yea I know, I always keep that in mind, but I just can't justify paying full price for hardware that's a year old and has much lower street prices... take the hr-03 gt for example, I wasn't going to spend $50 buying it from ncix lol
anyways I've just confirmed 100% that this mobo is doa... according to
this thread, the fans should spin up and stay spinning even if there is no cpu. I've tried the mobo naked without a cpu, and the fans continue to turn on and off. The only reason for this that I can think of is a possible flexing in shipping; when installing this in my haf 922 I felt that bottom right corner was flexed up, so the screw had to 'hold it down'. maybe the flexing screwed up the pcb? A year ago when I just got into the whole building thing, I was building my first rig and used the wrong screws so the mobo riser came out underneath the mobo (m4a78 pro, top left screw) and the mobo still worked perfectly even while flexed and after return to original form, gotta love asus stuff.
Taking my chances with a ex58 extreme if I can negotiate a deal (it's the only good looking mobo even close to my budget, still $75 over my budget of $150 though). From the front it looks a lot better, but it's actually worse because it has push-pins on the NB instead of the backplate on the ud5. I also have to install the hybrid thingy, which can possibly pull on the NB if my case isn't aligned perfectly with it. Kinda sucks for me, oh well
