Is it me or is the ASUS P5B Deluxe really this bad to get even a basic config workin?

[gdavison]

Building two brand new PCs, both similar spec

Thermaltake Armor VA8003BWS Case
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 Cooled via Scythe Infinity
Asus P5B Deluxe Motherboard
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2
OCZ GameXStream 700w PSU
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X GFX card
Drive C is Western Digital Raptor 150GB 10,000RPM SATA
Drive D is Western Digital Caviar 500GB SATA
Optical is Asus DRW-1608P3S DVD ReWriter (Black)

Both machines sit on Power smoothing / voltage regulating UPS units so they are getting pure 240VAC. Both machines assembled whilst wearing an earthed anti static wrist strap at all times

One machine is running on the single GPX card (as it has multiple monitors) and the others has a Crossfore config with a additional ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X Crossfire / Master Edition card

Neither overclocked .. All pretty much stock settings in BIOS except Vdimm set to 2.1 V and timings 4 4 4 12 as per Geils needs

The very first machine (lets call it A) during build lasted 2 days before the motherboad went thru more and more random crashes and eventually would not turn on .. would power on (ie fans spin and lights light up) for about 2 seconds and would then power off

Machine B never even turned on out of the box (fans would spin leds would light) .. NO post Beeps No nothing, nothing to the screen ie LCD showing no signal received

Both Motherboards RMA'd and replaced

New Motherboard put into Machine A .. runs ok ish except will still random crash .. no BSOD no nothing just crash and reboot ... maybe once or twice a day .. runs memtest86 clean for 5 hours .. runs twin Orthos clean for 2 housr (CPU went to 41C - Sits at 27C when idle) .. Found that if I disable the Sound functionality in BIOS it is more stable .. ie if the onboard sound is
enabled it often will not even boot clean ....

Machine B rebuilt with new motherboard .. again memtest86 clean and SuperPi'd to 32million no problems (not really a Stress test I know) .. 3Dmark06 as 9761 "out of the box"

http://service.futuremark.com/orb/pr...jectId=1144037

Runs the sound function with Soundmax loaded and does not suffer the random crash of machine A (would love to have some one explain that to me) .. After a day loading software and stuff went for some well earned recreation and fired up Quake III (not really a stress full environment for a machine of this spec) .. 2 mins into loading crash .. Corrupt checker board Asus Bios screen (ie major graphic corruption) .. didn't boot so I power cycled .. no nothing .. LCD again showing no signal received .. No post Bios Beeps either ..

Pull the RAM and I get RAM missing BIOS beeps

Split The Cross fire and go back to a single card ... nothing ..

Reset BIOS and only one stick of RAM in slot 3 .. nothing ..