OCZ 120 GB Vertex 3 SATA III 6.0 Gb-s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive VTX3-25SAT3-120G

I feel the need for speed, (What's this?) Replaced my primary drive in my MacBook Pro and the result is very fast boot, load and operations. It's not just faster, it flys.
Not ready for prime time, I bought the vertex three a month ago for a new water cooled build. I planned on sparing no expense and read some favorable reviews on ocz in general and the vertex 3 in particular. I wasn't until I experienced several BSOD's that I looked closer at the negative reviews. This drive fails far more than other brands especially if you have a cutting edge MB.
The first thing ocz support suggests is to make sure their are no "kinks" or "bends" in the sata 3 cable and of course to make sure you are using one. Secondly, they suggest you upgrade the firmware to the latest version which in my case was 2.15. This itself was a hassle since you cannot use the simple firmware upgrade tool on a system drive with the OS installed. I had to download a linux image, burn it to cd and then boot into linux to update the firmware. Once the new firmware was successfully installed i had no more BSOD's for a day or two but then they started again. There was no program or process that caused the failures. One time I was simply copying text from a web page and bamb BSOD.
I replaced the drive with a crucial 6gb/sec drive and no more problems.
Do not buy this drive or anything from OCZ. If they are willing to put out an expensive drive that is not ready for market they don't deserve your business or mine.
Super Fast SSD!, Ive owned 7 different OCZ SSDs and all which have been great with no issues.

I've owned

2 x 60GB Vertex
2 x 60GB Vertex 2
2 x 120GB Vertex Plus
1 x Vertex 3 MI

All which are going strong and fast. Only other brands I recommend in SSDs are, Corsair, Samsung, Intel and Kingston.
Very Pleased w/ OCZ 120 & 240 Vertex 3, I was very concerned reading all of the problematic reviews of OCZ's Vertex 3 drives. My son, who was visiting for Christmas and works IT for a major university talked me into it; he too bought a 120 from OCZ. The sale prices and speed were just too good to resist! We installed a 120 as an OS and application software drive on my year-old Dell Studio XPS 9100 and a 240 as sole drive on my Dell XPS L502X. Both were very robust prior to this installation, and afterward they are AMAZING! My 9100 only has SATA II, but the new drive still improved its performance visibly. Windows performance benchmarks went through the roof on both. Running both now for two weeks without one issue whatsoever. My son installed one in his new Dell laptop with the same great results. We read all of the instructional info on the web to maximize performance prior to installation and made sure that the bios and firmware throughout the machine were updated. Although I consider myself pretty functional with computer hardware and software, having owned and used them pretty intensively since 1986, updating the OCZ's firmware using a bootable Ubuntu (Lunix) CD and its associated command structure was pretty funky. I was lucky to have my IT son as tech support handy. Otherwise, it is all good.
Super fast drives, (What's this?) Easy to install on my Asus p8z68 mobo using intel raid 0. Running the AS SSD benchmark I was getting 986mb/sec read speeds.
Fast, decently priced; but Mac users, beware of caveats, (What's this?) This is my first SSD. After reading through so very many reviews on Amazon, NewEgg, TigerDirect and various forums, I decided to got with this via Amazon's Warehouse Deals due to pricing and capacity.

Price was right, shipment was quick, as is the drive. A noticeable difference. However, I am currently using a MacBook5,1 (MB466) and there are a few things you need to be aware of before walking into this.

1.) There are no native means by which to update firmware on OS X. There are, however, several autonomous Linux boot packages that OCZ has been providing in their support forums that work beautifully if you know what you're doing. Be prepared to:
-Burn your own boot discs with a provided .ISO image
-Read, read and read the forums.

2.) On a variety of Macs, this drive suffers from a bug that only allows it a SATA link of 1.5G/s vs the computer and drive's capability of a 3.0G/s link. This can be fixed with a patch that OCZ employees developed, which can be installed in the method described in item 1.) More info at the link below:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?96106-Macbook-users-with-1.5Gb-s-link-instead-of-3Gb-s-link

Without the fix, I was experiencing bursts of decent speeds, but beachballs/hangs/freezes all the damn time. Something as minor as clicking on a menu would trigger a 15-30 second freeze. Insanity. Since I've applied the fix, however, things appear to be working great. Time will tell, though.

