***Asus Rampage III Extreme Owners Thread***

[lonkny]

So I just finished my build and everything booted up OK on first attempt... Updated motherboard BIOS to latest version (1005)... Things are going very well, except for one issue... please let me know if anyone has any ideas on this - thx.

Haven't installed any OS yet, although will be installing Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Have the RIIIE running w/4 hard drives attached to the ICH ports... 2 of those drives I would like to configure in RAID0 mode... also have 1 SATA 6Gb/s drive plugged into one of the Marvell SATA6Gb ports (just an FYI - not part of this issue)... then I have 2 more hard drives connected to a Promise FastTrak TX-2300 PCI RAID Controller card in a RAID1 config. I have the "Onboard SATA6G Controller" set to AHCI mode (just an FYI), as well as under the main "Storage Configuration" I have "Configure SATA as" RAID (rather than IDE or AHCI)... here's the issue... when configured in RAID mode, I can see the ICH RAID config during bootup, BUT I don't see the Promise TX2300 RAID BIOS at all... even in the Boot Menu in the BIOS, the "RAID: FT TX2300 Array" doesn't appear there... However, if I switch the SATA config to AHCI I can then see the FastTrak BIOS config menu during startup, as well as it appearing in the Boot Device list... of course then I can't access the Intel ICH controller RAID BIOS config (although I do see the drives attached to it)!!

The question is - how can I get BOTH the Promise PCI RAID Controller AND Intel ICH RAID Controller to be enabled and available in the BIOS at the same time?? I would like to create RAID arrays on each and currently this is not possible... Or can I just configure the Intel RAID0 array using Matrix Storage Manager once Windows is installed (is this possible and/or recommended)?

One other question - does the BIOS RAID & AHCI modes use the same driver in Windows 7? That is, can I move forward w/my Windows installation (which is not going on either RAID array, but on a single SSD) and not worry about driver/BSOD issues if I switch between AHCI and RAID modes in the BIOS later on? I realize there a registry hack to get around having the reinstall Windows, but just wanted to know if the driver was the same or not... thanks for any help!!

Here is the hardware config:

Case: Corsair Obsidian 800D
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Extreme
Processor: Intel Core i7 930
Memory: 3x2GB GSkill Pi Series PC3-16000
Video: XFX Radeon HD 5850 "XXX Edition"
System Drive: OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 Sandforce Chipset
Data Drives: 2x500GB Seagate RAID1, 2x1.5TB WD Black RAID1, 1xOCZ Colossus OCZSSD2-1CLS250G 3.5" 250GB, 1xWD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s
Optical Drives: LG BluRay Burner, Asus DVD/RW
Sound: Auzentech Forte 7.1 PCI-e
Expansion Cards: Asus U3S6 USB3.0 & SATA6Gb/s PCI-e, Promise FastTrak TX2300 PCI RAID Controller
Display: Matrix Orbital LK-204-7T-1U-USB-TCI Tri Color 20x4 Character Display
Bay Device: Akasa All In One 2 Control Panel (used for ports only, not fan/temp control)
Pump/Fan/Thermal Power & Control: MCubed T-Balancer BigNG w/Analog Sensor Hub