I bought a pile of off-brand Nanos a while back that use the CH340, it's given me a problem on installing a few times, Windows likes to kick out the driver for some reason, but other than that I have had no problems with them and at about $4 each, it's hard to beat. I've done a fair number of projects with them and have seen no problems, nothing different in the pinout or controller and they run fine continuously or on a start/stop basis.