Other remarks: you may be tempted to use one of the many TRIM enabling hacks or applications out there to get past the issues mentioned above. Don't. My understanding is that these SandForce-based SSDs have their own inbuilt methods of cleaning the drive up (something to do with having it's own garbage collection and its overprovisioning ), so they wouldn't benefit from TRIM -anyway-. However, when I applied the hack, it suffered from more hangups and freezes than it did without,

All in all, the product felt a little halfbaked in its release.
OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 works great but not reliably, (What's this?) It's a fast drive which is nice but it has a very, very troubled history of firmware. Even to this day doesn't appear to have been fixed. When it works I love it but given the blue screens I'm getting every other day now it's hard to be very enthusiastic. I've yet to try the most recent firmware update process due to the technical annoyance it presents, so it's possible my problems will go away once I make the time to go through with it.

In short I would not buy this or any other OCZ SSD product until I heard reliable and consistent evidence of quality product development.
Amazing, really, (What's this?) I did my research and settled on the 120GB Vertex 3 during black Friday; price and features were right. The only complaint I have is the install instructions were nearly non-existent. If you are going with a fresh Win7 install you might not have any issues. BUT if you are trying to copy from a larger Drive... you will want to punch your self in the face. I followed every installation article I could find online but after 3 days, I still couldn't get my old partition on to the drive, until I downloaded "Paragon Migrate OS to SSD". Took 15 min and I had a machine that is faster by at least 200%.

Win7 64Bit Pro on a 17" ASUS G74X- Plays Skirim on my 50" at 1080P at 60fps with hardly any load times at all... Beautiful..
First one died in 20 minutes, waiting on a replacement..., (What's this?) I installed the drive in my macbook pro, placing my mechanical disk in an optical bay chassis. Booted to usb, partitioned and installed 10.7. The machine had a blazing fast (sub 10 second) boot into lion, and that was the only time it booted. The drive worked for about 20 minutes as that's how long it took to install the os and boot the first time, and after that it failed to be recognized in system profiler or disk utility also not being present under another windows installation on the mechanical disk. Tried the drive on 2 separate desktops, and it failed to to be recognized by the bios and obviously at that point could not be seen by kaspersky or OCZ's bootable usb utilities.
Fast and cheap especially with high price of HD now, (What's this?) I have a few of these and also a 120gb. I have to say I returned the 120gb Sata II after about 11 months as it died, but replaced quickly by OCZ. The other Sata 3's I have are fine. There may be some issues with setting up in the bios prior to the install but the OCZ forum helps a lot, not that someone should be having to do that of course. A simple instruction set with the unit would help a lot. nicely packaged with the adapter for the 3.5" drive bay. Make sure you are using windows 7 or similar as these need the settings for an SSD (TRIM support etc) and your operating system needs to be aware of this to stop premature death of the unit. However if you have the latest windows they should work fast and efficiently for years to come. I liked it so much I just bought another one.

Max Read: up to 550MB/s, Max Write: up to 500 MB/s, 4KB Random Write: I/O Per Second (IOPS): 60,000 IOPS, Seek time: 0.1 ms, Controller: SandForce 2281

Life Expectancy: 2 million hours Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF), ECC Recovery: Up to 16 bytes correctable per 512-byte sector

NAND Flash Components: 2Xnm Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory, Interface: SATA III 6.0Gbp/s, Form Factor: 2.5" slim design form factor

Max Read: up to 550MB/s, Max Write: up to 500 MB/s, 4KB Random Write: I/O Per Second (IOPS): 60,000 IOPS, Seek time: 0.1 ms, Controller: SandForce 2281.Life Expectancy: 2 million hours Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF), ECC Recovery: Up to 16 bytes correctable per 512-byte sector.NAND Flash Components: 2Xnm Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory, Interface: SATA III 6.0Gbp/s, Form Factor: 2.5" slim design form factor.OCZ Vertex 3 Solid State Drives unleash the performance potential of the SATA 6Gbps interface, leading the speed revolution in this next-generation solution. As the first SSD to feature the latest Sandforce controller design, OCZ designed the Vertex 3 to push the limits in both sequential and random read/write rates to blaze past the competition when every MB/s matters. With incredible 4k file writes up to 85,000 IOPS, these latest drives take productivity, gaming, and multimedia applications to the next level to work in perfect symmetry with the latest enthusiast platforms.

