BIOS nightmare with Z790 Pro RS/D4

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   So I built a new Unraid server in February and have run into the worst hardware issue I?�ve ever experienced in 30 years of building systems.

I paired the Z790 Pro RS/D4 with an Intel Core-i7 14700K. I had read about some 14th gen compatibility issues, but saw that they had been fixed with a BIOS update. 

I first tried running the completed build with the BIOS it shipped with. It booted right into Unraid, but I saw two issues ??the heat was outrageously high (97C as reported on the UEFI menu, despite proper cooling), and there was some system instability. I initially assumed these two things were related.

Next step was to flash BIOS to most recent version (14.01). This immediately fixed the heat issue, with the system suddenly running at 38C during UEFI. Except??this version of the BIOS will not boot from the Unraid USB drive. It sees it, it starts the boot sequence, then Unraid reports a slew of SquashFS corruption errors and hangs.

I tried rolling back one BIOS version at a time, but on each version, no combination of UEFI settings would let the key boot correctly. When I made it to version 6.06, the heat issue came back (but it still wouldn?�t boot).

Finally, the oldest BIOS version (1.21) would boot into Unraid, and I decided instead to underclock the CPU to get system temps down. A voltage of 1.250 got me down to 40C, and even with lower performance, it?�s more than enough for downloading and QuickSync transcode.

Except??the system is still unstable. It encounters a kernel panic and crashes for no apparent reason every 3-4 days, whereas my old Unraid server had an uptime of months or even years.

So the old BIOS allows me to use this motherboard, but because it doesn?�t fully support 14th gen Intel CPUs, the system is unstable. Upgrading to latest version of BIOS turns the machine into a giant paperweight because it won?�t boot from thumb drive. I should also note I tried other Linux distros (Ubuntu, Arch, Tiny Core), and even tried running a GRUB loader from a different USB, and was never able to get a successful boot.

Anyone else run into this issue?

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eg4190 Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 21 hours 11 minutes ago Status: Offline Points: 20	Post Options Post Reply Quote eg4190 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: BIOS nightmare with Z790 Pro RS/D4 Posted: 20 hours 56 minutes ago at 5:12am
	So I built a new Unraid server in February and have run into the worst hardware issue I?�ve ever experienced in 30 years of building systems. I paired the Z790 Pro RS/D4 with an Intel Core-i7 14700K. I had read about some 14th gen compatibility issues, but saw that they had been fixed with a BIOS update. I first tried running the completed build with the BIOS it shipped with. It booted right into Unraid, but I saw two issues ??the heat was outrageously high (97C as reported on the UEFI menu, despite proper cooling), and there was some system instability. I initially assumed these two things were related. Next step was to flash BIOS to most recent version (14.01). This immediately fixed the heat issue, with the system suddenly running at 38C during UEFI. Except??this version of the BIOS will not boot from the Unraid USB drive. It sees it, it starts the boot sequence, then Unraid reports a slew of SquashFS corruption errors and hangs. I tried rolling back one BIOS version at a time, but on each version, no combination of UEFI settings would let the key boot correctly. When I made it to version 6.06, the heat issue came back (but it still wouldn?�t boot). Finally, the oldest BIOS version (1.21) would boot into Unraid, and I decided instead to underclock the CPU to get system temps down. A voltage of 1.250 got me down to 40C, and even with lower performance, it?�s more than enough for downloading and QuickSync transcode. Except??the system is still unstable. It encounters a kernel panic and crashes for no apparent reason every 3-4 days, whereas my old Unraid server had an uptime of months or even years. So the old BIOS allows me to use this motherboard, but because it doesn?�t fully support 14th gen Intel CPUs, the system is unstable. Upgrading to latest version of BIOS turns the machine into a giant paperweight because it won?�t boot from thumb drive. I should also note I tried other Linux distros (Ubuntu, Arch, Tiny Core), and even tried running a GRUB loader from a different USB, and was never able to get a successful boot. Anyone else run into this issue?