Pros: - Very quiet - Good airflow - Front door masks a lot of fan noise - Still has a pair of 5.25" bays - Easy-access air filters (both from front) - Looks nice and understated, but somehow slightly menacing - Many thoughtful design touches

Cons: - 3.5" drive trays do not adequately isolate HDD vibration, and fit slightly loose - Black-on-black design makes front ports tough to see in dim lighting - Pointless fan control system (I let my motherboard handle that)

Overall Review: As a long-time Antec fan, I was disappointed by their late 2015 crop of “quiet” cases. My prior one was the P183 (which I couldn’t find anywhere), so I began to look for alternatives. I first found the NXZT H630, which in turn led me to find and settle on the Fractal Designs Devine R5. The most important consideration: it is indeed very quiet; even quieter than the P183. 140mm is a great fan size, and the 2 fans that come with the case are much quieter than I was expecting. I also added an Antec True Quiet 140 to the front for a little more airflow. The one significant disappointment of the case: the 3.5” drive bays. There are a lot of them, and they all use removable metal trays, which at first glance seems fantastic... except that the implementation is poor. The silicon grommets are very thin and incapable of completely isolating the vibration of my 4 Seagate 7200RPM hard drives. With those four drives installed at the bottom, the entire vertical drive cage begins to vibrate, vibration that’s transmitted into the case itself. Worse, any unused drive trays or trays with lightweight objects installed (ie. SSD drives) begin to vibrate audibly against the actual cage – because the trays and the spring locking mechanisms are slightly sloppy fits. I had to spend a fair bit of time wedging thin felt bumpers into strategic places to stop this loose metal-on-metal contact. Granted, I’ve managed to eliminate the buzzing vibration, if not the actual vibration – but the same drives in my P183 were rock solid. I suspect the much thicker silicon grommets and far sturdier cage and tray design helped prevent any vibration. So, one thing I’d like Fractal Designs to do is find some way to improve their 3.5” cage system. Thicker grommets, tighter tolerences, sturdier locking mechanism. Another would be to improve their 5.25” drive system. Considering the fancy locking mechanism on the plastic blanks, the fact that you have to slide a drive in and screw it directly to the case like any $20 ATX case, seems out of character with all those other thoughtful details. Also, how about a soft LED light to illuminate the interior of the front USB ports? The understated all-black design looks killer, but under my desk it becomes a featureless black hole that absorbs ambient light – and I literally have to use a flashlight to find the USB ports! Overall, I’m satisfied with R5. It’s well built, roomy (considering it’s a few inches shorter than the P183), and had many nice design touches that allowed me to route cables neater than I’ve ever been able to do before. Love the 2 easy-access air filters, the Velcro straps on the back of the motherboard tray, all the rubber grommets, and the fact that the design isn’t... well, bizarre and/or just plain garish like so many high-end cases. There’s always room for improvement, but there’s nothing about the current design that makes me wish I’d bought anything else. Recommended.

Pros: Purchased in December 2009 for a low-use PC for my father, it worked just fine as a DVD drive; mostly reading with the occasional writing. Bought it because it was a Plextor - the best - and I've been using Plextor since SCSI caddy-based CD-ROM days with zero issues.

Cons: All the drive had to do is sit there in the system and wait for the occasional use... but it wasn't even practical for that. You see, every time the PC powers on or wakes up from sleep, the drive makes a loud double-grunt noise as it checks for media (it's somewhat quieter if there's media in the drive). This is a common thing for drives to do, usually most noticeable on laptops, but this is the very first desktop drive I've had that actually did this. And it's loud. For a drive that advertises how quiet it is, this is unacceptable.

Overall Review: Did I mention that this grunting noise is LOUD? And annoying? Made me jump every time it did that when I was in the room doing something else for a month? Doesn't seem like such a big deal at first, and it probably doesn't seem like a big deal to you readers, but after more than a year of it doing this multiple times a day, it was just no longer acceptable for its job of sitting there, waiting for the occasional use. Building a new system for myself, I AVOIDED Plextor because of this annoying drive, and bought an LG 10X BD. It's completely silent at power on. In fact, I liked it so much I noticed that there was a new 12X model available, bought that, and swapped out the 10X in my system and put that in my father's system. Now his system is completely quiet with no annoying noises in the middle of the night when Windows 7 decides it's going to power on to do something.

