How to avoid purchasing Faulty "Cougar Point" Chipset motherboard?

Solution 1:

You'll want to look for a board that is identified as having "B3 Stepping" for the chip-set. Sometimes listed as a "Rev. B3" and sometimes there will be an "Intel Revised" logo, depends on the motherboard manufacturer for the most part, but they all tried pretty hard to ensure it was obvious that it had it.

CPU-Z can help you identify it on a running system.

Asus has some good info here.