[Problem] CPU Support of EliteGroup ECS X79R-AX (incl. "Deluxe")

BIOS/UEFI Modding BIOS Modding Guides and Problems
1

I’ve experimented with “ECS X79R-AX” and “ECS X79R-AX Deluxe” Motherboards. (Despite the Deluxe naming - the board without Deluxe prefix has much more expansion ports and post code indicator). All experiments were done with a hardware programmer, flashing the entire 8MB BIOS Flash Winbond 25Q64BV

Those boards work mostly fine (except the PCIe speed) when OS booted, but has a LOT of problems during boot process:

  • Problem with newer GPUs (hang/garbled/no picture)
    • PCIe speed is limited to 2.0
  • Problem with Ivy Bridge-based CPUs (Xeons v2)
  • Problem with hangs during boot
  • While UEFI boot mentioned in the BIOS - it does not see any UEFI-bootable devices as bootable, only legacy boot works.

I have no complete solution to all this, but I have a vendor-emailed BIOS update from December 2013 that solves most important GPU performance problems:

  • mostly solves the “newer GPUs” compatibility! At least this.
  • allows enabling PCIe 3.0 speed in BIOS setting (changing speed works, but seems to cause “no picture until OS booted” behaviour)

image
image1280×960 58.2 KB

Those are full 8MB dumps tested with Xeon 26xx v1 CPUs and different GPUs:

X79R-AX-2.14.1219-2013-12-04.zip (3.4 MB)
X79R-AX-Deluxe-2.14.1219-2013-12-16.zip (3.4 MB)

I tried adding support for IvyBridge - added microcodes, updated ME7 to ME8 - the modded BIOS works with SandyBridge Xeons, but still fail with IvyBridge. But I’m not sure if my IvyBridge CPU is OK, so attaching those intermediate mod results, maybe, would be useful for someone:
X79R-AX-mod-experiments.zip (7.1 MB)

Also, as an interesting “bonus chapter” I found that 4MB bios of Huanan X79 Deluxe (expanded with FFs to fill 8MB flash) is compatible enough to give picture! (and then hang on full-screen AMI logo). Maybe useful as a newer bios component source.
HuananX79DeluxeHNX79V279_271K0035_4MBexpandedTo8MB.zip (2.6 MB)


Edit by Fernando: Thread moved into the “BIOS Problems” Forum Category and title customized

2

Usually Ivy Bridge cpus need ME FW v8, besides added mcodes, this board has the 7.1.21.1134

3

Yes, i know that ME need major version update while changing CPU gen thank to win-raid guides!

Actually one of my attached experimental BIOSes zip has this update done via manual copying of parameters from FIT7 to FIT8 - still boots only with SandyBridge (and also didn’t show ME version in BIOS Setup, but don’t think thats matter since SandyBridge works). I’ve edited my post to clarify that this was already tried.

4

Hi, I admire your work greatly. I’m using the same motherboard and have run into the same issue — my system also fails to boot with an E5-2673 v2 CPU.

From my understanding, this motherboard has two versions: SNB-based and IvyB-based. I’ve also seen info. that even the Ivy Bridge version has trouble booting with Xeon E5 v2 CPUs.

Really looking forward to seeing any progress you make on this!