Cooler Master Cooler Master Elite 430 Mid Tower ATX Case with Window (RC-430-KWN1)

amazing case on a budget, (What's this?) used this case for my first build and it was very easy to set up. the instructions are basically useless so if you have no clue what you're doing then maybe you should ask some one to help you if you are worried you will break or damage something. honestly,i found very simple and self explanatory.
Almost perferct., (What's this?) This case works well with my barebone setup.. i honestly wish.. the plastic siding wasn't such a pain to screw my fan into. I liked the "secret" cord management thingy.. even though it was only beneficial to the Tower wiring.
A trifle cramped, (What's this?) On the whole, a nice case. It could use an extra inch or two front-to-back: my removable drive bay sticks out slightly because it runs into the connectors on the forward end of the motherboard. Also, I can't mount a fan on the bottom vents. The bottom-mounted power supply covers one vent completely and encroaches enough on the other that a fan can't be mounted. If the power supply was in the top of the case, things would have fit better.
very good for price, (
Great Product, First off i don't give 5 stars unless something is perfect. With that out of the way this is a great case with plenty of room for its price along with it looks a lot better in real life than it dose in pictures. with 7 fan spots(6 not counting the 1 for the psu) it has plenty of ventilation(all support 120mm). My only two complaints about it is that the sidings are a little flimsy, but most cases are. Also the back pci slot holes are punch out and you have to think carefully about were you are going to put stuff before you punch them out unless you buy covers.
Nice Case, Got this case for wifes new PC biuld, it is a nice case with good ventaltion if you add the four additional fans that do not come with it. I installed a 140mm in the front spot and added 2x 120 led on top, this is really close to the motherboard power connector but it worked. I also installed 1x 120 mm led in the rear and 1x 120mm led on the side panel of the case.

Ok maybe it is a little much for a PC that my wife uses for book keeping but it looks cool anyway.

I do have one con with it and it was the power and reset buttons, they were not installed properly and the first time I pushed them they fell out of the holder. It was a easy fix but felt very cheep, but what do you expect for $35.00.
You get what you pay for, (What's this?) I was very excited to receive this budget case because it looked like it had all good things going for it and it had good ratings on the newegg website. But upon actual installation of my computer hardware, I slowly but surely got less excited about it. For the price, its okay but there are several potential problems.

- Only one 120mm fan comes with it. The other five 120mm vents are empty for you to provide fans yourself (and 120mm fans aren't that cheap)
- The top two vents are too close to the motherboard.
Excellent Look and Very reasonable price, (What's this?) The case really looks good with the neon blue cooling fan infront. Very spaceous inside meaning you will have alot of ventilation. It should be rated 5 stars but due to the location of the power supply, if you use other power supply other than cooler master, you will have a slight problem regarding the atx power connector(4-pin ATX12V) because the length of the cord is not enough if you use generic power supply. So it is always advisable to buy coolermaster power supply if you decide to buy this pc case. Overall excellent case, good look and very reasonable price.
Very Nice, (What's this?) I actually purchase this case because of the price.
Nice case, losey instuctions, (What's this?) Nice case, two doors, and 120mm fan mounts.

Interior black coating makes stylish inside looks

Tool-Free mechanical design for quick assembly and maintenance

Side ventilation holes for better cooling performance

Rear 120mm fan for high-efficiency ventilation

Front 120mm fan with brilliant Blue LED provides the best airflow to HDDs

Interior black coating makes stylish inside looks.Tool-Free mechanical design for quick assembly and maintenance.Side ventilation holes for better cooling performance.Rear 120mm fan for high-efficiency ventilation.Front 120mm fan with brilliant Blue LED provides the best airflow to HDDs..

