What I finally found to be successful at substantially reducing the POST time for this board was three changes in bios. The first was to disable the boot logo from "Advanced-> Full Screen Logo-> Disable." This opens up another option just below "Full Screen Logo," "Post Report." This option is for how long the post report displays. I set mine to two seconds. This seems to be enough time to hit del during POST to enter bios if required. The final fix
was "Advanced-> Onboard Devices Configuration-> ASM 1061 Storage controller-> Disabled." If what I have researched is correct, the ASM 1061 is the controller for the REVO drives and this is what the "pre-post" is searching for. I went from, like you, a thirty second POST sequence down to about five seconds from the time I hit the power button to loading Windows. This was all done using bios version: CrosshairV-Formula BIOS 1003. All other related bios settings are default.
As far as the core unlocker, I would recommend restoring bios defaults and seeing if that fixes your problem. Also, try a bios update, this surely can't hurt anything and is incredibly simple through AI suite. As a second step I would verify the your processor is seated properly in your board. If you pull off your heatsink to verify that your processor is seated properly, check that there isn't any stray debris in the CPU pins. This potentially could cause an errant reading. If you go this route though, don't forget about replacing the thermal paste. Hope this helps.
