Hello! So I have been really busy at trying to get Skylake BCLK OC working a this "X170" board (Based on Intel C236 Chipset) so I can have fun overclocking Xeon E3 V5. The BCLK option is currently grayed out (BIOS version F1)
Interestingly, this board has a near identical PCB layout as the Z170X-Gaming 7 just with a different colour scheme.
So here are some of my attempts of getting it to work, but all failed differently.
Attempt 1 : Flashing Z170X-Gaming 7 Version F7a (non-k OC BIOS) using FPT.
Result: System takes a long time to POST, setting is enabled, but does nothing after changing it. Later reverts back to X170 Extreme ECC F1 from the secondary BIOS chip.
Attempt 2: Flashing Z170X Gaming 7 Version F7a onto both BIOS ROMs with programmer.
Result: System takes long time to POST, setting enabled, OC does seem to work, but extremely unstable above 110MHz BCLK.
Attempt 3: Modified X170 Extreme ECC F1 with FIT, changed SKU to Z170. Flashed via FPT
Result: Nothing happened.
This board has the same VRM as the Z170X Gaming 7 as they share nearly identical PCBs (I assume) There is no reason for this board to not support any overclocking…
I have very limited knowledge in this area and I am very eager to learn more! Hopefully someone can show me the way to success!
On the other threads for similar Xeon overclocks (search using MSI most recently), they had to use certain versions of older ME, and sometimes you had to disable ME by changing a setting in the ME via FIT to reserved YES (Disabling ME)
Thanks for the response. However, from talking with other people, I heard that changing that setting on Gigabyte boards cause either the system to shut off after showing the BIOS splash screen or get stuck at 32 during boot. I’ve also tried flashing Z170X-Gaming 7 F7a with ME disabled on this board and got similar results… Errrr, this is frustrating…
Did you try, or are they confirming that happens with your specific board and this specific ME change? Does this board have external clock generator?
I can make bclk setting not grayed out for you in the BIOS most likely, but that may not fix the issue if no clock gen on board.