Coolmax LCD Power Supply Tester PS-228

coolmax LCD tested PS-228, (What's this?) Delivered in a timely manner, professionally packaged and in perfect condition. A real time saver and at a very reasonable rate. Priced one similar on another web site and it was almost 5 times higher and couldn't as much as the PC-228 can. It would a mistake to pass this merchant up when shopping, their merchandise is the very top end and the cutting edge of technology. No cheap stuff at this merchants site, a sure enough addition for your "favorites"
Will be back every time I log on.
Okay tester and cheap plastic cover feel......., (What's this?) You get what you pay for, so should have get the aluminum body which costs a little more $18.92.
However, LCD screen is better than led light indicator.
Works well - valuable troubleshooting tool, (What's this?) I purchased this because I was having some strange computer problems and suspected the power supply. I got this one through Amazon.com because it was half the price of the identical unit at the local branch of a major computer parts chain. I won't go into operation and use of the unit because other reviewers (especially P.S. and R.W.) have already provided great detail. If you are troubleshooting a modern desktop computer power supply (ATX style) or an older AT style, you must have one of these. It is about as easy as it can get to operate: connect the motherboard and CPU power plugs to the tool, and disk drive and SATA power plugs if you want to test power for those as well. Then press and hold the button and read the display.

One thing that is rarely mentioned is that the power supply must have correct load impedances attached before it can operate at all. That is a characteristic of all switching power supplies, not just these. A switching power supply is not like an older analog power supply. If you disconnect it from the motherboard and try to measure output voltages, the power supply probably will not be operating. This tester provides the correct loads and makes the measurements for you.
Don't Buy!!!, (What's this?) I ordered this from LLYTech Inc as a new item. I didn't notice the clear tape on the back of the package.
power supply tester, it helps me to identify powers in different power cables....making sure it s good use before connecting to the motherboard...
Simply does not work., (What's this?) Cheap, flimsy plastic design.
Vague and brief instructions.
No way to regulate beeping sound.

Tested 3 PSUs, 1 brand new, 2 know to be to good. Same results for all 3. Inconsistent beeping, confusing readout. Tried all methods, from using only the main power-lines, to using up every port, to everything in between.

Spend the extra few dollars and purchase a solids PSU tester. This one is just a waste of time.
Now I know!, (What's this?) This tester was shipped from Amazon on June 1 2011. I purchased this just to have on hand in case I needed it. I finally had to use it this month (August) on a brand new power supply the supply tested bad. Tested another new supply, it also tested bad. I pulled a known good supply from storage and tested, this one also tested bad. I borrowed another tester (Extremely expensive model) and all three tested O.K. I will be returning this one for the same model because of the reviews on it.
Just as described!, (What's this?) This Power Supply Tester worked just as it was described. It took only a few seconds to determine that my power supply had gone bad. Much easier and safer than doing it manually. I recommend this device highly.
A useful tool for computer technicians, The Coolmax PS-228 power supply tester is a valuable tool for anyone who builds or services computers. It allows easy testing of the PSU voltages and cables if a computer fails or before PSU installation so you will not damage your CPU or motherboard.

The unit tests your 20 or 24 pin power connector as well as the CPU power cables, PCI-E cables, SATA, floppy drive and Fan/Accessory cables. It features a power on button so you can connect the PSU when it is off and when you push the on button you see the voltage levels on an easy to read display. I use it to test every PSU when I build a computer to make sure that the voltages and cables are all working. The digital display is easy to read and there are tone alarms for high, low or no voltage conditions.
It's cheap and it works, (What's this?) You do get what you pay for with this PSU tester, but for my purposes it worked perfectly. I was able to figure out how to use it with the included instructions plus one of the helpful reviews here on Amazon. I would imagine that if you use something like this on a regular basis, you should consider investing in something more sturdy. I only intend to use this when I need it for emergency computer break downs, and I think it should hold up just fine for that.

I thought it was odd that you have to hold down the power button for the entire duration you want to use it, but maybe that's standard with these things. It was my first time using one after all. The alert sound was vastly annoying, and rather ear-piercing, but it certainly gets you to work quickly. At least the display was easy to read.

