I have had this motherboard in my system running various versions of Windows Server with the latest ASUS bios (2104?) for years. It's still a capable system, but it has never really been stable. It blue screens about once a week. I have just tried windows server 2016 on it and it's not much better. To add insult to injury, hyper-v vms blue screen too, if the main machine doesn't.

Running windbg points to driver problems, probably RAID RST but also possibly the Intel NIC. (I have used various, including the series 13 RST driver that comes with windows server 2016). The crashing VMs may be down to enabling turbo boost or cpu sleep mode settings (I am running the bios at normal, optimised settings, with raid and virtualisation extensions set, otherwise auto). Microsoft (and VMware) have issued various cpu microcode patches to deal with hyper-v issues (which I would have thought would be included in Server 2016, but who knows).

I am not worried about getting the last ounce of performance out of the system, but I do crave stability and don't want to spend my life tweaking bios settings blindly.

What does the panel recommend by way of:

Most stable
(A) bios setting
(B) drivers
(C) modded bios firmware versions

for such a system, please?

Thanks, Dieter. I do remember the I originally got the system trying various different raid drivers (I have a couple of mirror sets). Some were very unstable. I can't now remember which I stuck with. It looks like it might well have been 11.1.1006, from my various download folders. That was just less unstable than the others (lasting days, rather than hours or minutes before crashing).

The RST BIOS updates for RAID that I can see for the board, which has currently installed (via Asus Bios 1204):

1 - Intel RST(e) OROM and EFI SataDriver
OROM IRST RAID for SATA - 11.0.0.1339
EFI IRST RAID for SATA - 11.5.0.1582

is

1 - Update to v11.2.0.1527 only OROM
2 - Update to v11.6.0.1702
3 - Update to v12.9.0.2006
4 - Update to v13.1.0.2126
5 - Update to v13.2.2.2224/13.2.0.2134
6 - Update to v13.5.0.2164
7 - Update to v14.8.2.2397
8 - Update to v15.1.0.2545
T - IRST TRIM-in-RAID0 Addon for Intel 6-Series motherboards
0 - Exit to Main Menu

So should I go for the 11.6, 12.9 or a 13.x version? (All of these being different from the 11.2 drivers.)

So UBU works OK with the ASUS cpu microcode updating?

Is there any merit in updating the Intel NIC code?

Thanks.

I still run my mines with a 3770 non k as my main WS (very little reason to upgrade even now, maybe when Ryzen matures). It has give me many years of stable usage even though I update everything firmware wise whenever possible mostly because I like to experiment. I think most if not all issues comes from installed software or driver combinations. I load up my system and test tons of software. Ive had the occasional bsod and other issues but not hardware issues as far as I can tell.

I have been using the 13.1.x orom + IRST 13.1.x for about a year now, and before that the 12.9.x series. Without a single issue ever on my raid array.
I always matched orom-irst series as suggested by the win-raid guide.

I used UBU to update microcode and Intel NIC. There was also some Intel nic firmware updater a few years back as well I used.

I have even updated Asmedia USB and SATA firmware as well.

I have always used WIN 7, so I can't speak about 8.1.
One of these days I will upgrade.

The first thing you should do is rule out memory and power supply. A good AC power supply from UPS or Voltage Regulator doesn't hurt either.
Once you have a solid base then you can troubleshoot better.

I use gskill ram and it fails the row hammer test in memtest but thats the only concern about my hardware. Not really worth it to change out RAM at this point in its life.
The next issue could be what drivers you use. I normally try and use whetever is the latest release @ station-drivers.com

Well so far I have tried

* RST v11.2.0.1006 (seems a bit more stable, but needs .NET 3.5 to get the GUI, which is a pain on Windows Server 2016)
* memtest (full) -- no problems
* Intel CPU Diagnostic tool runs in a Win 10 VM without problem (although it sticks on the cache test)

The power supply is a 750W one that is overkill. The system seems to draw only 40-100W

So we are down to looking at the microcode. Windows Server 2016 comes with an Genunin_Intel microcode update library 10.0.14393.0 (July 2016). The BIOS has Ivy Bridge CPUID 0306A9 - 17. (I don't know which patch the Windows library applies.) The microcode patch list shows:

I finally got around to flashing a modded bios after the original machine (Windows Server 2016) got itself into a state where it couldn't install updates. (I suspect as a result of installing .NET 3.5, which the original 12 series drivers seem to need.)

I installed the 13.1 Intel BIOS because that it what is recommended here as the last native one for the z77 chipset. It is a reasonably close match to the 13.2.1022 driver that comes out of the Server 2016 box. Also I updated the cpu microcodes to the latest versions.

The system is, indeed, more stable than it was. I have removed all but the (ssd) boot disk pro tem. The intel bios does't appear on boot, presumably because I don't have enough disks to make it worth doing so.

BUT: My hyper-v guests are not much more stable than they were before. But that may be hyper-v and the 3770k cpu. More troublingly is that when I transfer across large ISO files, they don't seem to be read reliably. (The file size is constant, but the SHA checksum is usually wrong and can change when running the checksumming twice in succession.). This is odd, as the OS itself runs ok, although it presumably does not do large sequential reads.

Ultimately I think that a new machine is the way forward, unless someone has some insights.

----

Later: I tried memtest86 instead of the windows build in memory test and it found a problem. Replacing the memory has resulted in a stable system without having to mod bios or use very specific drivers. Ho hum. We live and learn.