I think you are all reading way to far into this. Everyone's been on the phase kick since the MSI with 4+1 kept blowing up. The key is to keep the PWM's cool. I've pushed my GD70 pretty hard but I've always had active cooling over the NB/PWM area and I've not had any issues. I plan on pushing it harder when I get around to picking up a Thuban before replacing it with a 890FX board. There was an article, I believe on bit-tech, a while back regarding "Phase" design. 4+1, 4+4+1 etc.

Less is more can apply here as long as the quality of components is high, and to those worrying about your boards being 4+4+2/1 whatever and not true 8+2 dont worry and just enjoy your board and the overclock that comes with it. If this thread was never made a majority of you would of never known the difference and/or care.