Apparently, bit-tech had some issues with 9800GX2s and the ASUS Striker II Formula Mobo.

Read it here: http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/19/heat-from-geforce-9800-gx2-causing-system-crashes/

 I could see this happening... however it is not the 9800 GX2's fault.

Just look at the card, its INTAKE is above that heatsink, thus blocking airflow, air will be directed out the back, not the middle of the card. Any dual slot card would cause this. The issue then is that  bit-tech is doing a poor job cooling the motherboard. Most likely using a case with very little airflow.

The Asus board is designed so that the NB will be cooled, and also cool the SB at the same time via a heatpipe.

Interesting.  I did all of my GX2 testing on a Striker II Extreme and haven't had any instability whatsoever.  The Extreme does have a different cooling system though...

 On my P5N32-E SLI folks are using small VGA coolers on the SB and it works just fine, stock mine has one heatpipe connecting it to the NB, and that is just fine. Seeing as how they use the exact same SB, two heatpipes, plus a small heatsink should be able to handle the load just fine.

Again, what kind of test setup did they have? That is the really important part.

LovelyCrap:

What exactly is stopping them from relocating the card to another PCI-E X16 slot? I know the 1st slot is prefered for a single-card setup on that board, but is that a hard and fast rule or just a performance guideline?

i would think u could use any slot not like other board that has a pci automately set to a lower speed, but i maybe wrong  

this is exactly why i hate having pasive cooling, i do not like the idea of being required to add or remove fans from my case to cool the motherboard.  (although i do have a good cooling case - thermal take armor) when i had the a8n32-sli mobo from asus and i tried it out and saw the temps on the nb and sb i returned it to newegg and got my dfi lanparty expert (which is a great board btw).

but i am in a class of my own, i do not care about noise at all, when i leave my xbox 360 running and that is louder than any computer ive heard.

also, from what i remember didnt asus have some type of cooling fan to add on to their passive cooling motherboards? i remember they had something like that because of people who used watercooling...