Pros: 32gb kit for a decent price Moderately low profile Doesn't mess around with the BCLK Works just like it should

Cons: Not as low profile as it could be Bizarrely marketed solely for the Z170

Overall Review: I got this for an emergency computer build... and chose it primarily because it was one of the few 32gb kits I could pick up in person at the time. Newegg advertises it for the Z170 and X99, but G.Skill is very specific that it's only for the Z170 and doesn't even qualify it on any X99 boards... and I have no idea why. This is a 4 module kit, and works perfectly fine in my Asus X99 Sabertooth board using the default XMP profile. Rock solid stability with everything I've thrown at it. Note that I'm not overclocking the memory and cannot rate it on that, but see no reason why it'd do any worse than the older modules with the jagged heatsinks..

Pros: * 24 gigabit ports at a very reasonable price. * Built-in power supply with a real cord. * Ports and LEDs on one side, power supply on the other (although whether this is good or not will depend on your situation). * Comes with feet and rack-mount ears. * No cooling fan (my old 16-port gigabit switch had a fan that would come on occasionally). * Compact, heavy, seems well-built.

Cons: Current hardware version seems possibly cost-reduced, hopefully it still works as well. Main differences are a redesigned LED array, and larger vents in the metal housing. It still weighs a ton and *seems* to be a quality product.

Overall Review: I purchased this to replace an old 3Com 16-port gigabit switch, simply because I was re-doing my network and wanted a switch with both ports and LEDs on the front. As a bonus this exactly matched the physical size of my new D-Link dual-WAN router. Current shipping hardware version E1 is no longer as pictured. Version C1 (and perhaps D1?) shows a total of 48 LEDs, 12 ports in one row and 12 ports in the second row, each port with LEDs for link and activity. The unit I received has a very compact 6 by 4 array of 24 LEDs, one LED for each port serving double-duty as both link and activity. The single LED works fine, but the main issue is that the 6x4 array does not in any way match the actual physical arrangement of ports, not even vaguely, so to check something you have to match up LED number with port number; there's no quick reference like the original design. This is obviously a cost reduction change; I'm hoping that nothing else has happened to reduce quality or performance.

Pros: Works perfectly with a Microsoft Natural Keyboard (from 1994) on a modern USB-only PC with Windows 7 64-bit.

Cons: This wasn't the first one I bought.

Overall Review: Originally I bought another StarTech product, the USB2PS2 (which has a big beige box). Alas, that worked very poorly in games - it had issues with holding down multiple keys, as well as a bit of lag. This one, however, works perfectly fine - no lag, no key holding problems.

Pros: After buying a USB-only PC, I was highly interested in keeping my ancient PS2-only Microsoft Natural Keyboard in service. Not the oddball Elite, or the multimedia key Pro, but the "original" gigantic model from 1994 that has served me as writer/programmer very well all these years. After reading a lot of reviews listing various problems with these adapters, but very little on this model, I bought this one based on the fact that it was the most expensive, and seemed to have excellent compatibility with a wide range of systems. On Windows 7 64-bit it installed fine.

Cons: At first everything seemed to work. But then I noticed some things. * There seems to be a tiny amount of lag when quickly switching from holding one key to another, such as surfing through program code with the arrow keys. It felt like it went a line or two farther than I actually held the key for. * The killer for me, it absolutely does not work in games. If I hold a key and then press and release any other key while still holding the first key, after a few seconds the first key stops being held. For example, in a game I might be walking forward by holding "W" or "Up Arrow". Then, while walking forward, I might want to straffe right by pressing "D" or "Right Arrow" for a second while walking forward. With this converter, 2-5 seconds after releasing "right", the "up" command would stop being sent even thought the key is still being held down. I would have to release and re-press the key to continue walking forward.

Overall Review: After this failure I dug out my backup Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000, but after a couple weeks of use I wasn't completely happy with the feel (after spending 11 or 12 years with the original), so I picked up a few other PS2 to USB converters to see if any worked better. Another cheaper model from StarTech actually works perfectly: the USBPS2PC. No discernable lag, and no gaming issues.