Pros: -Comes with a backplate. -No coil whine. Very very quiet even at high temps. -Awesome aesthetics with lit up card logo on the side. -Epic SLi performance scaling. Best I have ever personally witnessed. (more on that in other thoughts) -Good temps for a single card. Shuts off fan when not needed and idles at ~50c. I have terrible A/C so my ambient is ~80F. Fan still didn't think it needed to kick on. I adjusted that. With the life claimed on these fans, why not?

Cons: -Card is 12" long. For me, not a HUGE deal but it was large enough in my full tower to keep me from using a standing tube reservoir. -ACX 2.0 runs great as a stand-alone card but add any more and temps go up quick. VERY quick. Even with proper spacing and pushing this card, the rest of the hardware will feel the heat despite how good your air flow is. I am temporarily running these this way just to see how they roll before my water cooling setup arrives in the mail. 85C top card and 65C bottom. Initially it isn't possible to install them in SLi with just 2 port spacing without removing the backplate on the bottom card. Not worth removing an egg, however. I know what this card is made for. I just wanted the EVGA backplate and that sweet SC lit up logo. All that said, the card has yet to throttle back. Nice! -Can only order 1 card at a time. Better price than other places, I guess. -One of the cards that showed up had a nasty smashed box. The outer shipping box was fine. This must have happened at newegg. :\ Careful, guys.

Overall Review: Upgrading from 2 old 4gb 670's and it was about time, I'd say. I steadily upgraded to a 6-core i7 and 32gb DDR4 and now of course, 2x 980ti's! I was getting 25fps in Witcher 3 all ultra except hairworks off. First 980ti showed up and I decided to plug in my 2560x1600 dell u3011. Got a SOLID avg 60 fps with dips no lower than 55. Zero screen tearing as well which I found amazing mixed with how pretty this IPS looks. Second card came in and my fps shot up to an avg of 85fps, peak 119 and lowest was 72! To me, this is a night and day type upgrade. I will get 4k as soon as I have the water cooling sorted out. With the 980ti out, it finally makes sense to go 4k for elite-class pc gamers but maybe not those with budget in mind. Even still, if you can manage to buy at least one card, I'm sure it can handle 4k at acceptable fps with some settings turned slightly down. That said, pretty games aren't everything, but I feel a LOT more immersed because of it. EVGA has NEVER let me down in over a decade. Thanks!

Pros: Has a lot of cool features in the bios and is pretty zippy. My first ASUS board that actually worked out of box with no repeat RMA's.

Cons: Sata III is false advertisement. Sure, it's there but it only goes a few mb/s over Sata II. What's the freakin' point?!?!

Overall Review: I'm not going to dump a fortune on LSI when I could use this RMA and the cost of LSI to just go to a new platform. This is easily my last ASUS product.

Pros: Was pretty quick when it worked.

Cons: Has always been really noisy. Died just after 2 years. Had about 1100mb loaded on there from video, music, games, family photos etc. All gone. Got pretty noisy, then slow then dead all in one day. Tried to recover what I could. No luck. :(

Overall Review: I've always been pretty happy with WD but I have a Hitachi 1tb I bought for cheap 7 years ago in the same system and it works fine to this day. Been reading a lot how WD is slipping. Time to move on I guess. Sad.

Pros: -Decent Aesthetics -Very quiet -Works with 2011v3...kind of

Cons: -The fan shroud blocks first DIMM slot on the right (or left, if you do a pull config) COMPLETELY on the MSI X99S plus. Why design it this way? It's already so large that it most likely won't fit in a lot of mid-towers and there is PLENTY of room in a full-tower. I still have a little over 2" between the top of the cooler and the case. -No installation instructions and I couldn't find any for the 2011v3 online. Typically for someone who knows what they are doing when it comes to building computers, it is still good to reference the intended instructions to make 100% sure you are doing it right. Now comes the 2011v3. It's quite a bit different. The spacers are useless and the long bolts BARELY bite into the backplate that is already on the motherboard. I Had to go to the hardware store and pick some longer ones up just to be sure. You have to be extra careful not to over-torque the bolts as they could lift the cooler off the cpu, bend the brackets or strip the bolts. I just went back and forth until the unit felt snug.

Overall Review: Newegg is fairly difficult to navigate on coolers, IMO. When you search by socket-type, it sets them up by what the category each cooler is designed for so you get a massive socket-type list! Wouldn't it be easier if you clicked on say '2011-v3' and BAM, all of the ones that work are there?! As far as the design goes, this cooler isn't specifically designed for this socket at all. Although it works, it's just barely. This was a very uncomfortable snag in my build. I've already got another one ordered elsewhere. My experience from a couple other big air coolers were that they were very close to block a DIMM slot so you couldn't have big flashy RAM. For me, I didn't care really care. This one flat-out blocks a DIMM slot completely on either side depending on a push or pull setup. I compared it to one of my older large coolers and even on the smaller socket types, it looks like it most likely will block a DIMM slot or be VERY close. Too close. All that nasty stuff said, I ran some stress tests on a 5820k stock. Highest temp on one of the cores was 62ºC. Comparatively, I ran a 3770k OC'd quite generously on big air and it never broke 65ºC. This is a bit discouraging but I cannot jump to conclusions as this newer cpu does run a little hotter but it is much larger so heat dissipation should be better. Not for me to really judge until I put another cooler on there and see what happens.