Features Large, backlit LCD display

Accurate readings up to +/- 0.1 V

Introduces the new 8-pin PCI-Express connector

The easiest method to accurately test or diagnose faults with your PC Power Supply Unit

Compatible with 20-pin and 24-pin PSUs

Features Large, backlit LCD display.Accurate readings up to +/- 0.1 V.Introduces the new 8-pin PCI-Express connector.The easiest method to accurately test or diagnose faults with your PC Power Supply Unit.Compatible with 20-pin and 24-pin PSUs..

Corsair XMS3 8 GB (2 x 4GB) 1333 MHz PC3-10666 240-Pin DDR3 Memory Kit CMX8GX3M2A1333C9

XMS Great Ram, (What's this?) This is Great DDR3 Ram for the Money. Works well wth all MOBOs & CPU's Even when you Over clock your system.
Reliable and inexpensive memory modules, (What's this?) When I upgraded my computer to the Core i7, which requires DDR3 RAMs I had to upgrade the memories too alone with a new compatible motherboard. I end up choosing this PC3-10666 1333MHz DDR3 Memory Kit. I've ordered the first set and then two weeks later, I've decided the computer may perform better with double the memory. I went ahead and ordered a second set which was $16 cheaper. It's relatively inexpensive considering having a total of 16 GB. These relatively cool running memory sticks works extremely well with my new system. In conjunction with my new processor. DDR2 and DDR3 has the same dimension slot with 240 pins but aren't compatible with each other and therefore purposely made with a different position blocking cut-out to prevent insertion on the non-compatible system. DDR3 has a lower voltage requirements then DDR2 and therefore consume less electricity. These memory modules requires only 1 1/2 volts to operate.

I have no problems with both sets and are extremely happy with these memory sticks. I highly recommend this product to anyone.
Reliable, Compatible, Affordable - Just got another Stick, Works fine in my first build as a single stick. Just ordered another to take advantage of dual channel capability even though O/S can only use 4GB. [Hopefully that will work, if not, there's another build coming]. No compatablity issues with the following components and the entire rig only cost me 400 bux [targeted price points & rebates & * = all rebates received]:

WinXP OS from old PC
Antec 300 Mid-tower Case
Antec BP550W PSU*
Corsair XMS 1333 DDR3 4GB [4x1]*
WD Blue Caviar 500 Gb SATA HD
ECS 880G mATX w/SATA II & 4250 IGP Moboard
Phenom II x4 Deneb 945 3.
corssair xms3 bad memory, (What's this?)
Memory sticks are tricky, (What's this?) I built a computer with an Intel i7-875K processor, an EVGA P55-FTW MB, Radeon HD 5770 video card, and two 4-GB OCZ3G1333LV4G Gold PC10666 DDR3 memory sticks (recommended by the parts purveyor). It was a beautiful computer. Very fast. BUT, for year and a half, periodic star-up problems that W7 Prof could not fix. Finally, computer died. Next, spent a few hundred dollars, until the answer came up. My MB and memory sticks weren't very compatible. Other analyst said maybe a bad processor (bad call). Went to EVGA, who said to check internet for their tested sticks. But also said, use 4 GB sticks to take advantage of 16 GB jcapacity for memory. All the sticks that were approved by EVGA were 2 GB stick. So, took a chance, and got four 4-GB sticks (that had same model number except for a 4 instead of a 2). Long story short, knock on wood, no more problems, and was able to double my memory because Amazon had a very special price on my new sticks. Also, I ordered on the interne one afternoon, and got them the next day. Nice job.
Great Low Profile RAM, (What's this?) I just recently built a new PC with Corsair XMS3 8GB RAM. It's been working fine since day one. As a graphic/web designer, I have about 10-20 windows open at once, including Adobe Creative Suite, and everything runs very smoothly.

One thing that's great about this RAM is its low profile. I was able to install the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus without having to deal with moving RAM sticks to different slots.

I haven't even seen my RAM usage exceed 4GB, so 8GB is definitely plenty for most people, unless of course you're working with many large files.

