I did experience something odd however. At some point during tweaking various settings, both in the new OS (linux) and BIOS, I was unable to F2 access the BIOS during start. I thought to find the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS but I COULD NOT FIND THE DAMNED THING. So before sending it back to ASUS, I removed the PCIe drive since it had personal info on it.
But booting AFTER removing the PCIe drive gave me access to the BIOS. I thought BIOS boot was independent of hard drive presence?
Anyway, after booting the BIOS I rescued my new machine and only had two screws left over after taking the darn thing apart!
trivia: first boot into linux resulted in "no hd found". Turns out this ASUS BIOS won't detect the linux hd unless you set VMD to disabled which enables AHCI. Thanks for the obfuscation ASUS!
benoau•1h ago
Bit early to call it broken by design...
pdpi•45m ago