It's toast I think. Removed both video cards and plugged into onboard video. Made Realtek speakers default, plugged in 7.1 surround plugs. None were detected. Made Realtek optical out default and plugged optical cable, nothing, not even that red fiber optic light.
Also Updated BIOS as suggested, but problem persists.
Just to check if my AVR was the problem, tested both analog and optical on an older i7-920 system. Both audio feeds worked fine.
It's only 3 weeks old and it was nothing but problems. AI Suite kept generating errors like
"WARNING - M/B TEMP BELOW -168 DEG C"
that's like temperature of liquid nitrogen.