1st board - Ran for awhile with chipset fan, everything fine, but loud. Replaced with Zalman NBJ47. Quiet, but my secondary IDE never worked again. RMA'd for new board.
2nd board - Installed NBJ47 before installing the board. Was even more careful about removing the pins and used Arctic Ceramique. Took about an hour to get back into Windows on this board, memory issues. Strange considering I had the same bios settings as previous board. Finally into Windows on one stick. NVMonitor shows System temp steady around 54 celcius. Higher than I have ever seen. Had 4 or 5 programs open when the computer shut down. Turned back on. During boot, when the little blue thing is scrolling, it locked and showed some purple squares randomly over the windows boot screen. Next time and every other time I tried to boot, fans would go, but nothing more. Asus tech support says temps should not have been a problem. He suggested I focus on the power supply as possible source but agreed to RMA this one.
Now using 1st board and sent 2nd board back. First board runs f*&%ing awesome (except no sec. IDE). Can game for hours, and run a project in Nuendo that maxes the CPU, no issues (my main program for this computer). Haven't done any benchmarking as I'm on my 5th windows install in less than 3 months and I'm sick of installing software and running benchmarks so unsure about full stability yet.
I've posted this other places and was told to get a different PSU as mine is thought to be rated at 18A on the 12v rail.
I contacted ASUS tech support about the PSU. As it makes me mad that the board is rated to operate with a 350w PSU, but I am told that my 380w is not enough. He wanted to know the rating on the 3.3v. Now looking at the sticker on my PSU, I see the 12v rail is rated at 24A and the 3.3 at 28A. This information contradicts the "specs" I find on the web which state that the 12v is 18A. I guess I should trust the sticker on my PSU more. That being said, should the PSU be an issue? Asus says no. This is the PSU that comes stock with the Antec Sonata case.
I have decided to try the papst fan for the northbridge as it doesn't require removing the original heatsink and I feel better about that.
Any thoughts?