Recommend me some mobo suggestion for Ivy Bridge CPU + misc stuff

It seems that it has reached 1 year since last I started collecting parts to build my current PC (though I already swapped two major parts of it already).

If anyone had been following on my recent nagging of trying to achieve overkill of overkill, I now want an Ivy Bridge CPU and this would require new mobo.

As of now, I am looking at Asus Maximus V Formula.

I may also want to venture into water cooling department, which I have not done yet, so if anyone got any suggestion, I would like to hear your thoughts.

Yeah that's the mobo I was looking at getting when I build my rig. Seems like a good one. Tom said it was overpriced for what it offered though.

That an awesome mob for sure. Kinda expensive, but pretty sweet.

I have ZERO experience with water cooling, sorry.

Its overpriced if the same components are used as regular mobos.

From my understanding, the parts put into the higher end mobos by ASUS are all certified to withstand punishing conditions. I am quite sure that I am paying for this higher quality components, and this I do not mind at all.

True.

Care to elaborate on what makes the mobo so much better than mine( Asus Sabertooth X58 )?

If there is on component I need to educate myself on its mobos....so Im not really sure the differences.

Its the same ASUS brand, so most components will be same.

The main difference should be that X58 is of older architecture obviously.

Just like TOP series video cards. I'm pretty sure ROG series use binning for all essential components.

Sabertooth X58 does not seem to have Digi+ VRM for voltage regulation for more stable performance, especially with overclocking.

Not essential for me, since I have separate sound card, but Formula & its cousins have separated sound chipset area from rest of its board for better defence against electric noise generated by other working components.

New heat-pipe, which is also water-cooler compatible, is used for chipsets and power delivery for further enhancing OC capability.

If I wanted to, I can use my laptop to connect up with this mobo, and change settings from there.

Ivy Bridge mobos with Virtu feature is able to inject more performance into graphics processing by lending Intel HD 4000's performance into existing video processing capability.

PCI-e 3.0, which I was nagging about (LoL).

Thats on top of my head at the moment.