Joined on 12/13/01
great upgrade from a cheap case

Pros: Well built, easy to work with case. With stock cpu cooler everything stays cool so far. You can feel the cool air coming out the top, and if you take the top off you can put your hand in and feel how cool it is inside. Love the ability to turn off the fan lights. Very quiet fans, white light looks great, especially in a dark room.
Cons: Fan controller doesn't seem to make a difference. Did not need firewire, MB does not have it anyway. Rather have a esata port or more USB....
Overall Review: researched a lot of cases after being disappointed with inexpensive Rosewill blackbone case. Wanted a better quality case that was under a $100. Finally decided between this or a Coolermaster storm enforcer. Went with the 500r because of the special price and more features. Very happy with the high quality of Corsair. Very unhappy with Newegg or Fed Ex because one of them lost the first case I ordered. Had to buy another case after realizing that nobody knew where my case was.(5 days after the rest of my order had been received) Newegg will refund the first purchase, but it will take a while. Newegg did give me the same price on my second order, but very frustrated that a 22 # case could get lost with no idea where it is. Seems to me that it was either stolen or damaged

Pros: cheap, works ok
Cons: broke after about 2 months of light use
Overall Review: You get what you pay for, the sound and mike were ok, good for the price. My kids are hard on headphones so I buy them cheap.
much better than stock cooler

Pros: inexpensive, was very easy to install on my MSI Am3+ MB. Took me about 10 minutes total with a few interruptions. Went from 58* C under load with stock cooler to 36* C with Arctic Cooler 30. Used on a fx 6300 cpu
Cons: big, had to move memory to second & fourth row instead of first & third. Still was very close to memory in second row. This might not work on all MB's or fit in all cases. Need a little over 6" from cpu to side of case
Overall Review: finally decided to have fan on opposite side of memory, so could have left memory alone. Nice that you can change direction of heatsink to fit better in different situations. Can't hear this over my other case fans. No problem fitting in a Corsair carbide 500r case. Very easy install for me, didn't have to take MB out of case.
nice upgrade

Pros: At the time it was the best price for a 7850. Seems pretty well made. Had no issues installing this card. Plays all the games kids have with no problems. They play Assassins Creed III, Grand Theft Auto IV, Bioshock, Tomb raider, Far Cry, Half-life 2, mostly steam games with no problems.
Cons: price seems to be going down....
Overall Review: Fit in my Rosewill Blackbone case, had to move hd. Really fit well in my Corsair 500r case with lots of room to spare. So far very happy with this upgrade.
good value

Pros: Very fast, I have worked with i5s and I can't see any differences in the performance. Very nice upgrade from a 2.9ghz rana tri-core. I think this is the best bang for the buck cpu right now for most people.
Cons: no cons unless I wanted to overclock, then I would definitely have to get a better cpu cooler.
Overall Review: Kids play some of the newest games and love this along with the Radeon hd 7850 I upgraded it with. I think it plays as well as any cpu out there, only benchmarks can really see the differences.
good upgrade

Pros: Inexpensive 970 am3+ board with usb 3 onboard for front panels. Worked great right from the start with no issues. Installed with AMD 6300 6 core cpu and 8 gb of ddr3 1600 memory, HIS radeon 7850 hd video card. Used "old" hd 1 tb seagate that is a few months old with Windows 7 pro
Cons: Board is not full width atx board, but didn't seem to have any problem with installing memory or video card.
Overall Review: very happy I upgrade from a 770 mb, radeon hd 5670 video card, Amd 2.9 ghz tri-core Rana(4th core unlocked by mb) 4 gb ddr3 10666 memory to this mb, 6300 6 core cpu, radeon hd 7850 video card, and 8 gb of ddr3 1600. $400 well spent