The Asus Crosshair II Formula From Hell

[zappa86]

I recently posted about a bad experience with the Asus Crosshair II Formula motherboard, but it gets worse, and I would like your advice.

Last month I purchased the Asus Crosshair II Formula motherboard. However, about after 2 hours of using it a capacitor exploded. I RMAed my board back to Newegg, and get another one about 2 weeks ago. This one, I installed and the audio did not work (I know for a fact that the audio of this board *should* work with my setup, because it worked with my first beard - well, that is until the capacitor exploded, then, of course, audio did not work.) In addition, the memory timings were off, even if I hard set them, they would want to be (ddr2 937 3-3-3-30t)

At this point, I started reading the Asus forums heavily and looking at Newegg reviews. I noticed that both the Asus Crosshair II Formula, and the Asus Striker II Formula (and Extreme) seemed to have a large number of complaints like post issues, memory timings, reboots, etc.. Both these motherboards use the NVIDIA 780a, 780i, and 790i chipsets, respectively. I then noticed that Asus was first to the market with all these extreme-gamer-high-end motherboards. Just recently, has an MSI motherboard with the 780a chipset appeared on Newegg (and it has a much better rating than the Crosshair II Formula). This leads me to believe that Asus cut R&D and quality control in order to get this board out first.

My 3rd board should arrive UPS today. I'm not even going to put this board in my computer to test it, I'm just going to try it on top of the box it arrived in. I hope it works because the motherborad's specs are very nice, if it does work it should be a beast. However, I fear it will not.

So far, I am out a bit less than a month of time and about $22 (from shipping the board back to Newegg). The problem is this board is listed as non-refundable on Newegg. So, I'm wondering what I can do. I *could* RMA it again, and then be out $33, and wait 2 weeks only to find out that the next board won't work either. I don't want to keep RMAing it until Asus finally realized their errors and comes out with a new batch which is fixed. Between my first and second motherboard Newegg agreed to refund it, but I said I'll give it another shot (I did not realize it would be this bad). If Newegg does refund it, I don't want to have to pay the 15% restocking fee, I would instead pay the 0% its-going-into-the-trash-can fee, because thats where its going; either in California trash system, or back to Asus and then in the Taiwan trash system. (In addition, I can short-circuit the UPS fee by just taking a video of me putting it in the dumpster and sending it to Newegg as proof.)

What do you think I should do? (If I quit, I have an AMD Phenom and 8GBs of ram sitting in my desk drawer.)

[zappa86]

Well, I received my 3rd Crosshair II Formula today. When I was taking it out of the package, I noticed a motherboard standoff screw in the container which the motherboard was sitting on (not a good sign to see random stuff in your box) Also, the blue heatsink covering the south bridge was missing a screw so it was no where firmly pressed against the chip it needed to cool. Therefore, I can not even test the board without risking frying that chip, (although that chip would rather be in IC heaven than on the a piece of crap motherboard). Strangely enough, that standoff screw was not the screw missing from the heatsink assembly, it was some proprietary screw with a spring about it.

I just emailed newegg to let them know about this crap. Lets see what they say.

[jhorsman]

Zappa,

I have this mobo too and it is hooked with a 9950BE and 4g of ram on a GTX280. I know the nvidia beta drivers can take care of the hardware issues with the graphics card.. But the biggest issue I have is that the onboard sound sounds like an atari. I was wondering if you or anyone else has found a solution to this? Right now I use Fedora..(PCBSD Has Kernel Crashes due to the hardware so I cannot do it from a BSD Perspective.) Any suggestions for getting all the onboard components working?

[paytonc]

I just got this motherboard, and it has been a nightmare for the last 3 days. I'm loosing sleep because of this crap.

It won't recognize the right memory timings, so you have to manually set them.

The new BIOS 1003 bareley works with 8 gig of ram installed for vista 64. It gives me blue screens and now my vista wont boot up anymore. Asus used to be soooo much better. My A8n-SLI PREMIUM w/ AMD Opteron 180 always served me so well and was rock solid. I then got a A8n32-SLI Delux, and thats where the quality started to go down hill. The Crosshair 2 Formula is like the tipping point.

This purchase makes me question the whole company. They just rush out MB to be the first and get the OCing enthusiest's money. They cut corners to be the first high end MB of a series, and it has been showing alot lately. Their BIOS updates are worthless its like they don't give a crap anymore. It seems like they didn't even test the bios before they let it out to the public.

Mabie a switch to DFI would be a good idea.

because all I have now is a computercase with a nice looking motherboard.



Set Up

CPU: AMD Phenom 9950BE
RAM: Corsair twin2x4096-8500c5d : DDR2 1066
MB: Crosshair 2 Formula
GPU: EVGA 8800 GXS

[jhorsman]

I just got this motherboard, and it has been a nightmare for the last 3 days. I'm loosing sleep because of this crap.

It won't recognize the right memory timings, so you have to manually set them.

The new BIOS 1003 bareley works with 8 gig of ram installed for vista 64. It gives me blue screens and now my vista wont boot up anymore. Asus used to be soooo much better. My A8n-SLI PREMIUM w/ AMD Opteron 180 always served me so well and was rock solid. I then got a A8n32-SLI Delux, and thats where the quality started to go down hill. The Crosshair 2 Formula is like the tipping point.

This purchase makes me question the whole company. They just rush out MB to be the first and get the OCing enthusiest's money. They cut corners to be the first high end MB of a series, and it has been showing alot lately. Their BIOS updates are worthless its like they don't give a crap anymore. It seems like they didn't even test the bios before they let it out to the public.

