ASUS Maximus II Formula - new P45 king?

[drnick]

Has anyone had the "CPU INIT" error with this board? From what I've read it is not too infrequent of an occurrence with the Striker boards. Had just assembled a rig consisting of (CPU and mobo brand new):

MIIF mobo
e8600 with TRUE 120 push/pull fans
4x1gb crucial ballistix 1066 (the oldies-double sided memory banks)
evga 9800gtx
wd raptor
pcp&c 750 watt psu
antec 1200 case
winxp64

I had loaded the OS without issue and had already run (DOS based) memtest for several rounds without errors. Then a few minutes into running two instances of windows memtest, the computer powered down. I tried powering back on the system numerous times which only resulted in the system fans and led's coming on for a few seconds or flickering on and off repeatedly for a few seconds, but it wouldn't post and LCD monitor displayed "CPU INIT". I tried resetting CMOS (pulled battery), tried BIOS 2 jumper, tried a different pcp&c psu from another computer, tried booting with only cpu, graphics card, and only one stick of RAM, but no love.

At the time of the crash I was running 8x450fsb, vcore 1.26, CPU PLL 1.5, vdimm 2.1, vFSB 1.25, vNB 1.29, mem at 5-5-5-15 with 333 strap, all else pretty much on auto. Temps before crash looked ok according asus probe- cpu low 40's and NB 47C.

RMA time for the mobo? The board was purchased from local retailer and still within return period...I was going to swap it for a new one.