Hey everyone!
So im new to BIOS modding, and I just need a few pointers and clarifications so that I can continue.
I wanted to unlock the BIOS of my MSI E3 Gaming KRAIT V5 for my Xeon 1230v5, to see if its possible to unlock the multiplier to overclock the Xeon.
One of the things that confusing me most is this. is it the microcode that dictates whether or not you can modify your frequency multiplier from x34, or is it the bios settings?
Ive extracted my Bios in AFUWIN, then opened it in UBU and AMIBCP - UBU says there is microcode upgrades available, and AMIBCP has a whole lot of options that I can set to USER.
Do I need to update my bios with a specific micocode that will alllow my CPU to be unlocked? Or do I just need to change some bios settings?
Thanks for the help
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Currently I can modify the base clock, but im trying to figure out how to install the required Microcode or module that will allow multiplier unlock or stable BCLK unlock
Do you have a flash programmer, such as CH341A or similar? If not, order one now and a SOIC8 test clip with cable, once those arrive I can make you some test BIOS. If you need linked examples for these items let me know (less than $7 shipped for both)
This is not easily possible without those, so lets not waste time playing around, they’re cheap and everyone should have a set especially when wanting to do BIOS mods.
You need just in case for recover, but also so you can easily and quickly try several things with ME Firmware too (This is the key)
Dude!
First of all, thank you for responding so quickly, and im so happy someone with knowledge with this is willing to help me!! I wanted to delve into this but without someone to help me understand everything so I dont do anything stupid and brick my motherboard makes me far more confident in doing these modifications.
Side note
Before we delve into the Xeon overclock, you might be able to tell me if this idea might be beneficial to the community, as ive only recently got m head around BIOS modding.!
Intel DZ77RE-75K Extreme series I actually purchased this card during the period 6GB/s Sata SSD’s had just really become big and Intel 5XX SSD’s were stating they had hardware encryption built in, yet out of over 30-40 high end boards I tested not one included proper hardware encryption.
Anyway eventually the one board I eventually found, only allowed passwords of max 6 lowercase characters to be set, which was the biggest piss take.. Once its running again I cant wait to extract its BIOS and see if I can first of all unlock the charset limit by Intel (This could genuinely have been implemented by NSA to create rainbow tables), but extract the hardware encryption module and put it on here for anybody else who would like to use it. I mean if you guys already have it great but if you dont its pretty useful, im not sure if the board requires a specific chip or if it works off the CPU’s AES Instruction included with Intel CPU’s. Anyway this is at least something I can offer the community.
SO essentially I have quite a few Skylake 6th/7th gen mobos so im super keen to delve into this and learn as much as I can, as if I can become proficient at this im not limited to the constraint of having to use 6th/7th gen chips in older 1151 boards.
Il cut to the chase:
Recently I obtained a MSI E3 KRAIT GAMING V5/Xeon 1230v5/16gb Kingston DDR4 2400/650 watt Corsair PSU/H110I water cooler/ - for use as a secondary computer for gaming so ive put an old 780TI to possibly dual boot into linux and use it as a number crunching unit. After all, it has a high end watercooler on a Xeon so might as well test its limits. My current computer has 2x1080TI founders which I think are still the most powerful consumer GPU you can get for hashing and number crunching, I have to re-encode 800gig of music videos so I was thinking about putting a 780Ti in my computer and putting both 1080’s in the Xeon rig to make it a beastly number cruncher. It just needs an upgraded PSU.
So I do not have the equipment you are talking about, but sure I can go ahead and get it, even though I have no idea what it is, so if you send me the links that would be great.
So what does this equipment do? I did notice when I was using afuwin, it had some checkbox’s regarding writing to the ME section (dont know what the ME section is), but im assuming there is a set of ME memory addresses that contain some sort of essential module.
So can I just clarify a few things, ive read countless forum posts from far and wide to piece this together but if you could clarify a couple things for me, it would be great.
First of all, is being able to modify the core clock multiplier value something that is just a simple motherboard module that is locked by motherboard manufacturer’s? Or is the core clock multiplier essentially “read only” to the Bios software and manufacturers unless the microcode allows the value to be modified? Hypothetically if you compared the hex microcode of the 6700 vs a 6700k, wouldn’t the only difference be that one microcode allows core clock variable write and the other one is read only? lol because I cant imagine the K processors having anything different built into the actual chip architecture.
Secondly, why do we select “USER” in AMIBCP as the option, wouldn’t Extended user or Supervisor be considered higher access?
Also, how do we know which options to select, as like often the master folders have the same options to be unlocked as the sub folders and ugh its a huge mess.
Anyway, please enlighten me on the situation I am currently in, and what I need to do to do a work around? Is it possible to start working on it while this equipment is on its way? Can I write to ME with Afuwin?
