dreamcat4

Yeah that is a brilliant idea. I think in most cases you aught to have less than 100 ohms resistance with a decent / good enough silver pen. So normally we would assume that should be low enough resistance to be good enough to pull up / pull down the line. It is worth trying, is you do so then please come back later to let us know such result, and which was the silver pen or paint product that was susccessful.

My answer is that: Since long ago the bios modders have realized that the hardware on the 10 is almost identical to the 9. So we can just use the z370 bios without and significant risk or issue. This is indeed very true and almost everybody here (and for many months now) has been using z370 bios without issue. That is because (for this specific board) there is no compatibiltiy issue to be concerned for. Unlike with other types / models of motherboard. So there is no motivation for anybody to do such a thing. You can try to do this and you will have greater issues especially concerning the max number of threads etc. as previously discussed. The z370 native bios neatly avoids all this issues and all other issues... which is why we love it so much.

Thinking about this matter it has since occurred to me today certain aspect of doing these hard mod on the boards themselves. Which is as follows: * If you glue down, or use UV curing mask on the little wire, then this makes a more durable trace. That is going to be much more resilient to incidental hits / blows. This is a better sort of job than is displayed in the photo. * If you want to break off the 2 isolate pins in LGA socket: well that is not normally recommended. Because there is a high chance of the broken off pin going 'ping' and flying off somewhere into the holes in the LGA socket. Never being retrievable again and potentially causing a short circuit. Very risky. * However if you can place a high strength magnet nearby. Then in therory the broken pin will always fly in the air and be catched by the magnet. For example I have some of these very cheap / very small / very high strength neodnyum magnets. Which are ideal for such purposes. That last suggestion is best tested on a broken board / broken LGA socket first of all. To ensure that these LGA pins are indeed magnetic (which I am guessing they should be). Anyhow you know it's all personal preference. People always take care around the pci-e slots where the jumper pins is. And some people just don't mind just letting the short pin burn off the tip (if that happens, let it happen). Which just doesn't seem to hurt anything. So those extra efforts for perfectionists, for others it is not to be concerned for, and not enough matter to be bothered about. But what I would say about burnt pin is: How can you be sure it does not leave metal debris fall into the LGA socket? Because once that happens, it's just going to rattle around down there and cannot be found / shook out again... I guess this is the main reason why I bother to talk about this matters. If you want to play it safe, it depends on the amount of precautions or levels of risks you wish to take. Also I might add that: dsanke does a whole lot of different boards. It might be that his is a more general recommendation. Due to not being able to keep track of which specific boards get this burnt pin. It's just easier to recommend that always. Or it could be that this overcurrent situation only occurs with specific CPUs, or under specific overclocking condition. I really don't know. It's not supposed to happen in the first place according to the intel specs. Ultimately its your property, it's really to the personal choice of the owner. Which levels of trade offs / paranoia. Overally fairly safe here I think. At least with this board it would seem, according to other people's comments here. But did anybody think to check the socket afterwards for burnt pin? IDK. This is really the all limit of my knowledge on the matter. I don't risk such things.

Couple of things: * Bypassing the SKT_OCC pin on the motherboard is going to be an extra risk on damaging / modifying the motherboard. * It's also a much more noticeable mod, with a longer wire that can potentially get snagged or torn off or whatever. * It does not isolate the pin in the socket that can get burnt out due to over current * If you are going to bother masking the pin on the back of the cpu itself, then at that point you might as well also short the SKT_OCC pair of pins there too, which means you don't need to bother doing that 2nd jumper wire after all. This does however mean that you need to carefully modify each cpu before you put it into the motherboard - so there is a trade off. Depending upon how often you are changing cpus out. YMMV, but this is best advise, from dsanke, who is the guy supplying and supporting these mod BIOSes.

Yes... You also have to short 2 pins and isolate 2 pins on the underside of the cpu.

Hey there I got an 8700K in my z170 OCF here (full atx version). And ofc mod bios etc. Just wondering what is the optimum LLC level setting? And also if i need to tweak the SA voltage a little etc. Can anybody else here share their overclocking settings? Or if you have used / found a specific overclocking guide really useful on this board. That would also / alternatively be really helpful too. Many thanks. Currently I have set my 8700K to 4.7ghz @ 1.30v and can't remember the LLC setting. It seems ok / stable ATM. Another question I have is: should I bother de-lidding it? I guess I should overclock first and see where it sits in regards to temps. However being on linux there really are not the same wealth of overclocking / benchmarking tools with which to check and see. Although my sensors are working, which is handy.

Hi @GTI-R, If you mean that the blue flashback light on the button itself is not flashing slowly (or quickly, whatever it says in the ASUS manual). Then it's most likely the issue is either: * Bad usb flash driver. Like my cheap-o integral neon ones were. No good / didn't work. The only other possible reason is: * Master partition table was not formatted as MBR. For example if you formatted your usb drive as the more modern GPT by mistake. That will also result in the same type of a failure. And it must be on the 1st partition FAT32 of course! So you check those 2 things I think and you should have a better luck with the ASUS flashback. Have a good day. Oh! Of course you check you modded your motherboard pins correctly too. And they are properly shorted. Those tiny pads next to the not-populated smd restistor. As per the 1st post on page 1 here.

