Pros: Stupid Fast

Cons: High end motherboards for it can be spendy, not really a direct con though

Overall Review: When I got the Canon 5D Mark II over 5 years ago and started immersing in video, I actually had the nerve to try and render my first HD vid on a Dell E1705 laptop. I had a gadget showing CPU temp, and when it hit 85C I knew I had to shut it down or I'd fry the laptop. Short n Sweet, I built my first pro rig in 2009 with an i7-920, then later upgraded to 950 and then 6-core 980. The 980 was pretty good, then my aging X58 motherboard gave up the ghost right around Christmas 2013. Time to rebuild. Enter the 4930K. I thought it'd be a bit better/faster than the 980... I was wrong. This thing is a tremendous improvement and along with the components we have in 2014 vs 2009, the speed is stupid fast. If you're going to invest 500+ in a proc, don't skimp. Get this CPU and pair it with a decent motherboard and you will never regret it. I actually render out HD vid faster than real time now, still can't believe it. Given the odd complex H.264 file format used by Canon that's quite a feat. Note also that I don't overclock and don't need to. Video editing is all about stability, not eeking out extra speed. And because the CPU runs cooler and I have that massive Noctua cooler on it, I'll render video which hammers all 12 threads at 100% for more than an hour sometimes, and the CPU temp never gets out of the 50s. I think the huge fans in my case help there also. Here's my rig, which I'm listing simply because of how helpful it was 5 years ago when I was about to build my first PC, and people listed their components in reviews. I had to learn the quirks the hard way (such as Premiere Pro not leveraging SLI so buying two video cards at the time was a waste of money), and seeing what people were using was a great help: * i7-4930K * Asus DELUXE 79 Motherboard * Mushkin 32GB DDR-1600 RAM * Noctua NH-D14 2011 Cooler (Air, not water) * EVGA GTX 770 Graphics Card * LSI 3Ware RAID card with two WD 2TB Reds in RAID0 for all assets, video and audio. * SanDisk Extreme II 240GB SSD for C: drive (All Adobe apps and Win 8.1, no personal files) * SanDisk 256GB Ultra II SSD for Adobe cache files and video project files * Also have a couple more 2TB-3TB WD Black drives for photos and all my files * EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 P2 Power Supply * Pioneer Blu-Ray/DVD burner * Antec 1200 v3 case * Dell U3011 monitor * Dedicated external backup drives for all internals. Hope all this is helpful!

Pros: Crucial usually reliable

Cons: 6 Month old Drive totally failed after 30 minutes of cyclical copy errors

Overall Review: I have a ton of crucial ram and drives (and a ton of Samsung), never had a failure from either. This Crucial couldn't have failed at a worse time, 2nd day of a week-long photo shoot. It's the data drive in my 2019 Acer Triton 500. I use CrystalDisk to monitor, it never went over 50c. Look for a newer Crucial drive if you are shopping. They are usualy reliable, but this model shouldnt be trusted.

Pros: Totally plug and play, no issues. UserBenchmark Multicore scores using an i7-12650H: MC Read 38.5 MC Write 37.4 MC Mixed 35.9 106% 37.3 GB/s

Cons: None

Overall Review: Good brand and the best price on 64GB out there.

Pros: Laid out well, room for larger cooler Good BIOS Good replacement for legacy CPU (for me i7-2700K)

Cons: No onboard RAID Only 1 full PCI Slot Only 1 sysfan jack for fan power

Overall Review: If you have a legacy CPU, socket 1155 (i7-2600/2700, i5-2500, etc) and need a compatible board for a simple build, this Gigabyte works great. Has an extensive BIOS for a budget mobo. No raid however, would have liked to build a RAID1 array with two drives for backup. Not a big deal. I use a fairly big air cooler and there's plenty of room to mount it, probably would handle a Noctua D14. No USB 3.0 but you can get a PCI card for that. Pick one that also has a 19-pin port and you can hook up your 3.0 case header ports.

Pros: G. Skill reliability is always great. CAS 16 better than other brands of the same type memory.

Cons: None. OK, ram prices overall compared to 18 months ago are super high, lol.

Overall Review: Originally I left this review: "Installed these in my Dell Inspiron 5000 2-in-1 (model 5379). The laptop did the classic thing where you power it on with the new ram and it powers right off, and you go through this 2-3 times. But then it booted up to the BIOS, I confirmed the change in system memory, and now the thing flies." And the ram worked great for 6 months, yay. I then got a newer Dell 6-core G5 (G5587-7866BLK-PUS) a few weeks ago, and I pulled the ram from the 5379 and installed it in the new 5587 G5. Works great! I do realize I put 2400MHz ram in a 2666Mhz laptop, therefore not getting the full stock speed I could be, but considering the cost, I'll live with that. Having 32GB for MIDI Orchestration is pretty mandatory and this was a sort-of no-cost way to do it. Anyway, those two Dell Laptops have no issues with this RAM.

Pros: Good speed Good price

Cons: I need a drive to last more than three years. It failed after 3 years and 6 months. I built PCs for the church office with i5's, 8GB ram, decent Gigabyte mobo and this Chronos for the C drive, all in huge Coolermaster HAF gamer cases! Huge fans and tons of airflow, to run Office and browse the web. I expected this drive to last, now worried about the other PCs. I've been a longtime Mushkin fan, have several boxes with their ram and my laptop has a 1TB Reaktor SSD, but the Chronos line doesn't cut it.