@EF, when you have your raid card on the board, does the message that says "Waiting for raid contoller firmware ro be ready" stay up during post for a while??. I just put mine up in the RE and the message during POST stays up for a while. This is with the Marvel Boot ROM disabled. Also, if anybody is interested, having the OCZ v2 on the Areca makes a world of difference, as opposed to having it on the ICH9R.