Thanks you two. 

It just won't run with the fan clipped.  I'm going to have to hope for the best and worst case scenario, now that I know about the cores (I thought so!) I'll just have to get the Phenom 6-core super-awesome cpu and a MB to match.  I might've done it but I kept thinking I should go ATX instead of current mATX which gave me pause, due to the price jump.