Hey there, I'm new to these forums myself, but I have been dealing with the Maximus IV Extreme Z for the past few weeks (ownership about 8 months).
V. 1004 worked perfectly.
For whatever reason, I decided to upgrade BIOS to 3402 while updating other software. Biggest regret ever. Had two RAID arrays (on the marvell controller, and on the native intel controller). Here is what happened.
First, one of the SSD's in the native RAID0 array became a non member. Only way to make it a member? delete the raid array and start from scratch (partition recovery software necessary). Fine whatever, I never store important data on the OS drive (unless on dropbox) as IMO its the first to go out.
Then I start having the sleep issues, as you stated. This is a big deal for me, I already have a $200 electri bill, I try to save where I can, and going from 200 Watts to 1-3 Watts idle is a significant difference over a month.
Sure enough, theres a new update. 3501. Update it, and now I have new issues. Fixed the sleeping issue, but.... A few times, it states that 3-4 hard drives are missing (on separate power rails too, trying to isolate the issue. ) This was a rare occurrence, and went away. Also the mobo would get stuck on 92 occassionally for about 5 minutes before botting a different bios, indicating the keyboard couldn't be found. (made it difficult to switch to old bios).
More importantly, there was a new issue. Having RAID enabled on the marvell controller. If I had it enabled and had hard drives plugged in, I would be met with the error to "Select proper boot device or insert boot media" while trying to boot my working OS hdd native on the Intel controller(I tried both RAID and AHCI on the intel controller).
Ok what about starting from scratch, attempting to install on a regular HDD(using a spare laptop hdd) on the intel controller, having RAID enabled on the Marvell. I would be met with this error.
http://i.imgur.com/nAvO3.jpgThe kicker? Every single one of these issues resolved by switching to the second BIOS (it was 700 something, upgraded to 1004) (it would let me install the OS with RAID enabled on marvel, let me boot any hard drive with the RAID enabled marvell controller, sleep worked fine.)
Suggestion? Don't update the BIOS if everything is working. Buy a motherboard that has been reviewed by others recently, with a current firmware to know what your getting and that it will be compatible with Ivy. Upgrade the BIOS at your own risk. I have 7 HDD's and a dvd drive, unfortunately I need the marvell controller. And yes, I updated the BIOS through the BIOS, I personally feel like its the easiest, and have never had an issue in my life with the various bios updates I've done.
