID Mode for computers that could support it (I have a 3930k 6 core with hyperthreading, and 16gb 1866 RAM @ 8-8-8-24, so I have resources to throw around). Samsung Magician software can't be used with other manufacturer's SSDs. It won't even give you SMART data of other drives, or even tell you if it is running at 6gb/s or 3gb/s. I can see why, but it'd be nice if it had that functionality. I'm really just splitting hairs here, most of my gripes are very minor.

Overall Review: I upgraded an older SSD with about half the performance of this drive. 350mb read, 175mb write. I bought 2 of these at 128gb and was contemplating running RAID 0 as they were shipping. However, I have the Intel X79 chipset, and support for RAID 0 and TRIM for SSDs is incredibly vague for this chipset (I've read that an updated BIOS and updated chipset drivers can support it, and in other places I have read otherwise). In the end, I just ran them without a RAID configuration and enabled RAPID Mode on the OS drive. I was very pleasantly surprised at the performance gain on benchmarks, and I saved a lot of hassle and frustration of trying to run SSDs in RAID 0 on my chipset.

Pros: It holds two 2.5 drives in one 3.5 bay. Build quality is nice, although it's somewhat flimsy and bendable. I'd much rather have that than brittle, so it's not really a bad thing at all. It's a great product for keeping the number of occupied 3.5 bays low, or for the simplicity of combining 2 disks in raid on one mounting kit.

Cons: Due to how close the top drive sits above the bottom drive, it's almost physically impossible to use 2 90 degree SATA cables. The top one needs to be a straight connector. It's also almost physically impossible to use 2 SATA power connectors if they are both on the middle of the SATA power cable. The top one needs to use the very last SATA power connector on the cable (as it has no wires running out through it, it is thinner), so positioning the mounting kit in relation to other drives must be taken into consideration before installation. If this product were easy to use with any SATA power/data cables, this would easily get 5 eggs.

Overall Review: Before installing, try to find a location for it above all the other drives, so installing SATA power cables is much easier (see Cons... if you try putting it in the middle of all the drives, you might end up wasting 20 minutes, then moving this to the top of the drives). Also, having a straight SATA data cable is almost mandatory; in order to make using this hassle-free, I'd recommend having a straight SATA cable on hand during installation.

Pros: Fans look nice - very high quality. Black sleeved wiring, rubber pads on the corners, fan housing has notches to guide air, and fan blades have notches to accomodate the notches on the fan housing. Fan blades also have grooves. These fans are not only distinctive due to color, but also due to construction. Fans come with a set of 4 regular screws, and 4 rubber case mounts. Not a big pro for most people, but me, I lose case fan screws all the time, so it's pretty awesome. The fans are for the most part silent. If you get enough of them you'll hear them, but they are still pretty quiet. They have a decent amount of pressure and airflow to use on radiators for mild and moderate overclocks. If airflow is critical for your application, these won't push enough air. I've used these on intake, exhaust, pull on radiator, and they all work well. I'd say build quality is great - sample size is low, but I haven't had a problem with any fans yet.

Cons: The plastic used in the fan housing is a bit more flexible than a lot of other fans - it's very easy to overtorque them to the point of bending the mounting points of the fan. After a year or two, the plastic gets a bit stiffer and less flexible, and trying to torque them up to the same amount of tightness can crack the plastic of the mounting points. Don't try to hulk smash torque them to a radiator or something, once they are a few turns past snug, that should be good. Don't worry too much about vibrations loosening the screws and overtorque them until they bend as a result. Their maximum airflow is rather low. Sometimes, I temporarily want more airflow (dialing in an overclock etc), but these cap out rather low. I wouldn't dock an egg over this, as their intended application is not maximum airflow, but it's a con for anyone wanting a versatile fan. These put out decent airflow, and great airflow per decibel, but these don't put out maximum airflow. These are also fairly expensive. The quality and performance for their intended application makes it worth it, though. If just any fan will work, these might not be good enough to justify the cost. There are a lot of louder fans that push the same CFM for less price.

Overall Review: In a negative pressure case, these shine. Due to positioning of computers, the intakes are usually facing the user. Putting some of these on intakes, and some louder and higher CFM fans on exhaust is a great setup and balance of airflow and noise. These are also pretty good for radiators. They have a decent amount of static pressure, and a decent amount of airflow. For large overclocks, these won't be able to push enough air to dissipate heat quickly enough, but for most overclocks, these are great for radiators. For most non-overclocked applications, these can be thrown everywhere and set to 60% fan speed. The only audible things will be the PSU and CPU fans.

Pros: 3930k: 6 physical cores. Hyperthreading. 2mb L3 cache per core. X79 chipset: Quad Channel RAM support. 40 PCI-E 3.0 lanes. This is a beast. It's great at everything but really shines when all cores can see 100% load. Video/Audio editing and format conversion is where this trounces quad-core processors. The processor and chipset is also suited for high-end gaming, but I cover that in the 'cons' and 'other thoughts'.