Motherboard: ASRock P67 Pro3 B3
CPU: Intel Core i7-2600 @ 3.
Very Nice!, (What's this?) This is simply an amazing choice of DDR3 RAM at the best price.
Corsair XMS3, (What's this?) 4GB XMS Memory kit for dual channel systems, 1600MHz, 9-9-9-24, 1.65V
When it comes to choosing the right memory for your system there are three main factors to consider regarding performance. These factors are memory frequency, latency and density.
Excellente Price, (What's this?) I can not complain great memories at a great price. I always look black Friday for these types of purchases.

Outrageously fast 1333 MHz performance using 8 GB of memory with 9-9-9-24 latency at 1.65v

Includes new connector for future upgrades and accessories

Two matched 4 GB modules for use in high performance for the AMD Phenom II or Intel Core i7, i5 and i3 Dual Channel systems

Intel XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) Support

Backed by Corsairs Lifetime Warranty and excellent customer support

Outrageously fast 1333 MHz performance using 8 GB of memory with 9-9-9-24 latency at 1.65v.Includes new connector for future upgrades and accessories.Two matched 4 GB modules for use in high performance for the AMD Phenom II or Intel Core i7, i5 and i3 Dual Channel systems.Intel XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) Support.Backed by Corsairs Lifetime Warranty and excellent customer support. Corsair's mainstream memory solution for the AMD Phenom II or Intel Core i3, i5 and Core i7 dual channel memory processors and platform. The XMS3 family is Corsair's mainstream line of performance DDR3 memory. These modules allow users to experience outstanding memory performance and stability. Available in Corsair's new XMS heat spreaders, each module is built using carefully selected RAMs.

Western Digital Caviar Black 750 GB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB Bulk/OEM Internal Desktop Hard Drive - WD7502AAEX

Fast, but loud, (What's this?) This is an OEM HD so don't expect anything other than the HD when it arrives! It arrived packaged nicely in a little box, undamaged.

Like others have said: this HD is loud.
Very Impressed So Far, (What's this?) I purchased this drive a month ago and installed it in a SANS metal drive enclosure with an eSata connection to my laptop. When transferring large files, I see a consistent 100MBs which is quite fast for a non SDD. The drive is extremely quiet. I also highy recommend the follow enclosure for it: SANS DIGITAL MS1UTP 3.5" USB 3.0 & eSATA Drive Enclosure.
The Hard Drive That Proves Pareto's Principle, First, a definition from Wikipedia: The PARETO PRINCIPLE (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.[1][2]

Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.
******************************************

How does this relate to a WESTERN DIGITAL hard drive?

Well, the mechanical drive itself works marvelously well. First class in every way. (The 80%.)

However ...
good item, (What's this?) This hard drive writes data twice as quickly as my last one and it seems to be reliable so far. It also came quickly and the seller was good.
Caviar Black exceptional quality, (What's this?) The Caviar "black" series is the only hard drive that incorporates all the mechanical features together with the obvious electronic & resulting performance features to allow me to rate is as a hi quality drive.
Great service, (What's this?) Hard drive did not work but you sent another without receiving the other back first. Considering the problem with the first drive your turn around was really fast to get me a new drive.
Awesome, (What's this?)
I have 6 of them, I keep buying these drives because they are so good. I am an advanced user and I go through a lot of drives. A year or so ago I decided to spend more $$$/GB to get better drives even though they may not be as large. These drives are noticeably faster than typical consumer drives and seem to last a lot longer. Since I use my drives a lot, thrashing them sometimes, the consumer ones just fail within a year. These dont. I have 6 in my case now, looking for 2 more and switching to a 6-drive RAID setup.
WD Caviar Black, (What's this?) Have had the HDD in service for around a month now with no apparent problems. The 64 MB buffer seems to have sped up the seek time somewhat. Had previouly bought one of the same model 6 months earlier and liked it. My one complaint would be the way it was packaged for shipping. I have seen this same complaint from others. I felt it was poorly packaged but luckily it arrived undamaged.
Great Drive, (What's this?) Purchased this drive because my old Raptor drives are almost full. I do a lot of audio recording for music and play a lot of games (SWTOR HOW I LOVE THEE!) and the drive works great. Access is fast and moving large files is a breeze. Packaging came as expected in an OEM drive. Came in a anti-static bag and cardboard edges to keep the drive from bouncing around.

