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Dave C.
It means that the motherboard can be tweaked to overclock the fastest RAM that the chipset would support. G.Skill DDR3 1600 RAM should work fine.
With no RAM installed, you'd get error code in the form of beeps.
You should have more than one power connection to your mainboard. Are both hooked up correctly?
You should probably have a power connection (or two) to your video card. Is that hooked up correctly?
Do you have a system speaker hooked up to the mainboard? When you start the system, do you get any beeps at all?
Disconnect ALL drives and try to boot with no drives connected. (disconnect both power and data)
Even though I hate Asus with a passion, I very much doubt if your motherboard is defective. But if you have no beep AT ALL coming from the mainboard, then you have a problem here, in order of most likely to least:
1) (most likely) Loose or missing connection between power supply and mainboard
2) Bad power supply
3) Bad Mainboard
4) (a real longshot) bad or mis-installed CPU
You need your system to POST (power on self test). This requires a good power supply, a good mainboard and a good CPU, assuming that all is hooked up CORRECTLY.
A good POST, you will hear one beep, then video card will be initialized (now you have display on monitor), memory will be tested, and then system will attempt to boot OS from various devices, usually starting with a DVD drive, then moving onto the hard drive...
A bad POST could give you a number of symptoms. Minor problem...display will show error messages. More serious problem, no display, but more than one beep from system speaker, indicating a hardware error. MAJOR problem...no display and no beeps at all.
If you get no beeps at all, this indicates that the CPU isn't even trying to run POST. That means there is a problem with your power supply, your mainboard, or your CPU. -Dave