Pros: Works great, cheap enough.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: I wanted to have 16gigs in my computer, but I was having issues with AMD drivers on my wife's GPU (HD Radeon 6870). Replacing her RAM with (2) of these fixed that issue, so now she and I are both sharing 8gigs each. I may just buy another set and have both of us running 16gig.

Pros: Great card, took everything I could throw at it and never asked for anything in return.

Cons: Cooler fan died after 1 year of purchase. I currently have contacted XFX for a replacement cooler, it's now 2 WEEKS later and I still don't have a finished support ticket (Just 1 response asking if I want to replace it or receive a new cooler to replace myself). After waiting this long just for a reply, there's no way I'm waiting to have this replaced by them. After looking at more reviews, this seems to be a very common issue with this card.

Overall Review: I've owned other XFX products before, and the cooler fans have always been an issue. I get about a year out of every one before they die out. I've never had a problem with XFX support until this one, so I'm not sure if this will keep me from buying XFX from now on. I did, however, buy a replacement card (Gigabyte 7870) to give another brand a shot. The real reason I bought the other card though is because even after waiting 9 days for XFX tech support to finish my stupid support ticket, this new card will STILL be here first! That's bad. Real bad... Again, I don't know if it's enough to make me never buy XFX again, but another similar support issue in the future definitely would be. Who can typically afford to go 2 weeks + without a closed support ticket, let alone without a GPU? Thankfully I don't mind the noise and can let a box fan take over for the GPU fan while I wait. What a turnoff though...

Pros: Great board. Tons of hookups, everything is labeled clearly, everything went smooth. First build to go without a single hitch. Love the 90 degree SATA hookups. I've heard a few people complain about them, but they made cable management a breeze (for the SATA at least). 5 PCI-E slots is overkill for my needs, but I'd rather have too many than not enough. Considering I'm only using one at the moment I could theoretically have four video cards with room to spare.

Cons: Socket placement. I didn't take off an egg for this only because it seems to be common on EVERY board nowadays. With after market heat sinks, video cards, you name it, getting larger nowadays it seems like board manufacturers would space things a little better. My heat sink just barely cleared the RAM (any closer and they'd be touching). Also, my video card almost covers up the next PCI-E slot. Since I'm only running one video card this isn't an issue to me, but later on down the line when I go to upgrade to a second one, I'm concerned about how it will all go together. Check the picture really quick... the PCI-E slot just about where it's marked "msi" is the one my video card is in. See how far away the next slot is? Sure, I figured I'd be covering the PCI slot, but the next PCI-E slot? I guess I would have preferred four PCI-E slots with two of them another inch further apart.

Overall Review: I'm not into manufacturing boards or anything but it seems to me like a an extra inch between slots would go a mile for anyone looking to build a gaming or video editing rig. Also, I don't understand why the 8-pin connector (for power) is always up by the I/O connections. My power supply's cable is as tight as it can be pulled without starting to put pressure on any of the connections. I was nervous at first, but it ended up being a "perfect" fit. I would have preferred an extra inch or two of cable to have to hide. Sidenote: I had to volunteer my girlfriend to hook up the 8 pin connector because my hand wouldn't fit between the heat sink and the back of the case. I'm not a big guy, but I didn't want to risk pushing on the heat sink. A motherboard tray wouldn't have fixed the issue due to how tight the cable is already. This may have just been the case with my particular setup, but I figured it was worth noting.

Pros: Nice spacious case. It will fit anything you decide to throw inside it. A multitude of huge fans provides tons of air flow. Everything you need in a case is here.

Cons: All of the controls and I/O ports are on the top, and since this case isn't going to fit inside, or underneath, any standard size desk, the controls being on the top is a little poor planned in my opinion.

Overall Review: My after market heat sink (CM Hyper 212+) sits about 1/4" from the side fan of the case, but it's a huge heat sink so I'm not surprised.

Pros: Everything. It's exactly what it's supposed to be and then some. This went into my budget gaming build and has blown through everything I threw at it like it wasn't even there. Bottom Line: I built a budget computer that acts like I spent three times as much, and a lot of that is due to this processor.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: I haven't overclocked anything yet, and after running this, I may not need to. I'm thoroughly impressed. With my aftermarket cooler (CM Hyper 212+) it runs a little warmer than I'd like (32C under normal loads) but given all of the other reviews with the same setup I'm chalking that up to user error. It was my first time using thermal paste as stock cooling has always been sufficient enough for my needs until now. There's no comparison with Intel at this price range either. Once you hit the i7 processors Intel wins hands down, but if you're checking out i7's, then you're probably not looking at a budget build. I've heard a lot of reviews saying to grab the 955 and OC it to match this one, but for $20 more you can not only run higher clock speeds stock with this one, but from what I've read it runs more stable than the 955 when overclocked.