Pros: Running this on an MSI k9a2 Platinum at 3.4. Ran as high as 3.5 stable with default settings on 1.5 bios. Runs everything I throw at it without a hitch.

Cons: H/T at 3600 mhz. Turned up to 4000 in bios, supposedly this also changes northbridge frequency (according to MSI support, haven't verified this), seemed to make a difference although I haven't benchmarked to verify. What the computer can do in the real world makes more difference to me than synthetic benchmarks, anyway.

Overall Review: Very good processor, especially for the money. My system: K9A2 Platinum, 940 Deneb @3.4, 8Gb GSkill @1066, Perc 5i w/ 4 73GB 15K Cheetahs raid0, WD 750GB SataII and 320 Barracuda for storage. This system FLIES in all respects. I can't imagine NEEDING anything more at present.

Pros: Guys, if I remember correctly, Asus supplies heat sinks for AMD, so its no wonder they look similar. On another note, the 80mm fan on this one probably will work quite a bit better than the small one on the AMD sink.

Cons: Too bad AMD doesn't supply their heat sinks with an 80mm fan like this one has. It might save some of us from needing to buy aftermarket fans for high end CPUs.

Pros: THESE ARE NOT SATA DRIVES!! Really! They are Serial Attached SCSI, and are NOT compliant with SATA controllers, even though the interface is similar, and SATA drives will connect to and work with SAS controllers. I suggest that anyone considering using SAS do some research, and take the time to understand the differences between the two. This will save you a bunch of bucks, if nothing else.

Cons: If you're planning on using these, you might as well budget for a hardware raid solution, or you will never get the most from them. The reason? PCI express offers a lot more throughput than software raid, and the better hardware controllers seem to be PCI express at the present.

Overall Review: I have 4 SAS drives on an MSI K9A2 Platinum, working through a Perc 5i controller. Originally I had a Raid0 with two of these on the onboard controller. This wasn't a lot better than two raptors on the same system. With the hardware Raid0 read and write speeds are approaching twice that of the raptors, and burst speeds are unreal. It depends on what you want, but two or three SAS drives for the OS plus larger SataII drives for storage, all on a hardware solution, is a hard system to beat. Plus, a lot of hardware solutions will interface up to 8 drives(or up to 32 if you're into backplanes). If you're into high end gaming, you will still have more(probably a lot more) into your video cards than your storage. Also, notice that the Perc 5i is not what I would call a high end solution, although it certainly is much better than software raid.

Pros: For you guys (and gals) running Dell stuff, don't ever (and I mean NEVER!!) expect non Dell certified hardware to work with Dell stuff!! If you buy stuff that's not from Dell's website, you are takng a big chance that it will NOT work with Dell Systems, and I'm talking about an 80% chance that it wont work. I'm not saying Dell is bad stuff, it isn't , it's just that it can be very finicky about any peripheral hardware that you might plug into it. If you want to buy nonbranded stuff, do your homework, cruise the website and learn what is working for others and what isn't, and be aware that nothing is certain when dealing with periheral components.

Cons: This is a nonissue in this review.

Overall Review: This is not a negative review for Dell. I work for the U.S. Government, and have use Dell computers extensively. They are good, solid computers, like most other major brands, but, like all others, they have their quirks. If you want to get the most out of them, get to know them intimately, do your home work, and either go to Dell for replacement parts or upgrades, or plan on spending a little bit of time figuring out what is likely to work. This is really no different than building a system from scratch. Even though you may have specific components certified for a particular, say, motherboard, individual components may have their own preferences. Just a word to the wise....

Pros: Reference my last review. For the record, I did buy this at Newegg, only "open box", which doesn't show on the review as being purchased at Newegg. I honestly can't remember the last item of electronic equipment I purchased somewhere else. Strangely, the box was still factory sealed, and all the contents were still sealed in their bags. Probably someone ordered it, then changed their mind about using it and never opened it. Oh, well, my gain, I guess.

Cons: No cons. I got a killer deal on it.

Overall Review: Get a good power supply. I'm presently taking my chances by using a cheapo power supply while counting my pennies for a new one. Voltages are pretty screwey, I'm not gonna mess with overvolting or any of that until I have a good PSU.

Pros: Set this board up with a 5400+, 2 gb of kingston (for now) and a 73 gb fujitsu sas drive. raised fsb to 215, got clock of 3.01 ghz. This thing flies! Initial impressions is that it runs much faster and smoother than my old (still my primary rig) 939 with 2 raid 0 raptors and 4800 X2 at 2.6 ghz. Still working on setup on this thing, but so far it works great.

Cons: I don't have another fujitsu hard drive laying around. I can't wait to see what this will do in Raid 0. By the way, the Promise controller IS bootable, you just have to play around some with drivers. I couldn't get windows xp home or pro to load with any drivers I could find, but xp 64 works like a charm.

Overall Review: I was going to use a Perc 5i controller on this, unfortunately the ram died on the card while I was messing around with it. It does work on this board, though, with pins b5 and b6, I believe it is, taped over. I bet this card would provide some awesome bandwith with 4 sas drives in raid 0.