Pros: (gaming rig) -Features found only on more expensive boards -8x DDR4 slots -High end PCI-E setup -Tons of usb 3.0 -A lot of SATA connections and types -Awesome M.2 features I have yet to try out -Price -Informative setup guide -Came with tons of nice SATA cables -Plenty of fan pins -Onboard buttons(on/off, reset and O.C. Genie) with a clear cmos on the back (which I had to use) -Modern and simplified BIOS packed with a ton of feaures -Sexy aesthetics. This is probably one of the best looking boards I have owned. The 4 DIMM slots on either side of the CPU socket makes it look pretty unique as well

Cons: Nothing major. I set up some simple things in the BIOS to get this thing started and shortly after I updated the firmware which caused a scary boot loop. I shut it down and pressed the 'clear cmos' button on the back and viola! Fired right up and set everything back up again. No issues. Oh, it does only come with one flimsy SLi bridge

Overall Review: My brother spilled tea on his old 1366soc i7 PC I sold him that I had built a VERY long time ago and we couldn't find a motherboard for it. (Seriously, WTH?! They're selling dead ones for $200-300 on E.BAY!) I felt bad and kinda wanted to upgrade from my 3770k 670 SLi setup anyways as I had plans to go 4k so he can get my hand-me-downs. After cutting and slashing like a mad scientist, I plugged this beast back in. To my excitement, it booted flawlessly right to the BIOS. In my history of building computers, this has always been the most terrifying part of building. I've had a LOT of failures in the past (especially 1366 socket, UGH). Setup necessary BIOS features, installed an OS and all needed drivers then straight to stress testing. Parts: 5820k i7, 32gb G.Skill Ripjaws 4 2400mhz, Arctic Cooler i30, 500gb Samsung 850 EVO. Note: The i30 cooler completely blocks the first DIMM slot on the right after install so if you plan on filling up the lot of them, get something else. Once I got everything needed to run, I ran some stress tests trying to get some BSODs. None. CPU temps never got over 62C at base clock with unparked cores. The games I played seemed a lot smoother and loads faster. Haven't ran FPS on any of them yet but I can tell they are running at MAX well above 60fps with ZERO studder. Games (all on ultra@1080): Project CARS, GTA V, DiRT Rally so far. I work a LOT so I don't get to game like I used to. Like I said, I plan on going 4k. Still running the 2x SLi 4gb 670 SC and they're doing well enough for 1080. Tried them on my 1600p and they lag a bit. I'll either get a Titan X or a couple 980ti's when they hit with a good 4k monitor. I figure I'll be good for a few more years again. Kind of crazy that I'm going back to MSI after the old Pentium 4 days. Seeing high end features on a mid-end priced board seemed too good to be true but it seems I've hit the jackpot! And nearly a month later, this board receives the Editors Choice 2015 award on Tom's which made me feel that much better about my purchase. They have an extensive uber-nerd review if you need more help thinking about purchasing this board as I am just an average builder/gamer.

Pros: ☻Quiet operation (the fans pick up pretty good but I have an audio system + good headphones to easily drown it out). ☻Runs below 80C (top card) under heavy load for many hours w/ no O.C. to this day (haven't needed OC yet). ☻Not a single BSOD or any flaw of any kind. ☻No stuttering like some have complained about. ☻Handles all of the NVIDIA features and new technologies very well to this day. ☻Plenty of VRAM for 1600p (what I built it for) and mods galore. I've got my 60" LED hooked up to it too. ☻Set SLi up and forgot about it. Checked later and everything is still set up and running as it should be. No issues.

Cons: ☻256 bit ☻Cost but it has only come down $40 in 1.5 years, so I don't feel all bad.

Overall Review: I bought 2 of these cards over 1.5 years ago and this is merely an update. I built my computer around 1600p to handle everything I throw at it on ULTRA at reasonable fps and these cards do a great job running my Dell U3011. Crysis 3 ran around 45fps with dips as low as 22fps (very low but still playable). BF3 ran an average 80fps with dips as low as 55fps. Loved that game. Glitchfield 4 (I deleted that garbage and swore off DICE/EA forever) got slightly less fps but not much less. Hell, almost couldn't stay in a game long enough to really test it. I am loving how this setup runs and being able to compete very well in fps games at ULTRA 1600p is just a blast! I can see people behind a bush miles away better than I could in lower resolutions. Sometimes, it's a bit too much for my eyes to decipher in CQ situations but I have gotten used to it and did pretty well. As I plan on moving to 4k sometime later this year, I decided to pop in here an give this great card another lookover for anyone somehow interested in buying good but not new and know that longevity is a non-issue with these cards. EVGA has NEVER let me down in well over a decade of service. Current Setup: -------------------- i7 3770K no O.C. (got a nice 2x 240mm fan cooler on it) 1050w Corsair PSU (I've got a 7 year old 750 Corsair PSU still rocking beautifully to this day) ASRock z77 (eth port died) 2x EVGA 670's 4gb SoundBlaster Z (great headphone amp/DAC) CM Storm Stryker case SSD/HDD combo 16gb Corsair XMS3 1600 Dell U3011 2560 x 1600 (beautiful display)