ASUS Maximus II Formula - new P45 king?

[Grnfinger]

Hey guys, I need your recommendation please.

I am building couple of rigs for friends now and one is having a rather budget system. I though of a build with e8400 on a budget p45 board but then... My mind crossed the idea that I could just as well pass him my q9450 and get myself either q9550 E0 or q9650. Well, now I am also thinking if I should just give him my mobo+cpu+RAM (I bought 8gb, so 4 are just dusting at the moment).

Question: do you think it make sense to get Maximus II Formula over the Rampage that I have now? I am not going to run more then one gpu in the future. All I care is max overclock of the cpu. I was thinking about remounting the heatsink on my Rampage (to lower NB and work on overclock) and that is something that I will be doing in case if I do get Maximus II.

That cooler(?) P45 chipset, some more bios options (and seems like better overclocks for quad) as well as (just have to mention it) the super sexy look of the board - makes me want to have it my hands.


Most likely I will be getting q9550 E0 if I will be able to find one. If not, will "have to" spend a little on q9650. Still have some time to think everything over (till next week).

Also, price wise - it will cost me nothing if I get q9550 and Maximus II Formula; ~60 Euro if I live Rampage and get q9650; ~150 Euro if I get both Maximus II Formula and q9650.

My logic tells me that ~475FSB on Maximus II Formula with a q9550 E0 should be achievable (to get to 4GHz). The other force that makes you spend money while going out without really realizing what for - tells me I should spend that 150 Euro.

What kind of xtreme should I go for?

Well this is Xtreme Systems not mediocre systems.
I was right where you are last week. Now I have a Maximus II Formula and a Q9550 @ 4.0GHz

.....i have to have said this like 20 times in this topic. seroiusly. the EXACT message it says when i try to boot from a 64 bit disc is. "Reboot and select proper boot media or insert boot media in the selected boot device and press a key" that isnt really an error message as a message saying that it doesnt see the 64 bit disc as bootable.

We are trying to help you perhaps leave your attitude for you mom.
So seriously I actually feel bad for you and I honestly want to help so I called Asus myself.
This what they suggest
1. Insert your motherboard cd and boot from it. If it boots there is NOTHING wrong with your motherboard.
2. If you have both IDE HDD and a IDE CD/DVD Rom on the same ribbon put them on seperate ribbons and retry.
3. If the pc will boot from any other cd then your 64bit disk is not being read as "bootable" and you need a NEW source to boot from.

So there is really not much more that can be done, your going to have to live with 32bit or grab a new 64bit Vista someplace, cause as we all said from the start its really looking like a faulty Vista disk.