On topic:
3 would make sense when talking about CPU, Board, and GPU but is there more to it? Mainstream right now is what a dual core CPU and 1 GPU, so thats 3. Could it be the Crossfire + Physics that has been quite silent lately? I am really curious as to how the new graphics cards will perform when put in a DX10 environment. I want to see games like crysis in action. I also want to see what AMD has in store with K10. I wasn't really into computers all that much till after the X2 series came out so I want to see how each company reacts to the new tech. I really wish the AMD/ATI merger didn't happen, I believe we would see both products out much faster.

Off topic:
Well I would say the flakiest boards of them all were the ATI 3200 chipset boards. Half the stuff didn't work out of the box, it failed to beat nvidia or intel in OC, and what, there are 5 boards you can buy with the chipset? Core2Duo was my first OCing experience and it was easy as pie, I am completely unaware of this flakyness you speak of.