The noise level of the drive is probably louder than some of the "greener" drives but really, my rig has a huge graphics card and fans to keep everything cool so I can't say the drive is loud as my rig is pretty noisy anyway. For those with water cooled systems, this may be an issue.

Definately would buy from Amazon again, this drive was far less than other sites, Brick & mortar included.

Rotational Speed: 7200 rpm

Capacity: 750 GB, Cache: 64 MB

Max. External Transfer Rate: 126 MB/s

Ships in Certified Frustration-Free Packaging

Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s

Rotational Speed: 7200 rpm.Capacity: 750 GB, Cache: 64 MB.Max. External Transfer Rate: 126 MB/s.Ships in Certified Frustration-Free Packaging.Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s.WD Caviar Black high performance 3.5-inch SATA hard drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, an integrated dual processor, and dual actuator technology for lightning-fast performance in demanding desktop, workstation, and multi-drive systems. And 750 GB capacity gives you the space you need to hold plenty of photos, videos, and files. Best of all these drives are backed by a 5-year limited warranty.

Why you should choose WD Caviar Black: WD Caviar Black Hard Drives – Maximum performance for power computing. WD Caviar Black delivers industry-leading performance that's perfect for hard-core gaming and intensive photo and video editing.

ASUS LGA 1155 - Z68 - SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 - ATX Intel Z68 ATX DDR3 2200 Intel ? LGA 1155 Motherboards (P8Z68-V LE)

Great Once Dialed In, (What's this?) Edit: The new bios (0702) released on Oct 6, 2011 seems to have resolved at least some of the issues. My mouse now works in the EUFI bios and the bios notes mentions "1. Improve memory compatibility 2. Improve system stability"

I had a few major issues with this but it's now working great. Some things you should be aware of:

If you're installing Windows from a USB stick drive or USB CD/DVD drive DO NOT use the USB 3.0 ports to connect/boot from. The install will get started but will then fail giving either an unhelpful error or a blue screen of death. This happened in Windows 7, Windows XP, and Ubuntu. Plug it into the USB 2.0 ports and it'll work normally.

The HD mode defaults to AHCI so if you installed Windows on an older hard drive and want to use it with this motherboard you'll need to go into the bios and change it to IDE mode. If you want the extra performance of AHCI on your old install google MS KB 922976 for a fix.
If overclocking - do not enable PLL overvoltage unless you don't need sleep, (What's this?) Here's my summary first -

Value - 5 stars - good price/performance
Features - 5 stars (for price) - CrossFire for future gfx upgrade, enough USB, SAT6gb, etc.
Stock Experience - 5 stars - everything worked fine on first boot
OC experience - 3 stars - I had to spend a lot of time with it - disable PLL OV and things are fine (read below for more)
Overall - 4 stars for me

Details:

Used this board to build a i5 2500k based machine. At stock speeds this board performed fine for me. Booted up first time, had to re-install windows 7 since the efi bios is not compatible with non-efi installs. I had a backup of everything, so that was fine. 5 stars so far..

So, here's the part that I'm taking a star away for - The Z68 chipset was released to give enthusiasts all the video features that sandy bridge supports, and the overclocking features that the previous chipsets had (those chipsets lacked the video features).
Great, Amazing value, bios is very intuitive and easy to navigate, set up and customize.

I had to RMA the 1st however due to a reboot issue I had, PC would boot 2-3 times sometimes when starting up before loading windows. It's been 3 months since and not another issue.

You can see my set up in the pics uploaded.
Great board overall with minor negatives, (What's this?) The board itself is fantastic, the best part probably being the GUI BIOS. The only things I have any reason to complain about is the outer port cover is really cheaply made. It is far too flimsy to stay in place sometimes so when plugging things in it will wiggle around. It basically just worries me is all. Also, the slots for the Mic and Headphones headers on the board are placed behind the GPU slot, so because I have a huge GPU it made it difficult to plug in.

Overall: Very happy about the purchase.

