Well, I have followed 12 dif ASUS mobo with catastrophic failures - smoke fire loud bang etc. All 12 used the CM 212+.
This can get to be a long subject, which i addressed with pics on another forum. To make it as short as I can - I ran into my own trouble with my P67 deluxe which after 3 months of use suddenly no longer had video - in any PCIe slot. Luckily for me the VGA red LED on mobo was lit up, telling me that PCIe was dead. The 4 mobo error LED's are a godsend, saving me a whole day of troubleshooting and moving components in and out.
The RMA went fine, tho I spent quite a bit of time on the phone explaining my prob (Indiana), which I dont think should have been neccessary. I immediately ran to Fry's and bought a P8P67 basic, reloaded the stuff and everything worked fine again as is. I might note that the basic does not have the vga LED, or reset/start buttons.
Anyways I always was using the TR Venemous, while using their TR 1155-56 bolt thru kit. I was very conscious of any shorting possibilities while reassembling things and the TR backplate seemed to clear everything. So the basic has been working fine for about 5 months.
However when I got the replacement deluxe and started putting it together, I immediately noticed the backplate was sooo close to the 5 surface mount caps in a row just to the side of CPU. So I got out my VOM and tested and sure enough the TOPMOST surface mount device solder blob was touching the sharp stamped edge of the backplate. Now this did not happen with the basic, so apparently the traces are slightly dif for ea model. Thusly I made a little fixture plate and milled away about 1/16" on one edge for clearance, and repainted it, shockingly exposing another tiny mobo solder point I didnt even realize was there
Then installed this modded plate to the deluxe and thats been working fine for about 3-4 months now.
So I became keenly aware of backplate probs. Then I noticed all the fried mobo and CM212+. So I went out and bought one just to see whats going on there. Because its cheap its prob the most common HSF around, bar none.
I immediately noticed a prob - the 4 threaded standoffs that fit thru one of three notches in the backplate (775 1366 1155) has a flat on the threads. This is something prob 99% of the peeps are unaware of. The flat has to co-incide with the straight edge of the arms on all four. As you turn the nut wrench (with a big phillips) on the fastening nut you can rotate the thread flat around so that it no longer stops at its shoulder and can crunch the motherboard. The outermost notch opens up quite easily, the middle one not so much and the inner (775) does not splay open up at all - beacuase its closest to strength - closed end.
IMHO CM should have made the outer end of arms CLOSED also! However I am not going to ruin a mobo to test my crunch theory out.
Fwiw the Venemous pressure mount that comes with it with its moveable adjust plates "universal mount" backplate is also bad, because they are narrow and hard, and would prob crush traces if tightened excessively. And the Prolimatech backplate is same as TR bolt thru.
Bottom line; do not tighten
ANY backplate past bare minimum and look carefully at what its touching.
I am not saying the CM 212+ blows mobo all the time, but some endusers may abuse the system design - assuming if tight is good, then really tight is better, or even tightening till nut "stops" after violating the tiny shoulder.
Be aware also, however, that ASUS sold 21.6 million mobo last 12 mo. - #1 in this category, so thats a lot of dif levels of enduser mechanical know how.