Pros: 1. 12 cores = lots of Si for the dollar. 2. Expandable, 4 socket motherboards for 48 cores! 3. Upgradable, AMD has socket G34 on their roadmap for several years, you should be able to upgrade to the 8/16 core 32nm Bulldozers with just a BIOS update for a possible 64 cores on a single board!

Cons: There is not much available in the way of motherboards right now but that problem should resolve in the next few months. Even finding a heat sink can be difficult, Newegg only had one active cooler when I bought mine.

Overall Review: I bought this CPU to crunch on BOINC. I am running it on a Supermicro H8SGL with 16 GB of Kingston ECC ram. The system loaded Linux and BIONC without any problems and has been crunching for a week without a hiccup. After more boards become available I plan to move it to a two or four socket board. I have to admit that my first PC was based on an AMD 386DX-40 so I have always been a fan of AMD’s price performance ratio. That being said, I have built hundreds of systems over the years with both AMD and Intel CPUs and they both have their own advantages and disadvantages. Both companies are making a great product today depending on what you want to do and that just benefits the consumer even more.

Pros: Smallest GTX 460 you can buy right now so the Palit cards are nice if you can’t fit big card in your case.

Cons: The fan is loud and the heat sink is just a hunk of aluminum, the reference design actually has a much better cooler. Also, my card was not clocked as advertised but that is not a big deal as most people will be playing with their clock speeds anyway.

Overall Review: If you really do not have the space for a larger card, get the Sonic Platinum, it has a much better heat sink. Otherwise, there are much better cards here on Newegg. Thank you Newegg for the no hassle RMA. Palit shame on you for putting such an awful cooler on a “sonic” edition card, this has been the first and last time I will try one of your products.

Pros: None so far

Cons: Like the previous poster it is nearly impossible to mount to socket 2011. Very strange overheating issues. When I feel the aluminum block that sits directly on top of the heat pipes it is too hot to touch so I know the heat sink is in good contact with the CPU. I remounted just to make sure. For some reason the heat pipes coming out of the block are cool even with the CPU at 77c.

Pros: I have two of these boards and they have been rock solid for over a year running both Linux and Win7 24/7. Support multiple GPUs. Room for the Nocturna 92mm CPU coolers which run silent at full load.

Cons: A little pricey for no on board raid.

Overall Review: With a lot of Bios searching I found out why my boards were not booting with my new 6274s. I am running non ECC ram in my machines and it seems that the 2005 bios automatically defaults to ECC ram. For some reason the boards would boot this way with the 6174s but not the 6274. After disabling ECC ram the system is now running great with my 6274s! I have been very happy with these motherboards and might just by another for the 6172s that now have no home.

Pros: I have been running two of these boards for about a year now and they have been rock solid.

Cons: Just received two 6274s and could not get them to work. I upgraded to bios 2005 and the system would post and recognize the new CPUs however the system reboots as soon as Win7 or Ubuntu tries to load. This occurred with both my boards. Also when I put my 6174s back in the same thing would happen. When I went back to the 0902 bios both boards booted just fine.

Overall Review: These have otherwise been great boards, they crunch 24/7 at 98% load with no problems. This board also allows you to run dual GPUs with an extra space for good cooling. I am going to contact ASUS tech support, hopefully the new CPUs won't collect dust for too long.

Pros: Price?

Cons: I initially bought two dimms and one was bad. I have now been sent two bad dimms in a row for a total of three out of four defective modules. Hopefully the next one will work, I am getting tired of shipping these back.

Overall Review: The only reason for two eggs is that Kingston does have quick RMA service and they cross ship also. I also bought a two pack of these same modules from newegg and they have both worked fine. I guess you could say then that only three out of six of the modules have been defective. Either way you look at it though that is pretty bad. In many years of building systems this is actually the first time I have ever used Kingston memory. Yep, you guessed it! It will definitely be the last.