ok, quick update on the nforce 2 motherboard.
it got through 50h of memtest86, just fine:
The attachment nforce2 - 50h.jpg is no longer available
So onto prime95. Unfortunately, at first it was unstable, with prime95 reporting hardware errors.
Since I am actually overclocking the CPU, that isn't too unexpected. So I've bumped up core voltage to 1.75V (vs 1.65V stock) and it now run for 10 hours no crashes so far.
The attachment nforce2 - prime95.jpg is no longer available
Now, I will leave it for the rest of the weekend, hopefully no more crashes. Then one more update and I'll stop dragging this topic off-topic.