Pros: excellent cooling, low profile

Cons: none

Overall Review: I'm probably the only idiot out there who bought the Lian Li PC-C60B HTPC case along with the Xigmatek Gaia cooler (which I've used for other standard PC builds with excellent results) and, 3/4 of the way into the build, realized that the Gaia protrudes a few centimeters above the top of the Lian Li case. The Intel cooler that came with the i5-2500k chip was the only other cooler I had available -- 41 C temp at idle. Didn't even try to load it. This Cooler Master GeminII is the answer. Although it's a pain to remove everything, pull out the motherboard, and install this cooler, this process only took 30 minutes, and if the computer's life is extended by even a day, this will have been worth it. Aside from how much quieter this cooler is (and no annoying whine like the Intel stock cooler), at idle 32 C with the fan speed at 658 RPM, and under Prime95 full load, max temp 57 C with fan at 882 RPM. Noise at the case under full load 59 dB, can't hear it at all more than 2 meters away.

Pros: excellent cooling -- 26 degrees on idle, 41 degrees at full load with Prime95, E8400, Asus P5Q Turbo

Cons: The shroud, a circular piece of plastic that's supposed to be removed prior to installation (placed to protect the heat sink during shipment), is attached with two small screws that must have been machine-tightened, as there was absolutely no way to budge them with a manual screwdriver. I had to use a wire cutter to break the shroud and remove it.

Overall Review: Why can't Zalman get everything right? I've built several systems with the 9500 and the 9700, and the cooling has always been great, but there's always something that isn't right. With the new 9900 mounting bracket, they've fixed the cumbersome and difficult attachment mechanism of the cooler to the motherboard, and they finally have a 4-pin controller for the CPU fan so the motherboard can control the fan speed. Why couldn't they find a way to attach the shroud with a plastic clasp that can be easily removed?

Pros: soundless, very fast

Cons: dead as a brick after only 10 months -- I shut down my system with the Windows shut down button, and 2 hours later tried to reboot, only to have the SSD completely dead. I swapped SATA and power cables, and tried to have the drive recognized in a different computer, all to no avail. I have my whole house surge protected, and have a high-end UPS/surge protector into which this computer was plugged.

Overall Review: Forget about the 1.5 million hours mean time to failure. There's a good article on Tom's Hardware about the real-world failure rate of the SSDs, and it's probably worse than mechanical hard drives. I had no idea this would be the case when I installed this Intel 510, which I specifically bought because of its reputation as being the most reliable of the SSDs out there at the time. I've replaced it now with a Samsung 830 and I'm crossing my fingers.

Pros: nice rubber case

Cons: I have three Patriot Xporter XT drives, two 16GB and one 8GB. All have been fine with light, careful use for several months. Now, early January 2012, they have all stopped working at the same time. In different computers running Windows 7 pro 64 bit, plugging the drives into the USB ports (either on the front panel, through an extender cable, or directly into the ports on the motherboard) results in an extended period where the LED light blinks rapidly 7-9 times, and then goes out. This cycle repeats for about a minute, and then the warning "You need to format the disc in drive E: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?" If I say yes, I get the message that "Format did not complete successfully", and in Disc Management, the drive is listed as 14.91 GB RAW, and I cannot format it or otherwise use it.

Overall Review: What's up with this? Did Patriot build something into each drive that delivers obsolescence as soon as the calendar strikes 2012? I can understand one drive going bad, this kind of thing happens. But all three at the same time? And please, Patriot, don't tell me about the low level format tool that you'll make available to me if I send you my email address. You shouldn't be making devices that need any such thing. And even if that tool works, what about data on the drive that is destroyed with formatting? I've had no problems at all with drives from other manufacturers, and I won't be using Patriot again.

Pros: Fourth time I've built with this board, the other three went fine

Cons: Bad CMOS out of the box. On first power up, two beeps indicating a CMOS checksum or load error. I tried everything I could find in the troubleshooting section of the manual and everything I could find online: pulled one of the two RAM sticks, tried to load the fail-safe BIOS defaults, pulled the onboard battery and shorted the CMOS reset pins for three hours, pulled and remounted every component on the board, all to no avail.

Overall Review: What an incredible waste of time and effort. I could have built ten systems in the time I wasted isolating the problem, investigating and trying solutions on this, all because they send a board out of the factory with a bad CMOS. What's up with quality control? RMA, here we come. Hope the Asus board I ordered to replace this works the first time.