The main reason I bought this  was to upgrade to a SSD and maybe get a bit of extra ram.  I found when I got a Macbook Air a few years ago this was such a significant upgrade in speed that it was what was slowing down my desktop PC.  I noticed some increase in speed but it wasn't the night and day difference I expected.  I haven't done a bench test and some of the performance might just be limited by the network and USB RAID but it still doesn't feel as responsive as it should.  Boots up fast and failure is unlikely so I'll stick with it for a while.  I was able to install a dual video card I had in my old desktop without any difficulty as I use it as a dual monitor TV Theater and extended monitor setup.  All in all for the price you can't go wrong.  Looks kind of corporate but it still fits in with the setup I have.