No offence dude, I'm sure I know how to do a fresh install, I've even created a new partition with linux ubuntu(mint) and had issues there. I've tried everything.
I'm a first time owner of this type of ASUS mobo, so I guess all of this might be the case, gonna get onto it right now and check it out. I do have AI suite installed, so going to remove that and do the tests you've suggested.
I've not oc'd the machine one bit, so will check in the bios for some other settings.