[CentOS] CentOS 6 kernel > 2.6.32-279 won't boot on ABIT AB9

I was trying to install CentOS 6.4 a workstation with an Abit AB9 motherboard on a machine that had been running 5.9

Installation completed, but upon boot, it hangs hard after

acpiphp: ACPI Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version 0.5
ipmi message handler version 39.2
 …  then 3 attempts to locate an ipmi interface at different addresses ...
Refined TSC clocksource calibration: 2175.999 MHz
switching to clocksource TSC

Googling a bit, finds a few references to similar issues on gentoo and at lkml. There was a suggestion to boot with
clocksource=acpi_pm
but for me that hangs at the same location (minus the switching clock source message)

 I have updated the motherboard BIOS to latest.

I had used the the 6.3 net installer disk (and the 6.4 repo) which I noticed had kernel 2.6.32-279, so I retrieved that kernel from the vault and it works.

The  279 and earlier kernels don't display any ipmi messages during boot (in dmesg)
The system is not ipmi capable I don't believe, should I be looking there?

Regards
Tony Schreiner