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Asus Striker Extreme LGA 775 nVida nForce 680i SLI ATX - The Ultimate Gaming Motherboard | List Price: $349.00
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Brand: Asus
Binding: Electronics
Features: - STRIKER_EXTREME MBD LGA775 NVIDIA SLI DDR2
ASUS Striker Extreme [Posted on 2007-09-29]
The bottom line is that four of 10 ASUS boards could not post long enough to upgrade the bios to 1305 which is essential for a full configuration. Unfortunately the first boards I got for prototyping worked fine. The nightmare followed.
Buy something else. Here is my experience.
I chose the ASUS Striker Extreme because of past success with ASUS motherboards and a review at Tom's Hardware. It had what I was looking for, two full speed PCI-e X16 slots for a pair of BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC2 video cards and a PCI-e slot for an external RAID controller. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600. RAM is 4 - 1GB Corsair PC6400 (C4). It said in the poop sheet that it was ready for those processors.
The first build was with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700. It was a bit flaky so I flashed the bios to release 1305. No problems thereafter.
The second build was with a Quad Q6600. Same experience with the first build. So, I ordered another and then decided to order 4 more for a total of 7, one with the E6700 and six with the Q6600 processors.
The next build was a nightmare. It posted for about 15 seconds a couple of times and then locked up. Thereafter you couldn't see the monitor. I striped the system down to one DIMM, one video card, and still nothing so I sent it back.
In the meantime, the other four came in. Of those motherboards, two builds went OK with the striped down bios flash. The other two were just like the nightmare boards. So, I sent them back.
Of the three replacements, I had to pick up on old Pentium 4, an old 512M stick to get them to post long enough to flash to bios 1305. Even so, one of them never lasted longer than 15 seconds and after a couple of boots, it would no longer post with anything I had. I sent it back for a refund.
I figure that the Striker Extreme Boards wasted about 8 hours of my time. I think your odds of getting a good board are 50-50. I will say that after the board bios is upgraded it works fine. I did try to overclock a bit, but without success. Actually all I wanted was stability.
I may try another Striker Extreme simply because I hate to have a missmatch of systems in a lab. But, this is ridiculous. Without a doubt, the dumbest thing about the board is reseting the bios (doesn't work as advertised) and the difficulty of flashing the bios.
On a $300 board, why not put in a really simple bios flashing processor? Here is what I would do. Designate one of the USB ports for bios flashing. Include a 32MB or larger memory key. They are nearly free.
Your bios processor has a minimal Linux build that displays all of the bios images on the key. You pick which one to install. It backs up the current bios before installing the new one.
Excellent Stable Motherboard [Posted on 2007-11-13]
This product is replacing an EVGA 680i that I had to RMA because it stopped working.
This ASUS board has given me no problems and I have been using it since September!
Yes with the EVGA board you might be able to OC a bit higher, but I prefer the heat pipe solution on the ASUS these 680i boards have to be kept COOL, especially the Mosfet Areas!
Highly Recommended, and it is not only me that recommends it, but also HP is using it on their new BlackBird 002 Gaming PC's!
worst Asus motherboard I ever bought, and also the most expensive :-( [Posted on 2007-12-31]
I went thru 4 Asus striker Extreme boards before finding one that would post normally, and that is with ZERO OVERCLOCKING. I don't know what the design flaws of this motherboard are, but there is a lot of 'variety' between boards... You are lucky of you get one that operates to spec. even my fourth try at this board will not overclock to any significant degree. I've burned almost a full year dealing with this motheboard in a cost no object system and this motherboard is the first one to cause me so much grief... I've never dealt with a board this bad... I really bit it with this motherboard and an just happy it boots at this point.
Flash the BIOS at your own risk!! [Posted on 2008-08-26]
Pros: Stable motherboard when it worked. Does not overheat.
Cons: Expensive. Must have been released in a hurry without adequate testing. I bought this based on my past experiences with ASUS motherboards and this by far has been my worst experience with any motherboard ever! It burned my $600 7.1 speaker system because of its incompatibility with creative Xfi sound card. I had to buy a new card just because they refused to fix the bug, not because my old one is not working! Then one of my network ports gave up and soon I started to have RAID driver problems so I decided to flash the BIOS. The BIOS flashed successfully, or so it said, and on restarting the system, POOF! My screen went black and that was it. I called Tech support and they said they were too busy and to leave my contact so they can call me back in 2hrs. They must be running on Jupiter time because its been a week and nobody has called back. I had this thing for a year and that was one of my worst years ever! Now I am stuck with RAID drives that need to be rebuilt and my fear is I might never be able to rebuild them since their RAID drivers are unique. DONT BUY THIS JUNK! unless you absolutely dont have a choice. My 2 cents.
Very good board [Posted on 2008-10-01]
love this board!
everything worked like a charm and runs cool.
i will be buying Asus again!
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