Hey guys I just wanted to give you a heads up about this motherboard... get ready for a rough ride. Honestly, I believe this motherboard could have been better tested. For something advertised as a gamer's motherboard, it sure does fall short in many catagories. I know it's a new motherboard, but I'm putting this near as close to the FIC boards in past.
I have not owned an Asus motherboard in 10 years. The last Asus board I had was a A7V for those who can remember it. I've always sticked to Gigabyte and MSI. I always liked the stability Gigabyte has provided. I can honestly say I was intrigued by this board after reading the reviews and watching the Youtube presentation on it. Unfortunately, this board has currently fallen short of the quality I expected.
First, let me take issue to the fact of total misleading advertisement. The board touts itself as XFi 2 MB. There is NO XFI2 CHIP on this motherboard! There is only "XFi 2 software".
If there was truly an XFI chip, it would have cost around $350. The sound chip is actually a Realtek HD sound chip.
Next comes my issue of memory. I was moving over 16GB (4x4 set) of G.SKILL PC1600 DDR3 1.5v 9-9-9-9-24 Ripjaw from my Gigabyte board to this one. I could not figure out the insane amount of BSOD's! What the heck is going on?! So finally I whipped out Memtest86+ 4.20 to check it out. So it appeared the set errored out. Here I go testing one stick at a time. No errors. Put two sticks in DIMM 1,2 - errors. Put two sticks in DIMM 1,3 no errors.
Put single stick in DIMM 2 no errors. Single stick in DIMM3 no errors. Single stick in DIMM4 no errors. Put three sticks in the system hard locks during the test. What the heck. All four DIMMS test fine as a set in the Gigabyte board. Finally I settled on using 2 out of the 4GB sticks in DIMMS 1,3 and no problems. Asus needs some stability fixes bad.
Next is the CPU Fan F1 problem others have experienced. I have this same problem too. The system reports no CPU fan on a cold boot. Warm reboot and the problem goes away.
Asus please FIX!
Experienced the notorious Intel driver crash everyone was reporting on the Crosshair IV. Newest driver didn't fix it. Custom driver didn't fix it. Solution, bought a realtek 1Gig PCI card. So far no problems with it. Again Asus, please FIX. If it is an intel problem, then get with intel and fix it.
Another problem is that the system reports I have 2 mouses and 2 keyboards plugged in on POST?! When I enter the UEFI the mouse and the keyboard goes berserk. I can't navigate the menus at all. Asus needs to fix this as well.
It may seem to all I am ranting. I am not. I do believe the motherboard will have serious potential when the BIOS matures. If you are considering this board, my advice is honestly I would stay away from this for now. The board needs some serious fixes. Of course, you won't read about this on review sites, because I'm sure they get some perks for positive reviews.
If you have had any issues such as mine, I invite you to please post back. Let's help them make this a good motherboard. So far, im not sold on this thing at all.
Without going into details, I run a network of over 100 workstations and I custom build my servers, so I am not new to the game. I will wait for Asus to update their BIOS and then I will report back with more feedback. I've done enough troubleshooting for a day. It would be nice to use the damn thing. Their memory compatibility list has to improve. Why I can run only 8GB of ram as opposed to 16GB is unacceptable. Is this board a winner? Only time will tell.
I have not owned an Asus motherboard in 10 years. The last Asus board I had was a A7V for those who can remember it. I've always sticked to Gigabyte and MSI. I always liked the stability Gigabyte has provided. I can honestly say I was intrigued by this board after reading the reviews and watching the Youtube presentation on it. Unfortunately, this board has currently fallen short of the quality I expected.
First, let me take issue to the fact of total misleading advertisement. The board touts itself as XFi 2 MB. There is NO XFI2 CHIP on this motherboard! There is only "XFi 2 software".
If there was truly an XFI chip, it would have cost around $350. The sound chip is actually a Realtek HD sound chip.
Next comes my issue of memory. I was moving over 16GB (4x4 set) of G.SKILL PC1600 DDR3 1.5v 9-9-9-9-24 Ripjaw from my Gigabyte board to this one. I could not figure out the insane amount of BSOD's! What the heck is going on?! So finally I whipped out Memtest86+ 4.20 to check it out. So it appeared the set errored out. Here I go testing one stick at a time. No errors. Put two sticks in DIMM 1,2 - errors. Put two sticks in DIMM 1,3 no errors.
Put single stick in DIMM 2 no errors. Single stick in DIMM3 no errors. Single stick in DIMM4 no errors. Put three sticks in the system hard locks during the test. What the heck. All four DIMMS test fine as a set in the Gigabyte board. Finally I settled on using 2 out of the 4GB sticks in DIMMS 1,3 and no problems. Asus needs some stability fixes bad.
Next is the CPU Fan F1 problem others have experienced. I have this same problem too. The system reports no CPU fan on a cold boot. Warm reboot and the problem goes away.
Asus please FIX!
Experienced the notorious Intel driver crash everyone was reporting on the Crosshair IV. Newest driver didn't fix it. Custom driver didn't fix it. Solution, bought a realtek 1Gig PCI card. So far no problems with it. Again Asus, please FIX. If it is an intel problem, then get with intel and fix it.
Another problem is that the system reports I have 2 mouses and 2 keyboards plugged in on POST?! When I enter the UEFI the mouse and the keyboard goes berserk. I can't navigate the menus at all. Asus needs to fix this as well.
It may seem to all I am ranting. I am not. I do believe the motherboard will have serious potential when the BIOS matures. If you are considering this board, my advice is honestly I would stay away from this for now. The board needs some serious fixes. Of course, you won't read about this on review sites, because I'm sure they get some perks for positive reviews.
If you have had any issues such as mine, I invite you to please post back. Let's help them make this a good motherboard. So far, im not sold on this thing at all.
Without going into details, I run a network of over 100 workstations and I custom build my servers, so I am not new to the game. I will wait for Asus to update their BIOS and then I will report back with more feedback. I've done enough troubleshooting for a day. It would be nice to use the damn thing. Their memory compatibility list has to improve. Why I can run only 8GB of ram as opposed to 16GB is unacceptable. Is this board a winner? Only time will tell.