I've been using BIOS 0802 for a while and besides the occasional odd VCORE spike in HWMonitor (set to 1.330v, spikes at 1.344v) the Maximus VIII Hero has been rock solid. However, BIOS version 1001 was released recently and let me tell you, it was nothing but trouble.
I set the A.I. Overclock Tuner to XMP, the CPU core ratios to 46, the VCORE to 1.330v, and everything else at AUTO -- basically the same settings that I had in 0802. The computer got to the Windows loading screen and then reboot itself multiple times. When Windows finally loaded, I would get all sorts of crashes involving ntoskrnl.exe, FLTMGR.SYS, and hal.dll. A quick GoogIe search revealed that all of these issues potentially meant bad RAM or a bad overclock. How is that possible if the same settings worked for the older BIOS? I thought my RAM was going bad, but MemTest86 didn't detect anything, and "sfc /scannow" didn't find anything wrong with the hard drives. I tried putting everything on AUTO and I still got blue screen crashing during intense gaming sessions. I eventually reverted back to 0802 and all the problems went away.
Is anyone else having these kind of issues with 1001 or did I mess something up? Or maybe the settings in 0802 are actually BAD for the computer and all that crashing in 1001 was normal? In any case, I'll just have to wait it out for a more stable update.
Computer Specs:
Processor: Intel i7-6700k
Motherboard: ASUS Maximus VIII Hero
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX (DDR4-3000MHz) CMK16GX4M4B3000C15
Hard Drive: Samsung EVO 850 250GB
Video Cards: 2x GeForce GTX 780TI