To start off the box that it comes in is a monster!!! By far the largest box I have ever seen a motherboard come in!! All in all the box is very fancy and everything is nicely packed away.
The first thing I did before installing was to remove the chipset cooling solution because I had heard that the thermal compound that was used wasn't done very well. And let me tell you, that is totally correct!! Check out these picks of the messy job that was done on mine!!!!
Anyways, it took me forever to get everything cleaned back up and then applied the AS5 and everything was happy!!! I hooked up the optional chipset fan and shoved all my parts into my machine!! She started right up. The manual is very nice and has all the error codes that the little LCD display has on the motherboard. I thought this was a real nice feature instead of having to figure out stupid beaping codes.
I can't tell you how much of a difference the AS5 made, but I can tell you under full load my chipset hits 31 degrees celcius! Which I think is really great!!!
All in all I couldn't be happier with this board, and EVGA rocks!! You can't complian about getting a lifetime warranty on a motherboard just by registering it on their website which takes seconds!!!
Also, so far they have been great with bring out Bios updates to resolve problems that have come up!! So far since I have had this board they have released two bios updates!!











