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I'll take cooling performance over aesthetics, that armor just traps warm air against the board.
Agreed. Much like the Sabertooth boards. I've seen them with that ugly armor. I'm thinking how the hell is airflow going to get thru that?
If you're going z97, get the ASRock Extreme 6. Running my chip at 4.7Ghz with 1.3v. Tho woomack got his to 1.228v
lol
I'm still waiting for M7 Impact ... 3-4 months now ... I wouldn't pay premium only for that plastic cover and features you won't use ( or I'm wrong and you are going to bench something on LN2 ). Hero or Ranger look not much worse but don't have that cover. I'm also not a fan of that armor thingy. In some places it has weird looking holes for heatsinks, slots etc. like someone had big problems to design it right.
These boards are not running hot except power section but there is a heatsink with option to use water cooling so I wouldn't worry about hot air under the armor.
I'm just starting to think that ASUS has big problems to release Z97 ROG boards. They have huge delay with most of their boards and we probably won't see extreme one soon. Impact had its previews 3 months ago and it's still not released.
Of course it would... the water is optional. Its like saying a car doesn't work right using the factory 16" rims versus the optional 18".reviews said even with NOT using the watercooling option there at the chokes...the air option installed works fabulous.