Hello everyone, I am currently debating using a z390 dark with my 6700k, and I know for a fact that i would need a custom bios to do such a thing. I have figured out how to change the microcode but i cant seem to figure out how to change the drivers. If someone could please assist me with this, I would be very thankful. Thanks so much!
Preferred Bios is 1.04
The problem with using Z390 with Skylake CPU’s is Intel’s Management Engine v12.
You would need to disable it completely which has other side effects such as disabling control of the clock registers (i.e. overclocking), no DRM management for Audio/Video due to the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) being unavailable, Intel ME Bootguard will be disabled, as well as AMT, vPro and JTAG debugging in boards that have it.
Intel ME v12 is different from ME v11 with the specific integration of the PMC (Power Management Controller), read here.
R-B-T was working on this for Z390 but stopped due to work commitments, although he did manage to disable it - so it can be done, just there are no tools currently to do this.
What kind of functionality would I lose by doing something like this?
Would i lose any kind of overclocking abilities?
I’m not 100% sure whether you would lose hardware overclocking (from BIOS) but software overclocking would not work with ME disabled.
Tpeng99 said that he just added the Skylake microcode (CPUID 506E3) and disabled ME v12 on an ASRock Z390 Pro 4.
That’s awesome! All I prettt much care about is to still have all the hardware ocing features that the dark offers. It’s just the drivers that worry me since I have no way of telling which drivers support skylake or not.
The drivers for what exactly?
Windows supplies the driver for the CPU - the rest of the drivers will be the same.
I thought I had to downgrade the bios’s drivers for sata, lan, etc to support skylake? Is that not necessary?
Nope.
Ok then, so pretty much all that’s needed is disabling me but then also downgrading the mc?
You will need to insert the microcode for Skylake (CPUID 506E3).
The latest Z390 BIOS 1.07 has microcodes for CPUID’s 806EA and 806EB which are laptop CPU’s (and therefore not needed at all) so you could remove one or both of those and swap the 506E3 microcode in.
@seranidy I have made a modified 1.07 BIOS with the latest Skylake microcode added and ME disabled.
If you have manually updated the Intel ME v12 firmware then I am unsure if EVGA’s built-in BIOS flashing tool will allow downgrading back to v12.0.5.1117 nor whether the PMC firmware can be downgraded back to 300.2.11.1014, so consider this as additional risk.
Your motherboard has 3 BIOS chips so in the event of a failed POST (brick) you should be able to recover by swapping to another BIOS chip and flashing the bad chip back to stock.
I don’t own a Z390 Dark and have no way of testing the modified BIOS myself therefore You flash it at your own risk!
I have left all Coffee Lake microcodes in the BIOS so you can test with your Coffee Lake CPU first and see if ME is disabled, then test if the Skylake CPU will boot.
107mod1.zip
The dark also has a “No cpu flash feature” where even if the bios bricks. You can recover it with that. I’ve only got a skylake chip on my hands. And will be recieving the board in a few days. Thank you for the bios btw
Where‘s Tpeng99? I need this Z390pro4 bios for running 3900T，could you provide his website or linkaddress ？
@thread Hi, I have asked Tpeng99 if he still has the modified BIOS and I will upload it here if he does.
Keep in mind that it was made back in 2019 so it’s a bit of a long shot.
Thanks， SkyLake and Kabylake CPUs work on CoffeeLake motherboard sounds more simple than opposite without modified hardware，but the intel ME is the obstacle。
I couldnot downgrade its ME from 12.0.70.1652 to 12.0.5.1117,and found its original firmware including version ME is 12.0.6.1120 which is still higher, I have no way to finish this job.Could you give me some advice?