well ez flash definatley sucks for bios flashing on this board, I am now stuck, I can't hotflash the chip, i tried forcing it on a different motherboard but the softwwrae won't allow it due to incompatibilty. I will have to wait until I can get hold of a new chip, or this one will come back to life. Oh well..
Don't use asus update from XP to flash bios on this board!!
Initial experiences; (while I had the board working on 0402 bios), the heatpipe blocking the atx 2.0 socket is definatley a hinderance for some connectors, I cannot get the connector to home square, as the heatpipe blocks the housing of the connector from sitting true. The board will still power up of course, but the connection itself does not inspire confidence.
Secondly the whole cooling array (heatsink.heatpipe) get's very hot, most of the heat is from the chipset which then spreads to the mosfet areas too via the heatpipes, in essence actually raising the temprature of all other connected devices. A lone solution for the nb would have been appreciated as it would have undercomplicated the fitting of a superior cooler by the user. The reason the issue is sensitive is that I noticed that stability anywhere over 1600fsb is directly dependant on how cool the board is running (more so than on other boards), the stock solution is a complete hinderance for extreme overclocking tbh, you'll need to hack up those pipes and seprate the nb or remove the whole assembly and go for single heatsinks in each area. Only other solution is to cover the whole board with fans at full blast. Asus do privide a clip on fan, but it does not look like it will really cool the chipset very well.
Hopefully I can get hold of a new bios chip soon...
regards
Raja
Don't use asus update from XP to flash bios on this board!!
Initial experiences; (while I had the board working on 0402 bios), the heatpipe blocking the atx 2.0 socket is definatley a hinderance for some connectors, I cannot get the connector to home square, as the heatpipe blocks the housing of the connector from sitting true. The board will still power up of course, but the connection itself does not inspire confidence.
Secondly the whole cooling array (heatsink.heatpipe) get's very hot, most of the heat is from the chipset which then spreads to the mosfet areas too via the heatpipes, in essence actually raising the temprature of all other connected devices. A lone solution for the nb would have been appreciated as it would have undercomplicated the fitting of a superior cooler by the user. The reason the issue is sensitive is that I noticed that stability anywhere over 1600fsb is directly dependant on how cool the board is running (more so than on other boards), the stock solution is a complete hinderance for extreme overclocking tbh, you'll need to hack up those pipes and seprate the nb or remove the whole assembly and go for single heatsinks in each area. Only other solution is to cover the whole board with fans at full blast. Asus do privide a clip on fan, but it does not look like it will really cool the chipset very well.
Hopefully I can get hold of a new bios chip soon...
regards
Raja
I hope you didn't pay for that. Is it mounted in a BTX or ATX case? Heatpipes dont work properly using the former iirc. Only thing I could think of re the overheating 
