I could do the soldering work IF I had the time. I don't.
Plus, like you said, it's a tedious and delicate process. Even with experience, I'd say 50/50 odds that I screw up AT LEAST one
Unfortunately, I need the extra beef of the server I had to run all the crap I had going. The worst stress was some CAD rendering that would literally render the machine unusable for upwards of 4 hours at a time. I can't skimp very far on parts without severely crimping my ability to run all that at once.
Right now I'm browsing crapBay for parts. I have an offer with a guy to purchase a MOBO that has caps from a different manufacturer (thus not subject to the problems). It's also a newer one that supports dimms instead of rimms, so with some luck if I can get that and I have a couple gigs of unused dimms laying around. That would give me the least headache and probably the best option until a future date that I can afford a new workstation.