Z170 Pro4/D3 Beta BIOS needs attention

When I built this system I was initially going to go for a DDR4 board and an i5-6600k.  But when I was researching all the options I did of course stumble across the Skylake BCLK OC phenomenon.  The idea that Intel had taken control of the overclocking situation with a "yes, you can overclock, but only if you pay more for special CPUs and motherboards" approach had always bothered me so this discovery had me rejoicing.  Somewhat "drunk" on the prospect of saving money and sticking it to Intel I thought why not go even further.  Not only does Intel say "no overclocking for you" to a bunch of people, they also say "sorry, no, you can't use your old 1.5v DDR3 modules either".  Now that's kinda fair enough if it's actually true, but when every major motherboard manufacturer is disagreeing with that assessment by way of producing Skylake boards that do in fact support 1.5v DDR3 modules, I'm thinking that it's ultimately more Intel nonsense that should be rejected.  Shortened CPU lifespan?  Maybe.  But so what.  That's a risk I have been taking since the dawn of overclocking, and as it turns out it was never a real risk at all given the nature of the average enthusiasts upgrade cycle.  There are always exceptions of course, but they call them exceptions for a reason.  If we lived our lives with constant reference to worst-case scenarios we'd never do anything.  We'd barely have any fun.  Being a little bit reckless can be invigorating, and we're hardly talking about life and death here.

Anyway...

The problem with sticking it to Intel though, twice, is that the Z170 DDR3 boards are pretty low-end.  I guess it makes sense that they are since most people who are looking to hold onto their DDR3 modules are probably budget conscious.  And the fact that the Pro4/D3 might not ever get me into the performance ballpark I was initially aiming for, and might not be a great option moving forward, had started to bug me on some deep level, and I eventually acknowledged to myself that I was never going to be truly happy with this particular build.  So I've now picked up a DDR4 board instead.  The Pro4 specifically, which I got a great deal on.  Better layout, better regulation (I think) and a more comprehensive array of OC-related BIOS options.  I already have my i5-6400 up to 4.2 GHz and I'm sure I can get a little higher.  It's still an entry-level overclockers board but I'm much happier with the build now.

Still can't get Ubuntu to boot when doing a BCLK OC though, so I suspect that it's a widespread issue.  I have posted about it here: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/hardware/processors-memory/848450-bclk-overclocking-on-z170-skylake-chipsets-prevents-ubuntu-from-booting

I will probably post all future updates (and hopefully successes) there as well.


Edited by cainn24 - 29 Jan 2016 at 7:12am

Dang, ya know what?

Right after I edited my post above, nolapic, I had a brain storm. Maybe

Go into the BIOS, disable HPET, and retry.

So, the 1.90 BIOS is now available.  However I am disappointed to report that all the same issues remain.  I can't boot Ubuntu even with the smallest BLCK adjustment, the "Max Battery" boot performance setting stills locks the multiplier to x8 (even in Windows under load) and there is still the occasional UEFI GUI freeze (mouse cursor still moves but the GUI elements become unresponsive) whether I am overclocking or not.

Edited by cainn24 - 27 Jan 2016 at 4:41pm

Small update:

Edited by cainn24 - 27 Jan 2016 at 6:46am

No idea about the engineers, whom don't forget are in Taiwan.

You can contact ASRock Technical Support via the form on this page:

http://event.asrock.com/tsd.asp

The Max Battery option is supposed to do what you are experiencing. It keeps the core multipliers at a fixed setting so they don't interfere with a BCLK OC. Recall that C States are not active when doing a BCLK OC, since they do just that, vary the multiplier among other things.

Back when over clocking was done mainly by the BCLK, disabling C States was a common practice for stability.

Sometimes video cards have problems with coming out of Sleep, and a PSU can too. Did you check the Windows Event Log for any clues?

What are your basic settings for your 4GHz OC? BCLK, multiplier for All Cores?  Multi Core Enhancement should be Disabled. Do you have any special BCLK options (some boards do) that may make a BCLK OC more stable?

Linux would boot for you when you are not using your BCLK OC?