So far I have, extracted my bios with Afuwin, opened it in AMIBCP and just changed as many things that looked useful to “USER” as I could be bothered clicking (why no batch options?). I flashed it with afuwin, which seemed to work although when I would scroll down certain menus the bios would reboot itself, and it didnt seem to allow to me to modify the core clock although I may have missed the option in AMIBCP, or perhaps I needed to include/replace a module to do this, or activate some new option in the bios menu before I can do this. I then installed fresh bios from manufacturer, loaded optimized defaults, and extracted again with Afuwin to put fresh BIOS through UBU with all the renamed MMTools and the included RST stuff, and updated the microcode to the latest along with all the other available options.
It would be nice to enable Coffee lake on the 6th/7th gen lock 1151 boards as if I can prove it can be done reliably, I will be use this extensively as I have quite a few boards like that.
Back to the point, in this case I was more interested in including a microcode that would unlock the core clock, does the Xeon 1230v5 just count as an non-K skylake???
The bios already comes 5 microcodes, one of them being duplicate for 506E3, it is the 506E3 │ 36 (1,2,4,5) │ FF │ 2016-01-05 │ PRD │ 0x17400 │ 0x7CD980 │ No - which I read somewhere the “FF” designation means it is the revision just before they patched microcode that allows overclocking but obviously this is wrong, unless they meant overclocking with the base clock. I mean I could try base clock overclocking but then I would need to under clock my RAM to get it to the correct frequency which fucks up the timing and is a nightmare. And also iv fried my PCI-E bus one too many times to make that mistake again although I thiks they separated these in Skylake lol. Ive trie doverclocking the base clock on this board and even small modifications give bios error on boot.
I ended up downloading a non-K overclock modded bios for a different motherboard, I think the MSI Krait Z170A or something like that, and extracted the microcode that was on that with MCExtractor. I then went into MCTools, opened the BIOS file which had been extracted from the original MSI board with afuwin, and deleted the "“FF” designated microcode I mentioned above, and inserted the singular microcode included in the non-K overclock Z170 bios mod ║ 1 │ 506E3 │ 36 (1,2,4,5) │ 3A │ 2015-08-23 │ PRD │ 0x16000 │ 0x5F0090 │ No - which I had extracted with MCExtractor.
I am yet to flash it, id like to know whether or not its microcode or what is actually necessary to OC this chip before I proceed. I read anyway that this microcode is only for base clock frequency which is not what I want.
Sorry for the long post, I just have so many questions that were left unanswered from my reading so to have someone who might be able to help has made me super excited I might actually be able to go through with this, as I don’t like doing stuff that could damage my equipment without understanding as much pre experiential knowledge as possible regarding what it is that I am doing. Since your saying we need to try some stuff with ME firmware, Is it possible to modify this region without the tools with afuwin while I wait for the tools in the post?
Again thanks so much! Ive attached the extracted Bios, the other bios was too large to upload and can be found on the MSI website for the KRAIT mobo in the support section.
Extracted MSI E3 KRAIT GAMING V5.rar (5.58 MB)
Im just reading about this device, this just made me think, could you like… desolder the ‘bios’ or whatever it is for iphone eeprom or nand or whatever and modify it to jailbreak it??
There is an e-bay listing for
EEPROM BIOS usb programmer CH341A + SOIC8 clip + 1.8V adapter + SOIC8 adapt SJ
Is this what im looking for?
http://download.msi.com/bos_exe/mb/7A43v16.zip
So from what I understand I need some sort of modified Microcode that allows multiplier unlock which can only be done in CPU microcode? And im assuming this would mean bios mod as well? Ive been looking pretty hard im not sure what other info ytou would like me to provide
"Try to edit an old version bios with non-KB lake microdes that may works fine。
I tried to oc E3-1235L V5 On asrock b150 z170 with idt chip named b150hyper or z170hyper and it works fine!Oc to 4GHZ is too easy!
notice: use the old bios with me 11.0.* and disabled or cleaned.
Hope could help!“
bclk overclock does not work for Xeon, at least we never found a way with 100’s of tests in the thread you linked - Trying to boot a Xeon E3 1270v5 on Asrock z170a-x1/3.1 (Help) (2)
ME version must be whatever you want, depending on what you want to do, within reason and within the ME rules laid out in the ME thread - ie you can put ME 12 in board with ME 10
For Xeon on this board, I suggest you use the version I mentioned above, we’ve already tested and confirmed it’s working with Xeon on MSI boards. 11.0.0.1191 - after that you can later test if 11.0.0.1202 or later 11.0.0.xxxx works or not.
Great deal on the CPU!”
Aside from all of whatever you call this… Plasticbags?
I also own an MSI Gaming krait v5 and have a CH341A programmer with test clip…
I am interested in enabling SLI on this as it has Xfire and dual 16 pcie lanes. That and potentially having an experienced user guide me on how to unlock other features of the bios such as enabling cpu compatability with newer gen CPUs.
I am very dubious about doing anything that could potentially brick my board without an experienced users assistance.