well, as an ex-A8N-SLI owner, i have to say i was impressed with many aspects of the board, but it fell short in some important areas. It did run pretty well, had a nice layout, great features and extras, and at $201 (my price from novapcs) i thought it was a pretty reasonable board. But a lot of things pissed me off. The SATA-II controller dying was the biggest, which is why i am an EX owner. Other stuff includes the discrepency about PCI locks (not sure if it works or not), no settings for NCQ, or dual channel, or memory dividers, so i had no idea if any of those things were coming into play. Also, the LAN gave me trouble, and i had to use the backup LAN rather than the integrated primary. And tech support was atrocious. I had to call a local number (no toll-free) and they kept me on hold for like 20 minutes, which i was paying for, only to tell me they would give me a call back at home later, which they never did, so i had to go through the process again. When i wanted to RMA the board, they estimated 3 weeks till i'd get a new one. So i said screw it, and ordered a Chaintech VNF4/Ultra from newegg. At $119, almost half the price of the Asus, i got everything i was actually using from the Asus anyway. While i don't have the board yet (it's supposed to be delivered tomorrow) i can say that if it turns out to have some minor problems, i can live with that, since i can just replace the board in 6 months and use the old board for a non-enthusiast computer or something, and not have to relegate a $200 board to the back burner. And from the experiences i've read, the board seems pretty good, and a reasonable overclocker, with the only gripes i've seen being the capacitors so near the socket and the bios needing an update.