Quote Originally Posted by hokiealumnus View Post
It's a good board; no second thoughts on using it here. It's not necessary to water cool the P55 chipset. It needs very little voltage increase if any. It's the upgraded equivalent of a southbridge. Good airflow should be sufficient.
I have very little airflow. Can the last PCI-E be used for a x16 card? It looks like it would be pretty tight getting a block on the the p55 with a card in the first slot. Also, are there any comparisons between this board and an asus board. Which seems to perform better? I think I like the feature set on FTW better.

Quote Originally Posted by hokiealumnus View Post
I'm using a D-Tek Fuzion v.2 without backplate (ridiculous, I know) but I don't have one and it didn't hurt anything when it was on on a TPower I45 for quite a while. There is a screw holding the retention bracket on that might give people trouble. Doubt it's specific to this board though. The resistor bank on the back of the socket is what worries me. Do NOT put a metal plate without something under it back there.
Dump the V2, pick up an enzotech saphire. They're super cheap and very high on the block list. (3rd or 4th now maybe).