The Asus Maximus Formula HowTo

This HowTo attempts to describe all aspects of the Linux compatibility of an Asus Maximus Formula mainboard and a Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU.

Debian users with SATA CD/DVD drives should take note that you have to use a Testing or Unstable installation disk. The kernel on the Stable distribution is too old to handle SATA CDROM/DVDROM drives!

If you have comments or suggestions, please drop me a note.

The Hardware:

SATA	All SATA ports are working perfectly fine in AHCI and IDE mode.
IDE	Untested but probably works
ACPI	cpufreq, Standby and Suspend-to-Disk work. [read more]
Hardware Monitoring / lm-sensors	Monitoring works, regulating fan-speeds not so much. [read more]
Onboard LAN	Uses the sky2 driver, working wake-on-LAN. [read more]
Onboard Sound	I was quite suprised to find it working OOTB with the snd-hda-intel driver.

The Software:

I'm currently running kernel 2.6.23.12 without any additional patches and BIOS 901.

Impressions:

I have never seen a mainboard with so many different LEDs. The green/orange/red Voltage LEDs together with a flickering HDD LED , illuminated sound-card and yellow/red PWR/Reset buttons make this thing look like a christmas tree on steroids.

It would be a real shame to hide this beauty in a closed case.

The BIOS features tons of high-end overclocking settings, enough to make any OC freaks wet dream come true. If you are into this kind of stuff, this board is for you.

But don't be afraid. All the OC features are completely optional, and if you choose to ignore them, you'll get a very stable mainboard in the usual perfect ASUS quality.