Originally posted by: lopri
This board is, while a great board, very typically ASUS. And the warm boot issue is extremely annoying if you're doing any kind of overclock.
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?page=3&articleid=729
Unfortunately, getting the system booted was not always that easy. In many cases, booting up the P5N32-SLI resulted in a blank monitor screen and we had to manually shut down the board using the kill-switch on the power supply. Originally, we thought this might have been a heat-related issue, as the system typically would not reboot after running benchmarks and the like. After checking fans and airflow, we were convinced that the setup, at least, was not at fault. We also noticed that the next boot after using the PSU kill-switch, would invariably halt during POST with the message that "overclocking failed or overvoltage failed". The problem with this is that in just about every case, we were neither overclocking nor overvolting any of the components. Investigating the issue, we found that in the Hardware Monitoring section of the BIOS, that the CPU was consistently undervolted, usually by a solid volt off of the expected value. That is, even if we raised the voltage elsewhere, the VCORE Voltage would be one volt lower. We managed to gain a bit of stability by manually raising the CPU voltage, but still found that the system became unresponsive from time to time.
It's a P5N32-SLI review, but the issue at hand is basically the same. The bottom line is, even with 8-phase power or whatever, ASUS can't get the Vcore right. Probably it'll take 9283665-phase power regulation before ASUS give us a board with a stable vcore. It's much, much improved compared to previous ASUS boards, but there still are Vcore fluctuation, too. I don't understand why AT review can't catch things like this, but AT didn't mention the Vcore fluctuation in A8N-SLI Premium review, either.
Also this board will try to do things on its own. There are many examples but can't write them all here right now. I believe the behavior is by design so a joe-six-pack can't mess up the BIOS, but I'd rather take a board that does what I tell it to do even if it means clearing CMOS.
All in all, it's an excellent board for stable day-to-day use. I currently have this board and a DFI NF4 SLI-D. Purchased this board in antipation of replacing the DFI as testing/OC'ing bed, but it doesn't look likely to happen. Probably I will continue to use DFI as an OC testbed, and use the ASUS as my main rig.