Cons: 130w TDP on an IHS the same size as <100w TDP quad core processors. This thing puts out heat. If overclocking past 4.2GHz, a closed-loop liquid cooler or custom loop is almost mandatory. Throw an extra 50 bucks into the 3930k build, because that's how much more you are apt to spend on cooling compared to an Ivy Bridge quad core with an air cooler. Considering a comparable Ivy Bridge quad core has almost the same footprint and almost 40% less heat to dissipate, it's a pretty accurate assessment. It doesn't stop at the cooler - an LGA2011 costs incrementally more than a comparable LGA 1150-1156 build. Higher wattage power supply, 4 DIMMs of RAM for Quad Channel, higher cost for the motherboard, etc etc. It's gonna cost more, and a lot of people would argue that it isn't necessarily a con (as it's just the nature of the beast, LGA2011 being the top-of-the-line), and I'd agree on every point. However, for anyone with money looking to build the fastest and most awe-inspiring rig may want to think about this for a minute: if the computer isn't going to be seeing heavy CPU load numbers, it's a waste. It's wasted money, and it's wasted overclocking overhead in the form of heat. A 4770k build has 4 cores with the same L3 cache per core, same hyperthreading, same IHS size, and an added benefit of less generated heat. The chipset can support Tri-SLI at PCI-E 3.0 without bottlenecking, and with an added benefit of being cheaper. If you're looking to build a 4k beast of a machine, LGA2011 might just lead you astray, because that's money spent that could be thrown towards another 780 Ti/290x, and it's a monumental task trying to get to 4.8GHz on a 3930k/4930k while trying to keep core temps under 75 with a reasonable amount of fan noise.

Overall Review: My other thoughts kind of spilled into the cons, but if you go this route, you won't be disappointed. Trying to keep cost and heat in check might be a chore, but the 3930k/4930k put down the kind of numbers that will keep it useful for years. I built my rig back in March 2012, and I'm getting the itch to build a newer system, but when I look around, the top-of-the-line is still on the same level as the 3930k. That's why it gets 5 stars. Sure, it's expensive and it's more difficult to overclock than a quad core (anyone remember the Core 2 Duos being cheaper and easier to overclock than the Q6600? This is it all over again!), but at the end of the day, like the Q6600, building a system around this chip is building a system that will last at least a couple cycles of new CPUs. In the end, it's overkill in a lot of situations but the price isn't 'not worth it' territory... It's just that other CPUs might be a better fit for a specific build. One thing is for sure: this CPU and chipset will be crunching numbers and playing games for years.

Pros: Build quality is great. Knobs are sturdy, device is hefty. Software consists of the device drivers and a program to adjust buffer size, sample rate can be adjusted in Windows Sound. 2 balanced outs, 4 unbalanced RCA outs, headphone monitor. Easy to set up and run to a mixer or a stereo receiver. 1 MIDI in makes this great for use with a keyboard and a DAW. Very low latency. Monitor knob at front controls volume through the outputs, headphone knob adjusts headphone volume - if the device is within arm's reach, it makes for a great sound card. Just plug in to USB, download drivers, run some RCA cables to stereo receivers, and plug heaphones into headphone monitor jack. Setup is fairly easy.

Cons: When plugged in to USB 3.0, it will potentially randomly cut out, cause blue screens, and cause DAWs to crash. If you plug into USB 3.0 and experience latency/stability/sound quality issues with this, try plugging it in to a USB 2.0 port and restarting your system before further troubleshooting. Headphone monitor jack works well with most headphones, but high-impedance drivers on some studio monitor headphones may benefit from a standalone headphone amp.

Overall Review: Music plays clearly - less static and other interference when compared to onboard sound and many PCI soundcards mainly due to the simple fact that the 2i4 is outside the case and has less EMI within proximity to it. <5ms latency in DAWs seems possible in most cases - running 88.2KHz in Ableton Live 8.2.2 with an Intel Core i7 3930k @ 4.7GHz and 16gb 1866 Quad Channel RAM allows me 3ms latency while CPU rarely exceeds 50%. Most quad channel processors should be able to cut latency down to around that level and not have sound quality issues due to CPU load. This includes many laptops. Due to size and latency, this may work rather well for DJs that use DAWs.

Pros: Pros: This thing delivers. The reviews are all true. Idling at 27-21C right now with fans on low. Room temp is 16C. 3930k @ 4.2GHz, 1.31v (processor power management is kicking it down to 1.2GHz, 0.88v). Load : Linx, 6 threads, max memory, tops out at 63C with fans on medium. Fans on high let me run Linx for about 5 minutes @ 4.6GHz, 1.35v until 3 cores hit 70.

Cons: Con: Only one con. The Corsair Link software is bloated. It's 100+mb of RAM and for some odd reason when it is running, it puts a load on the GPU. Also, right clicking the notification icon and selecting a new fan speed profile will open the Corsair Link software window. I wish they'd come out with a small software solution about the same size, footprint, and functionality as MSI Afterburner, it'll probably get better as they patch it up but right now it's kind of 'meh'.

Overall Review: Pre-applied thermal paste works. I used it on my 3930k. It's a little smaller than the heatspreader for the 3930k/3960x/4930k/4960x but it works well. If you wanna go push-pull, use all the long bolts to secure the radiator+ pull fans to the case, then creatively use the little bolts to get the push fans on the radiator. You know how fans have the 4 holes on each side, but on each side, there's a gap between the hole above and below? Put the bolt in between the 2 holes, then use the top hole to put the screwdriver in and screw it in! A lot of people say 'just use 4 of the long bolts on the top and 4 of the long bolts on the bottom', but doing this gets all 8 bolts on each side! The Y splitters aren't female - they have plastic shrouds over the male plugs. Pull the plastic off and there are the plugs! You can bypass the Corsair Link software if you run your fans straight to the motherboard (CPU and CPU1/CHA FAN 1), the USB cable for Corsair Link requires a USB header. You can skip that if you want, you just have to adjust the fan speed in BIOS. Pump is powered by SATA, the CPU wire only sends PWM information from the pump to the computer. It should be running 2000+ RPM all the time as long as it's powered by SATA line. If you are going the "no Corsair Link route", hook the fan's CPU wire up to monitor the pump speed to ensure that it's working or run a program that will shutdown the computer in the event of overheating, and you're set.