Joined on 10/28/12
Had fun with this case
Pros: Bought it for a build I was making for a friend and really just had fun working with this case. I love the fan controller even if just because it allows you to plug in so many bleeping fans! Cable management space is great, please use it. Comes with good fans. Nice airflow, even on low. Looks cool. Impressed a chick that came over.
Cons: Why is there only 1 LED fan? This is a fashionable case, there should be more LED's! Heheh.. It bothered me a bit that one of wires extending from the fan controller didn't have part of 2 soldered wires covered up. I had some electrical tape, being a nerd and all, so I fixed it The red of the plastic is a different red than the steel.
Overall Review: Rubber grommets don't like staying in... I don't really understand why they're not just glued in at the factory.
At first I liked it
Pros: I love the look of this AIO, very sleek design and it feels ruggedly constructed.
Cons: The fans worked, but were loud and didn't move as much air as I'd want, but I bought this knowing that would probably be the case, so I ended up replacing the fans with something quite a bit better in performance, if a bit less flashy. The pump failed after less than a year, it never seemed to move a whole lot of heat in the first place - not sure if that's a pump issue, radiator design issue, or something else entirely, but the temps were essentially identical to the wraith cooler that came with my 2700x (the one I had to put back on after the pump failed).
Overall Review: It looks great. it performs way below what I'd expect a water cooling solution to do and then it failed on me... I don't know what else to say.
The Hardware Works
Pros: 2 M.2 heatsinks are better than one! The BIOS is intuitive Integrated AC WiFi is a nice touch
Cons: The RGB lighting on the IO cover is mostly covered if yo have a fan in that corner of the case, which is where one is 90% of the time, so sort of a wasted bit of RGB lighting. Mystic Light is not the best software, the RGB color transitions work, but there's some stuttering and lag that is very visible at a glance. Also, some of the lights don't always respond to color change commands. I usually have to restart my computer to get the motherboard and IO cover lights to do anything I want them to which is sort of the opposite of the intended convenience for the software. Since Mystic Light software isn't really integral to the function of my computer, I'm not that worried about it, but I'd like a functional update soon.
Overall Review: The motherboard works and has a feature which I don't see too often anywhere else in the form of dual M.2 heatsinks, so I don't see why I wouldn't recommend it to someone that isn't too concerned about their LED's looking right all the time.
Works Great, runs hot
Pros: This is the best graphics card I've owned in terms of benchmark performance - a big upgrade from a 960, and I was already satisfied with the 960. The DUKE RGB thing is a nice addition, as is the backplate
Cons: The DUKE RGB thing is nice, but it's rather.. small? Idunno, it's not as big and flashy as someone who wants a bunch of RGB stuff in their case would want methinks, but that wasn't the selling point for me so not a big deal, just a minor tidbit. Despite the massive heatsink and 3 somewhat noisy fans, the GPU runs pretty hot under load, not sure if this is typical across all 1080's or just this model, but it doesn't get so hot that I'm worried about the health of the GPU, just hotter than I'm used to.
Overall Review: I bought this significantly cheaper than the current price as I'm posting this review ($1,320) and I would probably not purchase this GPU at that price point.
Really good mouse.
Pros: It's comfortable, doesn't skip around and lag like some mice do, has a changeable DPI.. the extra buttons are nice and not in an awkward location, the mouse wheel isn't annoying and squeaky, it's ambidextrous.. etc. etc...
Cons: I was kind of hoping that I could find a version of this mouse that had red LED's instead of blue LED's because blue light is so much pervasive than red light. It can be annoying when you're trying to sleep to have a bright glare instead of a warm glow reflecting off of your ceiling.
Overall Review: This mouse would be a lot more aesthetically pleasing if it had red LED's both in the DPI and behind the THOR logo similar to how the Razer Naga has the Razer trademark backlit.
Me gusta!
Pros: They're perfect for my build and they look better in person than in the pictures provided. If for some reason you're shopping for ram by looks and don't get this ram because you think it doesn't look as good as you would like, think again. These sticks really do look good, besides there's a suggestive joke on the box.
Cons: They don't have LED's on them.. that wold be kind of cool...