Iron wrote:Do you have a ECO Button into your control? MSI offers it for his HM87 Chipset Boards, so not for Z97? Thats would confuse me and btw, that audio popping isnt that new, same on older z boards. And how its possible that the realtek hd drive...

Guys, this isn't Asus' fault, it's something to do with the Realtek ALC1150 and Z97. I've experienced the same problem with the MSI Z97 Gaming 5. There's no way to get away from it until Realtek fixes it. Or, you can disable all C-States in the BIOS.

Kind of funny the bios after 2012 was one of the affected BIOSes, and that's what my board SHIPPED with. Not sure what they messed up, but I'll roll back to be safe.

I've been battling the same issue, and what I've found was that it happens on TWO different motherboards. I tested with an MSI Z97 Gaming 5. Same problem. So we're looking at either an issue with Windows 8.1, an audio driver bug (both boards have ALC...