ASUS Maximus II Formula - new P45 king?

[Grnfinger]

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.

Pop the chip and clear the cmos, put the chip back in and see how it goes.
I know its a bit of a hassle but it will take less time than an RMA.

Hey there,

I've been following this thread for a while now, since I too got an M2F. Ever since I got it,
it has been nothing but trouble and frustration. When I first recieved the board only changing
the AI overclock tuner option to manual would made it fail to post, after getting some help
from another forum we fixed the problem. On my former XFX nForce 780i board I was able to run
my lapped Xeon 3110 at 4.2Ghz @ 1.37v and ram set to 1171mhz. Now even 3.6 isn't getting stable.
I'll post my specs and make a small list of what strange problems I'm experiencing.

My Specs;

Intel Xeon 3110 Lapped
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme Lapped
Asus Maximus 2 Formula bios 1307 & Ket's 1307
Corsair Dominator Pc8500-C5D 2x2Gb
Corsair Dominator Airflow Fan
Gainward Radeon HD4870 875/4800
Thermalright HR-03GT
Level-One WBR-0601 W-NIC
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 2x750Gb RAID 0
Antec Truepower Quattro 850w

My Problems;

PC fails to post when changing PCIE frequency and hangs at "DET_RAM"
PC fails to post when changing GTL voltages
PC fails to start windows when overclocked even a little bit (like 400x9 @ 1.4v)
PC fails to post when USB devices are attached when overclocked.
PC needs alot of voltages when attempting an overclock (1.8v CPU PLL 1.5V Vcore 1.4 vFSB)
If the system does post it hangs with BSOD "IRQ not less or equal" error.
and it's overall very unstable.

I did try changing some components (CPU, RAM, VGA) to see if it would solve the problems but
unfortunately after 2 months I hardly have had any fun with it and seeing as some of you get
4Ghz out of a Q9550 I really hope you guys can help me out a little.

By the way I've been into overclocking for a long long time now.

Greetings,
ECPowers

For now get rid of Ket's bios and flash back to an Asus bios.
IRQ not less or equal to is a ram error, so start there.
You want to manually enter each value and set everything to stock speed, then test stability.
Once you have stock running stable you can move up.
Start by clocking the chip first and testing the CHIP ONLY, once its stable you can bring the ram into play.
Trying to do it all at once makes it very hard to pinpoint the problem.