CPU cooler clearance

Ohh not dont get me started on the 680/780 boards. If I ever see a damn Evga/XFX board again I might just snap lol. So many failed. So many were completely different of the same model in potential. Honestly they are why I don't OC like I used to.

One note, my watercooled setups minus the maint on the wc part were pretty much set-and-forget. Watercooling is so nice for stability. Well if you have a decent setup. But you cannot build a wc system for someone, they have to be able to maintain it, so air is pretty much necessary for amateurs/novices.

That comes down to the chipset voltage more often than not. Striker Extreme's and it's gimped P5N32-E brethren are actually a worse board for failure rates. I never actually had much problem with the reference boards (EVGA/XFX/Biostar) since I tended to lift the heatpipe/heatsink array and replace the sh*tty thermal pads and screw down the heatpipe (as opposed to those stupid push-pins) -shades of the Crosshair Formula/Extreme.
Having any warpage in the PCB usually meant an early demise for these boards precisely because of the bad cooling ability of the stock setup.

My experiences are somewhat different then. When I build a system (water/TEC) I usually set up a maintenance timetable, so every six months/year I (for a modest sum) will change thermal compound, flush the loop(s), blast dust out of rad fins, clean and check fans for wear, change/clean jet plates/block fins if necessary, check fittings/o-rings, refill etc. But then, I tend to get a lot of referrals so it makes sense to advertise a whole service...some murky-looking fishtank scene with tubing that looks like it was scavenged from a '65 Nova doesn't do much to attract new customers you understand.

"minus the maint on the wc part" i abbreviate too much. anyone who uses wc has to do maintenance on the setup regularly. i just meant the mb/settings etc.

That would be the bit-tech review I assume. Not the most flattering. Hardly surprising with the fan choice. Sharkoon Silent Eagle 1000 x 2...the website lists 64.8m³ flow rate - a quick conversion to cfm gives us 37.7. Not the most vigorous of airflows I would suspect...always pays to check the fine print.

Talking of reviews, Kyle and Co. just threw this board under a bus.....Wouldn't be the Asus and MSI sponsorship of their upcoming "Texas GamExperience" jizzfest coming into play...would it?
(Personally I rate [H] only slightly above Tom's on the paid shill-o-meter...but that's me) :suspiciou

Wow ROFL,
that is the only review I have seen that was not a stellar review. funny how it runs perfectly with Corsair 1600+OC for me...and everyone else.
4.26Ghz on my 1100T, guess I hit the binning lottery...and MB as well.
That was not review, it was an all out frontal assault.
well, I will go with the 30 other reviews I have read. Geez, thats about the most obvious case of shill I have seen in quite some time.

double post

Personally I will not use Gigabyte anymore. I got to see how many of their P35/P45 boards failed personally. Almost all the guys I work with had them during the C2D era and they are ALL dead but one.

So you have written off/sworn off the entire Gigabyte brand because of some problems with a chipset during the C2D era? ....interesting.
I have a different philosophy about tech/brands. The time from the C2D era to now in technology is about the equivalent to the Ford Pinto to the current lineup of vehicles. Brands like Asrock, Biostar, and now even ECS, once producing boards of questionable to terrible quality products, are producing very good, or vastly improving quality boards. PSU's are a good example of this as well. what is great one month, may not be so good the next as they change the primary build of their products. I think you are missing out on a lot of potential options by swearing off a brand for a bad experience years ago. But thats just me.

Could be... But the only power I have as a consumer against a big corporation is through my wallet.

Ok to be fair I shouldn't make a statement like that without all the facts.

First a lot of boards failed within 1.5 years - bad
second their customer support was terrible at that time
third the boards that were rma'd took 3-4 weeks to get fixed and sent back.
fourth they sent a board back that wouldnt run any ram in dual channel (we tried 5 different brands and used slower ram just to test, all failed any memory test or prime etc) without any testing it appears. it posted so they sent it back.
fifth they release multiple bios updates that cause more problems than they fixed.
sixth they made no attempt to explain or admit those boards even had a problem.
seventh they refused rma on a board that had changed the northbridge heatsink (its their policy and they can enforce it but asus doesnt as long as there is no physical damage)

so Its not just that I had a bad board or two. its much more than that.

It's generally accepted fact ( sales numbers, feature set, customer reviews, sketchy RMA return figures) that Gigabyte went from being a distant second to Asus, to parity at the very least, on the strength of their P45/X48 boards. With the noteable exception of the RoG boards, Asus' P5Q and P5E series boards are basket cases*. The quality control was abysmal, and the attention to detail slipped noticeably in the 2008-10 timeframe.
I might be somewhat biased to a degree in that both of my rigs are built on Gigabyte boards (both rock solid), as well as well over half of my customer builds. That is starting to swing back to Asus and more increasingly ASRock since they got out from under Pegatron's sphere of influence. Pricing for the given feature set being the prime motivator here.

Here's Hardware France updated article (Apl 2011) on return rates to France's version of Newegg, which would tend to support the fact that failures probably come down to either individual models or SKU's.
As for customer service, I guess my country is blessed with a Gigabyte distributer that cross-ships RMA replacements- and has done since at least 2006. That said, Asus and MSI replacements are usually expedited delivery also (~3 days from RMA notification) while the enthusiast offerings I've had to RMA from Abit and DFI took closer to 4-6 weeks (back when they were still viable entities).
As the saying goes: Your mileage may vary

*RAM compatibility issues, DIMM slot failures, PCI-E slot failures, BIOS/board that wont hold VTT, PLL, MCH and ICH voltage, misaligned heatsinks, missing pushpins, warped boards and the ever present loose capacitors rolling around in the packaging.

