BlueJay37
I am not as experienced with overclocking or some of the more technical aspects of this area as many of the other posters are, so I will give you my layman's opinion.
 
1. If you are not really going to overclock or even using liquid cooling, there are cheaper boards that I think would give you more than enough features to meet your needs. Asus makes a good midrange x79 motherboard (The Gene) that I am familiar with. I am sure there are others, and some of them are smaller form factors which might help with your cooler problem.
 
2. The issue with the voltage spike won't affect you if you don't overclock, but the fact that we have not yet seen a clear answer about this as well as other minor issues (like the fact that disabling the Raid controller shuts down the USB 3.0 ports, incorrect readings of temperatures using different software, 4 firmware revisions in a few weeks, etc...) lead me to want to say avoid this for now. It has an air of 'buggy release' about it.
 
Obviously just my opinion, but I am not extremely satisfied with my EVGA Dark experience at this point.

bcavnaugh

BlueJay37
I am not as experienced with overclocking or some of the more technical aspects of this area as many of the other posters are, so I will give you my layman's opinion.
 
1. If you are not really going to overclock or even using liquid cooling, there are cheaper boards that I think would give you more than enough features to meet your needs. Asus makes a good midrange x79 motherboard (The Gene) that I am familiar with. I am sure there are others, and some of them are smaller form factors which might help with your cooler problem.
 
2. The issue with the voltage spike won't affect you if you don't overclock, but the fact that we have not yet seen a clear answer about this as well as other minor issues (like the fact that disabling the Raid controller shuts down the USB 3.0 ports, incorrect readings of temperatures using different software, 4 firmware revisions in a few weeks, etc...) lead me to want to say avoid this for now. It has an air of 'buggy release' about it.
 
Obviously just my opinion, but I am not extremely satisfied with my EVGA Dark experience at this point.

If I was to take this attitude I would by a Dell or an HP as they do lock down the Bios so you cannot overclock.

• Documentation provided is extremely lacking
  • There is no actual user manual, but you will receive:
    • A 33 page 'Installation Guide' where 90% of the information is identical to the giant poster that's also provided and covers only basic setup information -- Compare this to the Rampage IV Extreme User's Manual (English) @ 179 Pages / 10.78MB PDF - Link (4th from the bottom)
    • A two-sided 2' x 1.75' poster which actually identifies most of the components and their use -- Like DIMM slots, CPU slot, SATA, etc. -- But is pretty useless once the system is up-and-running
• A seemingly advanced yet incredibly undescriptive BIOS where most of the settings will leave you Googling for what they actually do because the documentation provided does not show an image, let alone, even mention a single BIOS setting and most of the descriptions in the BIOS itself are a complete joke
• A ridiculously limited Memory QVL which seems to be leading to many unnecessary 'Memory Training' error codes upon initialization (17 QVL Entries (X79 Dark) VS 200+ QVL Entries (Asus Rampage IV Extreme))
• Even after being on the market for almost two months and having numerous revisions, the BIOS still feels like it's in beta, and while some things are being fixed, other things are breaking
  • My VCCIO/VSA (VCCSA) voltages cannot be manually adjusted in the BIOS (2.05) and seem to have automatically chosen ~1.22V (up from bare bones stock which is ~1.0V)
  • Since BIOS 2.02, leaving the DIMM voltage set to 'Auto' seems to not be providing all four channels with enough juice which is leading to unnecessary BSODs -- Even though both channels need to be set to the same voltage in the BIOS, each set of channels (AB/CD) are reporting slightly different numbers (All DIMM slots filled up with 64GB)
  • As of BIOS 2.04/2.05 users have now lost the ability to accurately monitor the VCore in many popular programs and are forced to either revert their BIOS to 2.02 or find another program (like AIDA64, which costs money) to get a correct reading -- Both CPU-Z and EVGA's own ELeet don't correctly monitor VCore using the latest BIOS revisions
• Trying to overclock and tweak settings to push just a few more GHz out of your chip? Better become intimately familiar with the button(s) that clear the CMOS because, more often than not, an incredibly slight adjustment will cause the board to not boot at all and clearing the CMOS is the only fix -- I feel like I'm playing Russian Roulette with the BCLK and CPU Multiplier
• Miscellaneous Gripes:
  • Mysteriously odd dependencies (e.g. Disable Marvell RAID and you lose your USB 3.0!)
  • The fact that users are required to install two separate Intel Chipset Drivers to remove the infamous Base System Device from the Device Manager
  • Secret features and optimizations that toss a dangerous amount of voltage at your CPU if you're not careful
  • Both Ethernet ports act up (currently bridged)
    • Top: Wall / Bottom: Second PC - Main PC (Dark) loses all connectivity after about 72 hours (requires restart to fix) / Second PC stays connected
    • Top: Second PC / Bottom: Wall - Main PC (Dark) loses all connectivity for about 30 seconds if the second machine is restarted

fegdenmark
 
Good luck with the Asus then.  Bought their Z9PE-WS earlier this year for a dual Xeon setup and at least two nvidia  GPU cards. Although this board was already half a year old when I bought it no single PCIe3.0 card was recognized, neither nvidias nor  ATIs. Nobody was able to use PCIe3.0 with this #?"§.    Took Asus months to fix it. And this is a business/professional product...
 
Compared to that experience I have to say the Dark gave me almost no troubles. My Ivy-E (4820k) worked out of the box with BIOS #3 and my two Titans both connect with 16 lanes each and PCIe3.0.