Intel Core i7-950 - Core i7 Bloomfield Quad-Core 3.06 GHz LGA 1366 130W Processor - BX80601950

Pros: Very fast - overclock capable with the right cooling and no lag even when running a game with two virtual machines running in the background (I'm a geek - do you really need to ask?)

Cons: It died after 4 years.

Overall Review: Sadly, my CPU looks to have died and this entire class of i7s (1st Gen) are no longer available except as used and they are priced way too high. So, let's have a moment of silence for my dead gaming system.

Pros: Was great while it worked. Works well as a paper weight.

Cons: Supposedly the warranty is voided if you run anything other than DDR3 1066 or 1333 memory.

No real competition for Intel to help keep them in check. They can do whatever they want and there is only AMD for us to go to and even that might not exist for much longer.

Overall Review: Called into support because after a year of running fine my system started to freeze up all the time and get crashes/bsods. After trouble shooting I narrowed it down to the processor. I have another system with an LGA1366 processor so I swapped CPU's and now system A works fine and system B crashes.

Called Intel support, the rep asked what kind of memory I had installed and no sooner did DDR3 1600 come out of my mouth he cut me off and said the warranty is void because I was causing the processor to run out of specs and that counts as over clocking and the warranty was void.

The convo was over at that point, all the rep would says is the warranty is void, the warranty is void. Even though in this system I've never clocked the memory past 1066, the "support" rep still claimed that making the processor downclock the memory so it would run in specs is running the processor out of spec and that counts as overclocking, then hung up on me.

Give me a break Intel.