Wow, I want I want.

I am not trying to discourage anyone, but before making an investment in this mobo you might want to check out the Asus forums:
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=Striker+Extreme&SLanguage=en-us

I have a question. You showed how the Noctua heatsink doesnt perfectly fit. Did you guys try with the ThermalRight 120 that you dubbed best heatsink?

Well, firstly, the Thermalright 120 CPU cooler does not have the interfearance issue that the Noctua had. With the Thermalright, is is about 7-8mm of clearance between the bottom fins of the cooler and the top fins of the heatsink that the Noctua was bumping into. A Striker owner could always use a Thermalright 120 instead of a Noctua NH-U 12, but personally, I like the Noctuas better.

And yes, Asus did send us this board. They didn't cherry pick it however. No one at Asus tested a batch full of Strikers and sent us the best of the lot. What we got would pretty much be what the average consumer could expect if they went out an bought a Striker of their own.

But as for that issue of some Strikers hitting a 500MHz plus FSB, those review sites actually sent their Striker back to Asus to get a better one that would hit 500MHz plus.

That seems unfair. In relation, we've had memory modules pass through Neoseeeker with the manufacturers claim that said modules will hit some very high timings. When they don't meet these specs, we send them back and get a pair that do meet spec. But we always report on out initial findings, regardless of how good or how bad the performance was.

The average consumer can't send their board back to Asus and request one that'll hit some higher performance standard. All of our testing and results are what the average consumer can expect if they we to purchase the same part (though performance may vary slightly).

Furthermore, some sites will claim an outrageous overclock acheivement regardless of stability. For us, it isn't enought that the board simply POSTs, but it has to run our tests and cannot crash. If it does crash, we count that as unstable and would not claim it as our final figure. Stability is of the utmost importance.

Just being accurate and honest. It is somewhat of a bad omen (for the end consumer at least) when a vendor supplies review sites with that cherry picked hardware.

It's like 'Consumer Reports'. They will go out and buy the products they review and rate. They won't accept a product direct from the factory. A car maker could have a team of mechanics rebuild and blueprint the car from scratch, invalidating the quality of their production products.

But I do agree in that Asus has to clean up the Striker. Most of its ills right now lay within the BIOS. I'll probably check back with subsequent BIOS revisions and see what happens, and keep the article updated as such.

I'm serious looking for help OC'ing the Striker Extreme. I have the following hardware and I'm boping the author of this article can help. My hardware is as follows:
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6850 batch #L723A943
RAM: 2GB Corsair Dominator 10000
Motherboard: Asus Striker Extreme (bios 1303)
Video card: Evga 8800 GTX Super overclocked version
Hard drives: 3 (750GB Western Digital 7500AAKS)
Power Supply: 750W PC Power & Cooling Quad

And a VapoChill LS that is keeping the CPU into the negative tempas. And all I can get is a measly 3.7Ghz

Any professional help would be appreciated
Adam