Pros: 1. Layout on this board is very roomy, lots of room for big coolers and jumbo graphics cards, but be warned the fit is tight the cards need to be rear exhausted, and not side exhausted. 2. The looks are clean but very nice looking, the blue really looks good with bright case lighting. 3. The features on this board are solid lots of options with regards to jumper settings to tweak performance, not to mention tons of ports for output, there is probably more items for output than most people have for use. 4. besides the jumpers and ports there are many lights on this board that are actually useful including pre power, memory and cpu, if the right set of lights are blinking you know everything is running good, if the wrong set is up and blinking then you know just by looking there is a problem. 5. Booted Fine out of the box with this config: Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz LGA 1155 Ram: CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 160

Cons: 1. The bios threw me for a loop, took a few rounds of restarts to figure out just when to hammer on del to get it read from keyboard found out that you really need the keyboard to be on USB slot 1 on the mobo for it to pick up- before it tries to book the disk 2. the sata controller comes in 3 flavors, 1 is Realteck one is Intel and one Marvel, all seem to work well but each one often hunts for the open slots to attempt to detect drives- even when ive specified what the boot drive is. 3. it should be noted that pending the size of your graphics cards you may not be able to use all the slots on the board- as the fan assems will block the slots. The board is a tight fit.

Overall Review: 1. some may complain as to the fit of slots on this board as I stated before the board is indeed roomy, Asus went to some extent to clear the path for the graphics cards to make it possible so that everything can fit. But the fit is going to be tight pending the manufacturer of your card. 2. I think its time for either the mobo makes to either force a larger mobo size or to create an initiative to bring down the size of graphics cards in general, so that more features and better cooling can be applied. 3. Another interesting feature of this board is a lit switch than can override the more common pin-out for you case push button, this is a really cool feature allows for easy posting and should your case button go bad your not in a world of pain. 4. with regards to sound, i have sound card system with a front doc so i did not use the sound on this mobo i just hardware disabled it in windows. By doing so i have not had any audio issues or conflicts.

Pros: 1. Very light weight 2. Very good performance overall temps are in the sub 30C. 2. Fan mounts are unique 3. Install was Amusing (see cons)

Cons: 1. This cooler because of the AMD mount holes required modification using a Dremel to fit the ASUS P8Z68 DELUXE/GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 Board. In short the AMD mount holes for the rear plate had to be cut off and ground down as they struck a mounting screw on the asus board, causing the cooler not to seat properly. The screw was located out side of the Intel mount are but in the exact area where the metal mount fin for the amd hole was. 2. The second major problem came when once i got it to seat right the barrel screws in my kit were not threaded correctly. I had to re-drill 2 of them as the threads on the bottom were malformed. 3. The fan shipped with my cooler had a loud bearing wine to it, so I swapped it out with a diff fan I had on hand. 4. There were 2 sets of instruction in the box, one for a cooler that was an older model (i guess) and one for mine.

Overall Review: The rear plate required an additional modification to fit the Asus board, I blame this mod on Asus more than I do XIGMATEK, I had to remove some foam to clear another mounting screw. However this screw was in the Intel mounting area, Asus should not have put it there or made it thinner. Overall, I love the cooler its performance is excellent and i love the fact its ultra light. But some of the problems I had could have been avoided. Instead of making a universal plate they should just have 2 plates, one intel, one amd. The amd mounts on this dual intel/amd plate effectively set you up for not having an Intel compliant cooler for an Intel install, as there in vastly different positions. It also would have been nice to have a few extra screw parts to avoid the re-drill. And the fan, well its a good thing I have many fans on hand. In short it cost me nothing to fix these issues but the kit was a disappointment for its install and any cost associated with the fan

Pros: clean install complete instruction manual complete kit, all parts given for the user to install. super quiet operation and compact. when tinkered with for performance it can deliver decent performance for entry level price.

Cons: Since the Intel bracket is plastic with fine metal threads its very easy to strip it out as you try to tighten the unit to the mobo, it also does not seem to tighten down very tightly, the pre-applied CPU grease is useless, as the unit is not in an air tight bag, so its all dried out. one of the fans in my kit at max rpm seems to be "whiny"

Overall Review: i bought this cooler to replace my metal fin fan cooler from xigmatek for giggles as more less im trying the concept of closed liquid cooling for the first time. the board is a LGA1155 with an Intel core i7 k2600 processor overall the install was very easy but the Intel bracket was problematic, its too easy to strip out. Luckily my metal mounting hardware bracket and all from xigmatek rose to the challenge and the corsair the cooler is now firmly attached. Also note: while the Intel bracket is plastic the AMD bracket is a nice chunk of polished metal Grease wise when i opened the box the grease looked dried out, but i gave it a shot anyway and it failed miserably (70c in a about 5 min or so) when i put it through prime95, took it out, cleaned up everything and applied some fresh arctic silver and poof its happy 20-40c and holding. so the fans with the kit are not bad fans but one of mine is a bit more noisy, now i will note that i opted to not use these fans and instead replaced them with some cougar vortexes for added performance. other things: the entire water block seems made out of plastic leaving me to wonder as to its longevity, summery: docking an egg for the Intel bracket as if you can make the amd one metal you can make the LGA one too, xigmatek sure did,

Pros: Backstory: For many years I was a user and consumer of Creative Audio Products, then finally one day I just said enough, - I basically gave up on consumer pc audio and was about to move to a professional RayDAT when I saw this product and decided to give it a shot. Unboxing/Install: Out of the box you are greeted with simple packaging and the card with its expansion in sealed anti static plastic. From there you open it and install it into the PCI slot,the expansion plugs into the bottom of the card with a cable. Then once that happens you get to open the manual and be greeted for once with instructions that make sense. For the drivers you have to navigate to there site as the disk drivers provided are out of date, no problem as the card is clearly listed and the package downloads and installs with out incident on windows 7 X64.

