I have only changed SATA mode, and have not updated the BIOS since I bought this motherboard. 3.7.10 works, 3.8.0 doesn't. I'll try to set up bisecting, but this CPU is really weak. As another data point, the main OSes boot in UEFI mode. ArchLinux installation media with 3.8.4 kernel can only boot in BIOS mode, and it works fine.