LGA1155 socket for 2nd Generation Intel Core i7/Core i5/Core i3 Processors

Intel Z68 Express Chipset

EPU - System Level Energy Saving & Real-time Power Management for Superb Platform Power Efficiency

LucidLogix Virtu - Dynamic switching between i-Mode and d-Mode

Intel Smart Response Technology - Experience the Benefits of both SSD and HDD

LGA1155 socket for 2nd Generation Intel Core i7/Core i5/Core i3 Processors.Intel Z68 Express Chipset.EPU - System Level Energy Saving & Real-time Power Management for Superb Platform Power Efficiency.LucidLogix Virtu - Dynamic switching between i-Mode and d-Mode.Intel Smart Response Technology - Experience the Benefits of both SSD and HDD. The ASUS P8Z68-V LE motherboard features the Intel Z68 chipset supporting the 2nd Generation Intel Core i7/Core i5/Core i3 Processors.

Kingston 256MB DDR2 SDRAM Memory Module 256MB (1 x 256MB) DDR2 SDRAM 144pin KTH-LJ2015/256

Printer Performance Increase, (What's this?) Really does increase printer performance, and since time is money this improvement is well worth the price. Now my CP1525nw is maxed-out, wish HP would allow MORE memory.
A Worthwhile Upgrade, (What's this?)
Kingston 256MB DIMM for HP Color LasetJet CP2025, Great price from Kingston. I was surprised to see the wide variation in price for such a memory module. The product arrived on time. Make sure that the DIMM is seated-in well in its bay before you tilt it to its vertical position (Thanks, Thomas Lee). Otherwise, the printer appears to freeze with no hint on the display.

I still have difficulty in printing a certain PDF document (which I attributed to factory low printer memory of 128MB before I installed the additional 256MB DIMM). I continue to get the 'Job Too Complex' message. The same document saved as JPEG and imbedded in MS Word prints just fine. I wonder if this has something to do with the way my job is sent to the printer -- spooling vs direct printing, etc.
Great memory for HP LaserJet CP1525nw Printer, (What's this?) Wow! I am taken back by how fast my HP CP1525nw printer now prints. No more lag time as before the memory upgrade. Amazon's $10 price cannot be beat. Kingston is ALWAYS high quality memory.

Installation is easy and config (on a Mac) was as simple as opening System Prefs -> Print & Fax -> Options & Supplies -> Drivers -> pulling down the tab from 128MB to 256 MB. It might be a bit confusing since you are adding 256 MB to the existing 128 MB, but your system realizes this and will utilize 324.17 MB of the 384 MB installed.

You don't have to be a tekkie to have a faster printer. This was easy and results are significant. Highly recommended upgrade.
(P.S.
Perfect upgrade for HP Color Laserjet CP2025dn, (What's this?) Typically I go to Crucial for memory but when they failed me I turned to Amazon. I upped my HP 2025dn RAM from 128MB to 384MB thanks to Amazon + Kingston.
Great Memory, (What's this?) Can't say enough about this memory! Just put the memory into it's socket and my printer saw it right away. I would recommend this memory to anyone.
Printer Memory Upgrade, (What's this?) I was a bit shocked to find the range of price on this item and was glad to find a much lower price and a well rated seller on Amazon. The memory arrived in perfect condition as promised, the only problem I had was getting it into the printer. Very happy buyer (and a very happy wife) wish I had upgraded the memory years ago... Should the need arise, I'm a repeat buyer.
Kingston Memory, (What's this?) The shipment arrived in a timely manner. The item was easily installed and seems to be working just fine. The price was way better than HP's.
Perfect fit for our HP P2015, (What's this?) Not much to say, other than it works exactly as described in our HP 2015. Simply unplug the printer, open the small memory door on the side (no tools required!), slide in the stick, replace the door, power on the printer, notice an immediate and huge improvement.

I did notice we needed to reset the printer using the orange button on the panel after installing the memory. This was a one time affair.
Worked, (What's this?) It was a stick of RAM that worked as expected and got here quick as hell. This is how all purchases should go.

LASERJET

LASERJET. All Kingston memory modules must perform properly to ensure maximum performance. Therefore, Kingston has developed an industry leading quality process to ensure that Kingston memory delivers superior quality, performance, and 100% compatibility with the computing system.