Mabie a switch to DFI would be a good idea.

because all I have now is a computercase with a nice looking motherboard.



Set Up

CPU: AMD Phenom 9950BE
RAM: Corsair twin2x4096-8500c5d : DDR2 1066
MB: Crosshair 2 Formula
GPU: EVGA 8800 GXS

Hey Pay:

Looks like we got a very similar set up. Though I am not sure why you are having problems with Vista 64, (You may want to retard timings to 800, when an asus board flakes I always do that first.) I use mine in Vista 32, and it works like a champ with the exception of creepy power saving it has. I cannot put a distro on it right now because of issues with controllers/Sound/etc. My biggest thing is that I would love to put a Linux Distro on it, but the drivers I do not think are ready. I think the biggest mistake here was for me at least, I did not check any type of hardware compatability on this board. My thinking was, "Oh it is an nforce, I had a 2/3/590 This should work fine".. Boy was I wrong. I am looking for someone that may have a success story of what they did to get this board completely working.. Asus boards have had a flakey track record indeed.

Board: Crosshair Forumla II
Cpu: Amd 9950 BE
Ram Corsair Twin 2x2048 @ 1066
GPU: gtx280

[deanjo]

Hey Pay:

Looks like we got a very similar set up. Though I am not sure why you are having problems with Vista 64, (You may want to retard timings to 800, when an asus board flakes I always do that first.) I use mine in Vista 32, and it works like a champ with the exception of creepy power saving it has. I cannot put a distro on it right now because of issues with controllers/Sound/etc. My biggest thing is that I would love to put a Linux Distro on it, but the drivers I do not think are ready. I think the biggest mistake here was for me at least, I did not check any type of hardware compatability on this board. My thinking was, "Oh it is an nforce, I had a 2/3/590 This should work fine".. Boy was I wrong. I am looking for someone that may have a success story of what they did to get this board completely working.. Asus boards have had a flakey track record indeed.

Board: Crosshair Forumla II
Cpu: Amd 9950 BE
Ram Corsair Twin 2x2048 @ 1066
GPU: gtx280

Given that it's basically the same components as a M3N-HT, I would expect that everything would work as the M3N-HT works perfectly in linux (providing your using a new enough distro. Suse 10.3 for example won't work but 11.0 will OOB) The only issue I could possibly be an issue is the ADI 1988B because of it's use of a PCI-e - PCI bridge. I'm not sure if alsa is aware of that chipet with that particular setup.

[paytonc]

My setup is working now, but I can only use 3 sticks of RAM. A 4th stick of RAM makes vista not boot.

It's very strange, ASUS needs to release a BIOS update to fix it.

[deanjo]

My setup is working now, but I can only use 3 sticks of RAM. A 4th stick of RAM makes vista not boot.

It's very strange, ASUS needs to release a BIOS update to fix it.

Try running with 4 sticks in unganged mode. Also make sure your ram is runnning @ 800 Mhz as 1066 is not supported in 4 chip ram configuration as it is a limitation of the memory controller in the Phenom. 1066 is only supported when running 2 chips.

[compsmart4240]

Hey Pay:

Looks like we got a very similar set up. Though I am not sure why you are having problems with Vista 64, (You may want to retard timings to 800, when an asus board flakes I always do that first.) I use mine in Vista 32, and it works like a champ with the exception of creepy power saving it has. I cannot put a distro on it right now because of issues with controllers/Sound/etc. My biggest thing is that I would love to put a Linux Distro on it, but the drivers I do not think are ready. I think the biggest mistake here was for me at least, I did not check any type of hardware compatability on this board. My thinking was, "Oh it is an nforce, I had a 2/3/590 This should work fine".. Boy was I wrong. I am looking for someone that may have a success story of what they did to get this board completely working.. Asus boards have had a flakey track record indeed.

Board: Crosshair Forumla II
Cpu: Amd 9950 BE
Ram Corsair Twin 2x2048 @ 1066
GPU: gtx280

I have yet to have a problem with ASUS... You are grounding yourself correctly and have no parts of the board touching the case that ahouldn't be and all that right... I know simple stuff, but never know... I always update BIOS before attempting to run the board, I have the most current 1003 and even when on 0901 I had no problems, installed fine, flashed fine, booted fine, sound installed and works great, Running Vista 64 with phenom 9950 at 3.0ghz, with 8gig dominator corsair 1066 ddr2, set memory in BIOS to 1066 and works fine, Dual EVGA 9800 GX2's on quad SLI, runs fine, using 4 SSD 64gig running in RAID booted fine and all that, installed and works fine, no problems... The only thing I have ever gotten bad from NewEGG was a hard drive like 3 years ago... The return was simple, the replacement came promptly, no big deal.. I really don't see why so many people have problems like the ones I've read about on this post...

Flash the latest BIOS, makes sure you have latest system drivers and graphic drivers installed correctly and update windows... Do this while being grounded to the case the whole time and you shouldn't have any problems... You might not think static will damage, but it does and if you pull that board out and set it on a surface that is charged or you are charged it could damage the board... It sounds to me like this might be some of the problem, as to the random screws in the board, I had them in my board as well... I forget what they went to, but during my build I figured it out, I think it has something to do with the face place, but can't remember...

Anyway, you wanted to know how anyone got it working, and that's how I got it working, but then again it worked great right out of the box, never had any of these problems mentioned or any of the ones mentioned in other reviews for that matter...

I still think ASUS is rock solid, Since the last 4 boards I've purchased have been ASUS and they've all worked great...