Bro, I'm not really sure the mobos have gotten that much better, especially concerning the PWM sections of the boards (Asus 79-T being the possible exception)... Most of my chips have been BE's, and I've only used the HTref to tweak my memory and it has never really required much over 220 on that clock (1180 Mem speed)...
When my DKA790 died my HTref was well under 220, I can't say for a fact that your wrong, but I'm really not sure high HT clocks kill boards...
From my experience, high V's kill stuff faster than anything else. When my MSI died I modded the AOD file to allow 1.55 CPUvid, and it popped after only 20 minutes of P95....
I'm not really sure that your assumtion that high HTRef clocks kill boards. I agree with ya the that with BE chips it's really not nescassary and can cause more problems than it's worth, but when OC'ing a locked chip as long as you keep V's under control I'm not sure it is a board killer either.... If I had a PhII 920 I wouldn't hesitate to crank the HTref to 250.
My biggest problem is running Prime95 for hours on end... Most Phenom boards still have weak PWM sections with inadequate cooling. Even the boards with Heatpipe coolers still don't do the job...
Most of the people I've seen kill stuff do it by running really high V's on their IMC/NB volts... My personal limits on these are:
1.55v's on the CPU core (Asus 79-T)
And 1.4v's on the IMC (bench only, everday I keep it under 1.375v)
The IMC is VERY sensitive to high voltage!
All that being said, for me IntelBurnTest will catch errors in 20 minutes that will seem stable even after hours of P95, and I don't have to worry about waking up up with a dead box...![]()
Bookmarks