Pros: SAS is vastly superior to SATA in many ways- trust me, I maintain servers for a living. So when I found an ASUS motherboard with SAS capability, I jumped on the chance- though I was nervous about the noise a 15K drive makes. I was pleasantly surprised that this drive seems to almost have several different speeds depending on demand; under high stress you do hear a little bit of what sounds like sand in a vacuum cleaner, but other than that- it's pretty darn quiet. The drive is fast- though to really get the benefit of SAS it really should be in a RAID setup. I bought this as a single drive alternative to SSD, and I don't regret that decision. Write times are awesome, which is great for what I'm using it for (A/V editing). Now that I know how quiet it is, I'll probably get another and put it as RAID 0 and see how that performs (I'll check back). This is in a system with a 160GB SATA II drive and I can tell you that the speed difference is significant.

Cons: Cost, obviously. This isn't for the inexperienced builder or causal system user. Also, people should be aware that SAS interfaces are built around server platforms and always take longer to boot up. It's nothing to do with the drive but if you're looking for a fast boot, SAS is not your answer.

Overall Review: I don't know what the other reviewer's problem was trying to put a SAS drive in a SATA port, then blaming NewEgg for it. For all you round-peg-in-a-square-hole types out there- if you don't know what you're buying, don't buy it. SAS and SATA are NOT the same thing, even though they look similar. SAS interfaces on consumer-class motherboards is very rare (I have a ASUS P6T Deluxe with a Marvell SAS controller built-in). You can't magically make a 15K SATA drive no matter how hard you try. Personally, I'd rather see a drive at this price from Seagate for SAS, but so far I'm satisfied.

Pros: Heat spreaders are fairly effective, especially in a case like my cooler master with the 120mm fan right above the RAM. Mild Overclocking possible (though I can't say recommended just yet) Admirable community support forum that OCZ participates in quite actively- they really do seem to care about their product

Cons: I feel bad about rating this RAM because I'm not sure my problems were because of the RAM but rather a finicky first-generation motherboard. I have an ASUS P6T Deluxe (v1) with i7 920 (tried latest and last 3 BIOS revs) The problem is that I'd boot the board and only 8 GB was seen. Oddly enough it tested okay, which was puzzling. It took about 3 hours to finally see the issue. Sometimes the board would see a timing of 7-7-7-26, other times 9-9-9-24. I can't really tell if this is a problem with the RAM or the MoBo but once I put in the manual timings of 8-8-8-24 it snapped to attention and I was able to see all 12 GB. I haven't really done a lot to overclock the RAM itself but I have finally been able to OC my i7 to 3.2 GHz. Windows 7 x64 with 12GB RAM with an i7... I'm at 7.9 across the board now and this thing is FAST (I also have two 15K SAS drives in RAID 0)

Overall Review: I see a lot of comments about not buying in a set because of warranty issues- don't buy into this, it's actually really important with DDR3 RAM to have the RAM come from the same production run, or you may have issues. Time and again I see advice to go with the Platinum series instead of the gold, and I honestly wish I would have. If it wouldn't have been $50 to return the RAM, I would have done so. So- my advice is to CHECK THE BOARDS for both the RAM and the MoBo you are considering before you pony up the cash. Though DDR3 has gotten much cheaper, I bought at $340 which is still pretty substantial!

Pros: -Form factor and power for the size is great. This is a Co-Work office dream. -Built in Wi-FI worked (didn't test BT as of this writing) -VESA mounting -Intel Graphics work shockingly well for basic content creation and daily use -No lags in performance unlike it's i5 brethren

Cons: -The Fan. My lord, the Fan. Your options are to keep it at a constant baseline of going (noisy) or face random speeds of the fan ranging from a going concern to full on fan panic that will make you take your hands off the keyboard and beg forgiveness for pushing the limits. -Said limits can apparently be achieved by Facebook or running multiple workloads (the whole point of having an i7!) -No M.2/NVe support- you're stuck with 3 Gbps SATA and a single drive, apparently you can't mix mSATA and SATA at the same time even tho the interfaces are both there (haven't confirmed this but NUC for the win with the ability to run a SATA and M.2 at the same time) -Check the return guidelines before you buy- I got stuck with this unit which is a bummer. Was hoping to return it and wait for the new i7 NUC :-( -The power supply for this is a monster compared to the NUC.

Overall Review: -I bought this unit for use as a mobile lab to test Graphics Virtualization - if that is your intent be aware that there is only one graphics core available, which you'd be able to pass thru anyway... so, not sure what the point is just yet. -Put simply- go with the newer NUC i5 (as of this writing [4/16] the i7 hasn't been released). I bought the 615SYH at the same time as this one, and benchmarked the two against each other. The NUC outperformed the BRIX with only two cores and virtually no fan noise. This makes me think that the next generation of BRIX is going to be amazing.

Pros: Well, it was cheap

Cons: Screw hole alignment made mounting difficult, but the bigger problem for me is that it just stopped working entirely. As in, I plugged in a USB thumb drive, windows made it's 'disconnected device' sound and it was dead. And yes, the thumb drive works fine in other hubs. But it wasn't just the USB, all the drives stopped working. Skip this one. Not even worth the cost to send it back.

Pros: Just installed one of these in a client's Dell Inspiron 17 notebook. Before the upgrade the boot time for Windows 7 was about 1 min. After, about 20 seconds. Nice! Trim utility works as a scheduled task so I should be hands-off from this point forward. Didn't measure how much less power the drive uses but I'm assuming he'll get a few more minutes out of his battery. Performance on battery compared to spindle-based drive is very nice, especially with reading data. Good example of this is going thru photos with Picasa; read thru several gigabytes of photos in far less time than the previous drive.

Cons: Size is obviously less, and price is more... but c'mon. It's a laptop- who cares! 80GB is plenty, and you can use the old drive as a backup drive with a $10 external enclosure.

Overall Review: Can't speak to durability or anything like that just yet, but I'm assuming with Trim enabled the client will be better off long term.

Pros: As a person who builds systems on a near constant basis, I can tell you that this case is one of the best all-around performers for both general use and for overclocking. The entire front panel (including the drive bay covers) are steel mesh (not plastic) with backing that filters out dust while allowing plenty of air thru. With a single hard drive and adequate CPU cooling, the provided 12 cm fan is all you need. Airflow is outstanding and noise is minimal. The case itself is very solid, with only a few 'flimsy' areas. The look is better in person than in the pictures. Hardware install is easy. Really easy. I'm trying to convince my boss that we should switch to these cases instead of the Antec Solution series for our customer builds.

Cons: That said, I would add the caveat that if you have a lot of noisy internal components (northbridge, CPU, GPU or PS fans or the dreaded Maxtor Whine), this case doesn't isolate sound from the front from it's design. The front LED is too bright to be used in a bedroom - but some people like that sort of thing. I would rather have the front panel buttons recessed or the front panel IO up top instead of at the bottom - but that's no big deal.

Overall Review: ASUS K8N motherboard, Athlon 64 3200+ (overclocked to 2.6), eVGA 6800 GS AGP, 2 Seagate 80GB HDDs.