that's shocking (are you sure you are not over tightening your waterblock) >> talking about your bios clearing issues aside from other stuff eek

i don't think you'll have those issues with reference boards to be honest unless you are overtightening or something

you also don't need to be too clever when OCing as nvidia engineers have some some good ground work to improve OCing and make it very easy .> leave volts at auto (only set vcore/vdimm) and let it rip