Cons: 1. Out Of Date Drivers on Disk 2. While I don't mind PCI- some new motherboards are starting to phase it out completely, be sure to check you have a slot for the card and a room for the expansion in your case

Overall Review: Some have complained about this device being PCI- If your not processing banks of 7.1 for studio use the card system will provide plenty of signal processing for analog or digital for your receiver or general use music processing deck. If you are wanting direct drive this card can do that but remember is not a receiver don't plan on direct driving anything more than a really nice pair of 5.1 headphones or 2 channel desk speakers. For my setup this card feeds digital output to a Onkyo receiver that powers 5.1, Use is for gaming and general AV stuff This card is one of last cards of its class before you start getting into items like RayDAT and HDSPe for any one not wanting to drop $1000 and cant stand Creative any longer HT Omega is the way to go.

Pros: Display = Very Bright- brilliant color- epic at all angles and lighting Lid Finish = brushed aluminum and a lit up MSI LOGO- NICE Hinge- nice and tight- holds the display well- mounts are solid Keyboard = back lit but not as bright as say a Saitek Cyborg Controls- Blue Tooth, fan, turbo,etc all at your finger tips Power- huge power button- it beckons you Sound Processing= very good out put on the 5.1 out Speakers = 3/4- there built in, fairly good- no real bass though Decking Around Keyboard = shiny plastic and brushed metal = nice Performance = Kills it on BFBC2- BF3- and Crysis Heat = never hot on the out side Vent placement- will not rost your mouse cause the placement is to the rear and upper left side- even if your a lefty the vents are up enough so you are comfortable Lap?- yea its cool there Ports- lots of them and very easy to access Battery life: about 3 to 4 hours ish- less on turbo. Size = big but manageable- get a good case.

Cons: Decking- The plating around the track pad and keyboard seems to be adhered with some sort of tape i guess..on mine its popped up slightly.. Keyboard- I love the back lighting but the keys them selves are cheap feeling -they the low profile floater type- the other issue is that common indicators for things like Caps-lock insert and so fourth are missing, you only know by typing if your capped or not. Power Brick- its huge- as big as the new xbox 360 power brick- you will need space in your bag to carry it. and its heavy- like a brick. Track Pad= I hate the track pad- its terrible- I get tap glitching where things being held click uncontrollably- might be a driver issue might be a hardware issue im still debugging. So get a mouse while your at it. I use a G9X No complementary case provided- not even a sleeve- just a really nice box- Windows Home Premium- WHY?!?!! I up graded to ULT- but was very easy to do that.. Touch controls and back lighting = death if you spill.

Overall Review: I build game towers- this laptop was bought as a replacement, IM allot more mobile now due to my current career endeavors- so this was my great compromise should you call it. I should mention that as compared to a game tower this laptops is very quiet both running and in turbo- now if your a laptop junkie- this laptop will appear to be "quiet" but very loud in turbo mode, if you only use to laptops, you will be annoyed. lots of stickers on the keyboard deck and they are a pain to remove- I had to bust out my Arctic Silver CPU thermal compound remover to remove the sticky stuff left over. Lucky that did the trick and left the surface intact. Overall, Ive known about msi for years in the tower world- there boards partner ship with NVIDIA has a solid track record. So its really nice to see that come into something like a laptop- this def has the specs that a tower would be proud of. I will be buying another laptop from msi again as i need another one.

Pros: huge amount of inner airspace for airflow and large CPU fans, awesome cable management system, Hard drive rack mount system is super easy , looks are rather amazing, almost all metal, little plastic, casters, there's a breeze if you stand behind it, drive bay locks = effective and super easy, mesh grating acts as a nifty poor mans air filter-

Cons: super large 240MM fans while being quiet are power hungry, door has a vibration noise issue whining with the grating, to remove the door you have disconnect the power to the door fan..standard molex provided- quick disconnect would have been nice, power supply mounting is ok, but having an air handler in the bottom case is necessary for effective cooling on PS, casters are a bit small for the cases size and weight-will tip over if pushed, case must be elevated from floor as it will suck in anything from your carpet- it lives on my coffee table, dust accumulates on side door if side door fan is used as an intake- you get a distinctive dinner plate sized circle of dust, thumbscrews are junk don't fit in holes, because of large air space in the case- case is more prone to heating when humility in the room is high, and yea all that metal = a really heavy case

Overall Review: ive had this case ever since it came out, and out of the box its pretty good..but some modding is needed, the worst part overall the default PS location there's just ist any good airflow down there- you can mount the PS topside like normal but you will have to replace the fan in the top of the case with a smaller one... another thing is the thumb screws are CHEAP..better ones are needed.. most problems can be corrected if you scavenge the gear from your previous case, (fans, ect)