I've had the bios freeze on a black screen with a blinking cursor a couple of times now during a restart while I rebuild windows.  I still have to make several attempts to boot windows but I've also noticed several times that if I powered it down and let it sit a few minutes that when I powered up the next time it would load windows on the first try.  I've also moved my asus xonar dx2 sound card to the lowest 4x slot which is the 3rd 16x physical slot down.  I'm hoping that this will help.

This is a clean install as in just a few hours ago.  The other thing that I've just noticed during the post bios attempt to load windows is that if my usb keyboard initializes while the windows logo is on the screen it will complete loading.  If it doesn't initialize then the system will reset and repost itself.  To clarify this happens right as windows is attempting to load and the bios is transferring control of the keyboard to windows.  The illumination will turn off and it goes dark while the windows logo is on screen and if it relights while the logo is still on screen it will complete loading windows.  If the lights do not come back on it will reset and repost.   I've also had more bios freezing with the blinking cursor on a black screen on a reboot.

Now the marvell controller has started dropping my sony optiarc bdrw.

I'm fairly certain that it's my cpu now.  My wei score on it has dropped from 7.8 all the way down to 6.7.  I'm still talking to intel support about rmaing it.  Looks like I'll be back on the i3 4130 soon.

This morning I fired it up and after multiple post loops and freezes at the same black screen with blinking cursor I managed to boot windows.  Then I reran the wei  and my cpu score is back up to 7.8 so this is really weird.  I'm really thinking about putting the asus back in just to double check.  The other strange thing is that the marvell controller bios sees my sony optiarc bdrw drive during post but when I get to windows it is mia and device manager still says that it is functioning properly.  I've double checked the sata cable to it and since the bios sees it during post it should also be present in windows.  I also swapped it out with the other sony I have just to be sure and both drives now go missing once windows loads.

The new driver has returned my optiarc in windows.

I'm sorry to hear that your issues continue!

HRPuffnstuff
It's a new day and we still can't get into windows on the first post plus the marvell controller still drops my sony once entering windows.  I've got the beta bios for the controller and I am very tempted to try it.

You know the option rom is two parts. One legacy and and for UEFI. If you run your Win 8 in UEFI mode you most have that option rom. There is an software that patch BIOS file with the latest option roms and called UBU. You could read more about that over at win-raid.com. When the controller is onboard version like yours, you cant just flash that rom as it is a part of MB BIOS. So you would need to patch that.

My optiarc has returned again this morning.  I'm using one of the sata cables that came with my board and I might try swapping it out with one of my older cables just to rule it out.  I have noticed that the supplied cable quality that comes with these motherboards is not very good like the set that came with my last z87 ftw.  They had strange white spots all over them and were not very pliable.  The cables that came with my asus are of high quality, shielded and are very pliable plus half of them have right angle connectors on them. 
 
Does the z97 chipset have a problem with windows 7 x64 ultimate?  I've never had an os loop like this before on any new build I've ever done.  I made a video of the board handing control of the usb over to windows and the relationship between the windows logo continuing to animate while the usb turns back on.  If that happens windows will complete loading and if it doesn't then here we go again with a repost.
http://youtu.be/tGzfUuRJBuU

*side note - I recently built 2 systems using Z97 and win7 x64 ( PRO & Home )  - I have not heard/ read of any issues using z97 and win 7x64 as you asked about.
 
 

Well a few minutes ago I swapped over to the asus maximus vii hero and put the z97 ftw up in the closet.  The usb controller is different on this one as I had to also disable the ehci controller to have usb keyboard support coming into windows.  I really hope that all of the z97 motherboard manufacturers can nail down their bios settings so we all can have trouble free bleeding edge pc's.

Don't get me wrong I'm not bashing the z97 ftw.  When I took my asus out of its box yesterday it was doa and since I'd only had it 7 days I took it right back to tiger direct and exchanged it for a new one which I am running on.  I'm convinced that all of these z97 boards are quirky and this one does the exact same thing trying to load windows but it has a fuller feature set so that is why I'm back on it.  I needed all of my usb ports on my case and it has the headers for my front panel connectors plus the uefi bios is more refined.  The other thing is that the asus asmedia controller hasn't lost a drive yet and the marvell on the z97 ftw dropped it constantly plus I have my front panel eata on it as well and it doesn't get lost either.  EVGA should consider dropping the marvell controller on their boards for something that will work right.  I considered buying another drive card and keeping the z97 ftw in but why when the asus already has the connectors that I need and they work.  It would also be nice if evga offered motherboard monitoring software like asus does.

Funny thing about this is that this is the first time ever in all of my years of building pc's to have a board that will not load windows on the first try.  I've had driver errors before that prevented loading but on a clean build I've never had issues like this.  Before I received that first 1150 board I had planned to go back to amd and build an am3+ system with an eight core fx cpu and I could've done it for the cost of that 4790k alone.  The last two am3+ systems that I build I used asus boards and they have run perfectly since day one.  Next time around unless something changes I'm going back to amd.

Well...
 
Do you wanne have the parameters, or "stay" in your AMD-heaven? ^^ I don't think that AMD is a competitor for Intel anymore, but please don't let us talk about science.

My asus hasn't dropped any drives, no lost anything and my 4790k is screaming along.  Evga needs to return to the construction quality they demonstrated with my e760 because that is a stellar board.  When it goes they don't have anything to replace it with and I know it unless they change.  Look at the power regulation on an asus or gigabyte board then look at the evga models.  The z97 ftw only has 6 phases and this asus has 8+2 and the higher models have even more phases.  I haven't had one single bsod since moving to the asus board.  My drives haven't been lost not for one second and I can add drives via esata on the asmedia controller at will without them being dropped while in use.
 
When I was in tiger direct the other day I had a talk with one of the managers and we were just discussing computers in general and he mentioned to me that he only builds with asus or gigabyte boards.  Those two brands dominate the shelves in his store and there isn't a single evga board to be found on his shelves as he won't use them.  I was honest with him about what had happened with the z87 and z97 ftw boards and he just shook his head because he already knew about them.  It was refreshing to be able to talk with someone else who actually knows computers and understands how important build quality is.  This experience has actually pulled the fan boy blinders off my eyes because I've had such good luck with the e760.  I've never run a board that long before in my personal system ever but the x58 classified has been exceptional for me.  I usually build a new system every two years but I never gave it a  second though until my oc'd 930 died suddenly and I decided to just pull the water cooling out of my system and go back to air.  I ran that 930 oc'd from the start for over 4.5 years.  That's when I discovered that my e758 couldn't read all the memory slots and then it just went down hill from there.
 
I will tell you in no uncertain terms that I will turn to asus for every build from now on unless gigabyte has a high end board available locally with features that the available asus models don't have.  I came to evga from a bad msi 775 board and I will never use them again.  I also have an asus striker II formula 775 and a gigabyte 775 system both of which are 7+ years old and they are still in service.  Both of them still have evga gpu's in them.