OK, here's my tip to the "extremely slow booting" problem. I was also left staring at the POST screen for 40-50 seconds, and this is what helped:

If you don't have a fan, change it's BIOS setting to "Ignore". If it set to N/A, the mobo will search for it. N/A doesn't mean it's not there, just that the mobo can't find it, but it will look for it...