RMA stands for what now?

about a year ago I got into a great conversation with a rep at Newegg that said to me that 93% of the components RMA'd were components that were functioning perfectly well.
-buying incompatible parts
-not looking at QVL's
-taking the PSU out of the box, plugging it into the wall, and returning it because it didn't start up (thats my favorite):haha:
-various other not knowing what they are doing , or reading instructions
- buyers remorse

...etc etc

add a few more percent for damaged in shipment and you start to get the idea where a lot of these "Brand X Sucks man!" comments come from.

Well we switched to Gigabyte primarily (for business and EVGA/XFX for gaming) when C2D came out so I didn't get to see many of those boards except for my friends. I did hear of a few problems but nothing like you mentioned. Mainly the bios, voltages and the heatsinks (paste didnt even touch chip). I can't say I've ever heard of a capacitor on an Asus board loose in the box. I have seen a Biostar like that.

Oh and Abit and DFI are the other two I would never buy again. But they had very serious issues and some of their boards just never worked properly. We see how they ended up. I still use Gigabyte everyday (do a lot for universities and government) and honestly I do not see many failures anymore. The H55 and P55 I think I've only seen 1 or 2. Just their customer service got me so frustrated, they just acted like they didn't care. When its my personal board I'm not that worried, when its a customers and its been 3.5 weeks and you cant even get a response from anyone it will drive you nuts. I'm no Giga-hater I just think at some point you have to speak up with your wallet. Everyone has difference experiences and you are across the "pond" (haha love that phrase) so who knows if it was a batch issue etc.

I don't use generalizations for 1-2 experiences, I've built many many machines so I try to hold my opinions until I get enough experience to justify my opinion.

okaaayyy, thats a good thing to do.....I have no idea what it has to do with my post however. I was relaying what I thought was an amusing conversation with a rep from newegg.

That wasn't aimed at you. Hang around a while and watch the visceral fanboy responses to stories on new product releases, and Op's asking things like "what Graphics card should I get" and such....you will know what I meant.

another case of me not taking the time to read it properly ) read it on my phone responded on the computer. dont think ill ever learn that one. i try to do too much at once. anyway its definitely true. when i test stuff, especially network equipment, that is supposed to be not working it almost always is. the one exception is usually ram. sometimes its compatibility but its usually bad.

Eminently believeable. Add in bogus returns from overclocking adventures and I'd say the 93% is close to the mark. Likewise I'd say that for the most part, the numbers for each vendor/model/SKU returned under those conditions should be roughly equal - the obvious exceptions would be where a vendor has deliberately left out pertinent information knowing the customer will assume a certain feature set- case in point being non-reference HD 6950's that started shipping without the BIOS switch to deter shader/memory flashing.
So, if the majority of non-RMA returns could be assumed to be roughly equal, they should in theory have little bearing on the percentages when compared vendor-to-vendor, just the percentages of returns-to-shipped units

Regarding the Hardware.fr article....I guess France aren't included in Diamond or VisionTek's sales markets huh?

I get a 404 when I try to link that article Chef.
That sounds about right though. I figured out a while back that I could get away with buying some open box stuff. I have never had to return one of them. I bet they do not even test them for function, just look for physical damage. The only things you cant get open box (besides PSU's) is ram. It has a higher failure rate than the others...but i would bet you a large % is damaged by people trying to cram it in the dimm with the notch on the wrong side, and running across the carpet with it in hand to show their buddy the cool heat-sink! ROFL.

I just noticed in the artice they mentioned the P5N-D. I have one of those dead at work. Yeah industry-wide accepted failure rates are around 2% except for hard drives. They do cost-analysis on how much it would cost to get under 1% or drop to 3-4%. The money spot is around 2%. Read a huge article on this. Of course this was motherboards, but it generally applies to most computer parts. This was years ago so I don't know if its that valid now. It does seem failure rates are higher these days, especially in the high end components. Of course I could be biased by all the 3 and 4 series Intel chips I had to deal with and the SB fiasco.

You want to know something funny, I've actually seen more issues with Intel made boards than any of the brand names. They have some strange issues sometimes.

[H] is a bit of a mystery really. They have thrown some companies under the bus that do a bit of advertising with them but seem to favor other companies. I wouldn't put them in the bought category but they do seem biased sometimes.

If you get on to the Hardware.fr site, it's in the "articles" section- dated 20/04/2011.

Re: the RAM. Sending back Crucial Ballistix modules was for a time an international sporting event (HEY! how did that damp facecloth end up draped over those sticks!...why, they could....could....die...oops!). Some people (who may, or may not be me) took exception when Crucial decided to change their IC's from D9GKX and GMH -double sided to D9DQT and later (single sided) without telling anyone, so people tended to invent mobo compatibility faults (it worked on the earlier modules- doesn't work with these later ones) and Crucial sent out GMH replacement kits...at least until the stock ran out.
The difference for overclockers when FSB was all important was that the earlier modules could relatively easily run at DDR2-1000 3-4-4 or close to DDR2-1150-1200 at 5-5-5-15. The later modules generally topped out at 900-950 4-4-4-12 or 1150 5-5-5-15 (with a good RAM overclock board i.e. Asus Commando or Giga P35-DQ6)

This is what DGH / GKX's are capable of
( Just for the record DDR2-1038 @ 3-3-3-8 isn't a workable set of timings for any length of time)