I purchased this motherboard after doing extensive research.. yes, it's for overclocking, and that's what I intended to do. I want to keep SLI (bought 8800GTX on September last year when they were still $500+, and a pair of Radeon 3870 right now are still somewhat expensive compared to a single 8800GTX that I can pair with right away), BIOS with PLENTY of voltage mod options, and fan headers. All the NVIDIA ref boards have only 6 fan headers, while MSI and Asus offer 8. I thought about P7N Diamond, but my experience with MSI BIOS is..let's just say, not so pleasant - I hate using Page up/down to adjust clocks. I had positive experience with P5K-E, and M2N SLI Deluxe with Asus. Thus the reason why I chose this board.
First thing I did after receiving it is removing the NB heatsink. Yuck, those poor excuse of a thermal paste is just baked on-die. Had to wipe it several times with isopropyl alcohol. Applied AS5 on NB, SB, NF200. I also bought the Antec Spotcool..but of course, it didn't fit that well with Zalman 9700 on the CPU. I removed the fan from Spotcool, ziptied it to the heatsink. It perfectly fits there.
NB temp was 78'C (stock) before I cleaned and reapplied AS5. With the mod described above, NB temp barely hit 70'C (@1.6v) during Prime95. My case is CM Cosmos S, plenty of airflow there, and the Spotcool on NB really helps. I think a 60mm fan will sit perfectly well on there too.
Overclocking experience -
First of all, if you're using Quads + 4 sticks of RAM..set CPU_GTL ref to at least +30mv. That's a requirement for stability.
It took a lot of work for me to get my Q6600 to 3.4ghz. It does have quite high VID for a G0 (1.2625v). 1.4000v Vcore, everything else set to the maximum "safe" voltage. 16.1k 3Dmark06.
E8400, on the other hand..I LOVE IT! Right now I'm running at 4.3ghz @ 1.38v vcore. http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=354968
18k+ 3Dmark06, still working on OCing the video cards.
AS5 is still settling in, so the temps will definitely get lower in about a week or so.
My next build might be on Intel P45 platform, but for now, (after a lot of work) I'm very happy with Striker II Formula.
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