[Problem] GA-B250M-DS3H with Intel Xeon E3-1240-v5

[meow]

Hello fellow forumers, I really need help as I have been trying to tweak and figuring things out on my BIOS. The reason I modded the BIOS is due to the motherboard not supporting Intel Xeon despite the microcode being there already. I am using FPT because EFIFlash, BIOS Flash, AFUDOS, AFUWIN doesn’t work as it will say invalid image.

Motherboard: GA-B250M-DS3H
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1240-v5 (That I’m trying to get to work)
CPU: Intel i3-7100 (CPU thats being used to flash using FPT)

What I did:

• Updated the microcode using UBU
• Disabled and Removed ME Recovery using CoffeeTime
• Added patches such as PCIe, Init 8+ CPUs, ACPI tables, support for 128Gb ram

PCIe (The patch removes device_id checking by host bridge to enable CPU PCIe lines)
Init 8+ CPUs (The Patch allow system to init more than 8 CPU thread)
ACPI tables (The patch implement correct features control for 8+ threads like C-state, thermal, performance, throttling, etc)

Now that ME is disabled, its able to boot the Intel Xeon CPU. However, certain RAM were not able to be used despite only a bit different (2444Mhz and 2449Mhz on the label). The 2449Mhz were able to boot with single stick, but the 2444Mhz fail to boot with a single stick. But if I use the i3-7100, its able to boot both stick regardless in any slot.

Another issue I am facing is where when restarting PC from Windows OS or from the BIOS (Exiting with saving) will cause it not to boot. It will shutdown, but when it turned on again, it will only stays on for 1-3 second before shutting down. Not only that, it’ll not boot even if I tried to power on. The only way to fix this would be turning of PSU and holding power button for 5-10s before turning on the PSU again and pressing the power button again. This issue also doesn’t happen with i3-7100 CPU.

I’m at my end wits, so I’d hope this forum would help me with troubleshooting or possibly giving a method to fix this. Original and the modded BIOS are attached in the link below.

Note: Not having those patches other than ME disabled and ME Recovery removed doesn’t change anything, since those are only for Coffeelake mod (Which I will attempt in the future)

16 MB folder on MEGA

Edit by Fernando: Thread title specified and customized

[meow]

Update:
After waiting for few days and seeing no helps, I decided to take things into my own hand and did some more digging rather than waiting for a long time. Here’s what I did.

• I found that the cause where it fails to restart and will shutdown, and won’t boot afterward (pre-POST) unless I did full power cycle(off PSU, hold power button 5-10s, on PSU, press power button) are due to Intel Management Engine(ME) are the one causing it due to not supporting the Intel Xeons CPU. So I changed the ME to latest Corporate version available in CoffeeTime and keep the state as Disabled. Afterward, I tested with 1 ram stick and it boot properly, with proper restart(pre-POST) as well.

• For RAM, I am now able to use both ram stick(8gb, same brand and type) after fixing ME as it now able to properly did the memory training, which failed to complete due to pre-POST not working before.

• The RAM had issue where it fails to do memory training for dual channel, so all I have to do is clear CMOS to reset BIOS. Save afterwards, shutdown again and install the 2nd ram stick, and voila! Dual-channel works.

Note:

• I also added the working BIOS file(working_mod.bin) in the link I sent previously if anyone has the same motherboard and also trying to get Xeon CPUs working.