Thank you for replying so quickly! I’m really lucky to have come across your experiments with this motherboard, since most of the information about X99 is dated before 2020.
My motherboard version has 2 RAM slots on each side of the CPU, but that’s not the issue. I know for sure that one specific RAM stick is faulty regardless of which slot it’s in. I tested the system using only one stick at a time - swapping between the two - and only one of them consistently causes the computer to shut down after 20-30 minutes of gaming at any frequency above 1400 MHz. Interestingly, MemTest86 ran for 3 hours and showed no errors at all.
It’s disappointing to learn that the motherboard itself doesn’t allow increasing the RAM voltage. But it still makes sense for me to update the BIOS to try using the Command Rate 2T setting and possibly looser timings to restore both frequency and system stability.
I’ll follow your advice. I’ll build the BIOS according to your instructions and look into the benefits of TPM 2.0. My GPU does support UEFI.
I fully believe in teaching people how to fish, rather than just giving the fish. Here is how you can try to become a fisherman yourself:
See detailed locations and items in the file “Changelog BD4 251005.txt”. This makes a good starting point, and covers everything important.
OcInit PEI module for CPU and cache overclocking was also discussed in the same post. You can basically take that as a starting point. But from what I can gather, X99-P4 V 9.01 is using a HM55 chipset (ME region 6.0.30.1199). Therefore I have no idea if this will work or not. So you might need to use software like Throttlestop for overclocking anyhow.
125 MHz strap I have not heard of working on any Chinese X79 or X99. You are probably even more out of luck with an HM55 chipset based board.
@Tris@tiburcillo You were looking into HM55 based boards recently, anything you want to add or found out?
Since I don’t have any HM55 boards at hand, nothing can be said with any degree of certainty. Nevertheless, I just think overclocking on such a pathetic board is simply a bad idea.
I fully agree with you that high core overclocking will very likely not work well on that VRM. XD4 instead of P4 would have been a much better choice.
But assuming that the aim is a cheap gaming computer: I know from my own experiences that overclocking the ring bus greatly improves the latency/minimum FPS. So I am not ready to write this off as a terrible idea. Personally I would go high on ring speed (3.6 GHz is common), 2400 MHz RAM with tight timings (CL13), and aim for “sweet spot” core overclocking (typically around 3.9 GHz) with as low voltage as possible.
On my X99‑P4 V9.01 the ring bus is already running at 3600 MHz without issues, and Resizable BAR can be enabled directly from the BIOS (Above 4G Decoding + ReBAR Support are both present and working).
The only real limitation is that the CPU multiplier cannot be raised above 36x, because the BIOS locks the MSR registers. ThrottleStop works correctly, but it cannot override the BIOS lock, so the CPU stays at the stock all‑core turbo.
Everything else (RAM tuning, ring bus, ReBAR) works fine — it’s just the core multiplier that is blocked at firmware level.
Ok, good to know. It is actually very promising that you can increase ring bus so high already!
Have you turned off “Overclocking lock” and increased “Core Ratio limits” as I listed in my change log? If these are not visible to you now, then you will need to open the BIOS in AMIBCP and change “Access/Use” to “User”, then flash back a modded BIOS. You can compare these things against my BD4 BIOS for reference.
Those options (“Overclocking Lock”, “Core Ratio Limits”, etc.) are not available at all on my X99‑P4 V9.01. They do not appear in the BIOS interface, and they also do not exist in AMIBCP — the menus simply aren’t probably present in the firmware structure.
The Xeon E5‑1650 v3 has an unlocked multiplier, and with only 6 cores it would not stress the VRM much, but the BIOS enforces an MSR lock, so the CPU cannot go above 36x, and ThrottleStop cannot override this. SpeedShift also cannot be enabled for the same reason.
I’d say, keep to the standard mods for this P/HM55 boards. I’ve tried a bunch of different cross flashes and managed to get one with secureboot and TPM, but the boards are very buggy.
The H55/HM55 chipset is just not meant for those CPU’s: the Intel ME is ancient, it has no USB3.0, and the PCI lanes from the chip are only at 2.5GT/s speed. Finding the right drivers is a hassle.
Just to clarify: my board is actually using an H57 southbridge, not H55. H57 does have native USB 3.0 support, unlike H55, but apart from that the behavior is basically the same — old ME firmware, limited PCIe lanes and the same structural BIOS limitations you mentioned. So your point still stands: these HM55/H57‑based X99 boards are very restricted compared to real X99. I am trying to flash the previous bios, but I have some problems with usb pen.
@tiburcillo Correction: There’s no ICS. I checked the motherboard, but considering I paid €26 for it, it’s fair enough. Anyway, I can always work with the multiplier. I’ll only use this computer a couple of months a year, so I’m not complaining; I just need to unlock the multiplier.
@maxelcrocao With some trial and error you should be able to find a compatible BIOS you can cross-flash. Make sure you have an external programmer. Unfortunately I don’t have any unlocked CPU’s so can’t help with that, I usually just use TBU on E5-26xx v3 processors.
@tiburcillo At the end I bought an X99-XD4 as advised, I will resell this one on ebay, this card is not bad per se, but too limited for my purposes. LPCIO is really good, but with H57 was impossible to do also basis things. Thanks all for the help.
@maxelcrocao I did the same, but then an X99-XD3 (as i have lots of DDR3 left). The Soyo HM55 i had just stopped working, so I’m gonna cough up the extra 15 EUR for a better board.
I bought the soyo sy-x99e-d4 motherboard and I was hoping it had a working secure boot sense it had the tpm 2.0 header on the board. Well that’s not the case and with CSM disabled the ecu freezes at the splash screen. I found this thread with the modified bios for the version 3 and version 4 and stupidly blindly cross flashed the bios and the result was a bricked board. I tried recovering it with a chip clip and my gq-4x4 programmer and it would not read / write in circuit. I lifted the chip with hot air and rewrote the stock bios and it fired up and worked again. I took the modified bios and copied over all the dxe files where the secure boot DXE was found. Went for it and flashed the modified bios and low and behold it was still alive. Further yet, I disabled CSM mode and it BOOTED! After going back into the bios with CSM disabled I found secure boot under the security tab and enabled it. I was playing War Zone and all was seemingly all good. A little bit later I found that 4 of the 6 rear usb ports now do not work and neither do the USB 2.0 front panel. To be honest I dont really care all that much about them Im just glad to have it working with secure boot and with the TPM module. Attached is the original bios, the non working bios from this thread and the working bios I made
Existe como eu instalar no meu x99 pr9 sem brincar , tenho uma memória Loki W2 8gb de ram um xeon 2650v4 e uma GTX 1650 da colorful porém não tenho chip de recovery da bios e nem estação de aquecimento tem como eu fizer esse flash sem nenhum problema?
First of all: Please use English on this forum. Secondly, welcome!
Generally I do not recommend trying flashing without having a programmer available on hand. But in this particular case, it is very likely that it will work for you without any problems. Why? A brief summary of Machinist PR9 is:
After digging deep into flash chip support, my latest BIOS release does indeed support the Machinist PR9 board. This includes support for the not so common Fudan FM25W flash chip
I’m trying your BIOS on an X99-XD3 motherboard, and I just wanted to know which method you use for TBU. I only have experience with this method: Xeon E5 V3 Turbo Boost Unlock with S3TurboTool | Miyconst Personal Blog where you add an .ffs mod depending on the undervolt you want to try. I was wondering if
what the undervolt value is in your BIOS?
if I need to mod the power settings in AMIBCP as in the link I sent, or is it already done?