yes

Well here is the latest mod bios from @dsanke. Who cannot post it here himself to whatever forums problems registering his account. Same as before. You can see what they added in the ASUS changelog, https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-MAXIMUS-X-APEX/HelpDesk_BIOS/ Which says.... > ROG-MAXIMUS-X-APEX BIOS 2203 > 1) Support Intel upcoming CPU > 2) Improved system stability and performance > 3) Update RAID driver to rev. 17.5 > 4) Support Intel Optane Memory H10 device > 5) Update ME firmware for Intel security issue. > Before running the USB BIOS Flashback tool, please rename the BIOS file (M10A.CAP) using BIOSRenamer I don't think you want to renae it "M10A.CAP" though. See 1st post for the other filename / full instructions how to flash. BTW you can also use the MCE Extractor tool on this dsanke's BIOS file. Just to double check which of the intel CPUIDs microcodes are included / supported. By searching them in the Intel microcode guide PDF file https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/sa00115-microcode-update-guidance.pdf Kind Regards ROG-MAXIMUS-IX-APEX-ASUS-2203.7z

well let us know if you decide to change BIOS. because i'm also on the 2003 one ATM. wondering how it really is. maybe this newer one has some intel security patches in it? Could that be anything to do with the issue? Or otherwise windows 10 update, now applying a newer MC at boot time? Sorry I'm on linux so cannot help with diagnosing that type of an issue. Let us know if you find anything more.

Hello. During my BIOS mod today, I have had the opportunity to confirm that it is using 4x phase doublers. They are 4x IR3599s on the main Vcore, as you can see with the photos attached. The silkscreen says PU10x0, and there are no markings for 3 of them. However the 4th one PU1040 does carry a clear marking. And the package size and type matches the only package that the IR3599 comes in, the locations are where you would expect them to be etc. There is no possible way that this board does not use IR3599s. Without any doubt.

correct. ...still waiting for somebody to confirm whether this board is a doubled or a true 8 phase. Actually I can inspect mine today. So just wondering what I should be looking out for? There was some other way were were going to verify this. Ah: "What would be nice then is to try to CONFIRM that the other 2 phases for the igpu are coming from a completely different VRM controller (than the main vcore one). Because if the vcore is a true 8 phases, and it is an Asus rebrand of an IR35201.... then there should be 0 phases left on it for the igpu vrm --> needs a seperate controller."

Please tell us if you can what else was changed. It would be nice to hear about these other differences. It may be helpful to know about when running the new 10's BIOS on the 9.

Yeah man. This has also confused me too for a very long time indeed! According to the german vrms list here https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f12/lga-1151-mainboard-vrm-liste-1175784.html It says that it should have 4x IR3599 "Doppler" (="Doubler" in english) But here is the part Buildzoid's video where he comes to the same initial conclusion as yourself: What would be nice then is to try to CONFIRM that the other 2 phases for the igpu are coming from a completely different VRM controller (than the main vcore one). Because if the vcore is a true 8 phases, and it is an Asus rebrand of an IR35201.... then there should be 0 phases left on it for the igpu vrm --> needs a seperate controller. Hopefully you can take another look! Many thanks because so many people keep saying it's just a doubled 4 phase and I truly don't know still. Would try to look myself but it's my main system here. So unfortunately cannot dismantle / examine.

[NOTE] New 2003 mod bios file is attached at the very bottom of this same post. Please download / save for later. However before flashing / updating, please read through very carefully and fully all of the post here, for the changelog information. Since this new BIOS includes new update(s) from Intel !!! And personally, as for myself I don't actually know what they actually are yet... Hello again. Well it seems yesterday @dsanke has released new BIOS updates for some of these ASUS boards. Including this one. He did not include his normal summary information this time. But instead put: dsanke Changes the same as before. So therefore the only difference between this 2003 revision and the previous 1901 BIOS should be whatever the manufacturer, ASUS has added. And remembering that this is actually a modded the Apex 10 bios. So that actually made me curious enough to bother checking what might be in it. Also because the version number seems like it is significantly higher now. The original files are available from here: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-MAXIMUS-X-APEX/HelpDesk_Download/ Unfortunately (unlike in their previous updates), ASUS did not tell us what was changed in this latest update. Wheras the previous 2 updates from ASUS did at least include some partial information, for what was improved: Here I am just copying from a previous information which was included with the earlier '1901' BIOS. Assuming that nothing @dsanke has done has changed: Author: @dsanke Motherboard: ASUS ROG MAXIMUS IX APEX Based on:ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X APEX 2003 ME: 11.7.0.1229 Microcodes: The same as original M10A BIOS. Note: Flash via SPI Programmer. Support All LGA1151 CPU except Xeon and Skylake ES. AURA/SLI Fixed. ==== $ md5sum * 4904b53e1dceb1ac217e590bd43c7d69 ROG-MAXIMUS-IX-APEX-ASUS-2003.7z 9baf6299714bff49eb766bf48e7177bd ROG-MAXIMUS-IX-APEX-ASUS-2003.bin Anyhow, coming back to the missing changelog from ASUS... @dsanke also updated these 2 other ASUS boards. All together. And for *those other 2 boards*, they *do* include information in their changelog entries. And the other '2003' bios (for the Maximus 10 Hero) shares the same exact upload date. As the apex. https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/ROG-MAXIMUS-X-HERO/HelpDesk_Download/ So perhaps it was just an innocent error / forgot. Since the similar Hero board does explain it's changelog: But it also shares exactly also the 2 previous changelog entries. So this really does strongly suggest that ASUS does try very hard to keep these 2 boards in-step / always together. So then, the 2003 update includes 4 new changes. Vs the 1901, which was purely for compatibility with new intel processor SKUs. The ASUS changes are: * "Improve System Performance." * "Updated ME FW." * "Updated Intel commit for security." * "Updated RAID driver." Whatever that means. @dsanke mod bios for Apex 9 attached. Please discuss, it should be possible to find information elsewhere (from other sources) for what the middle 2 are all about. Kind Regards. Just a quick note: FWIW It almost seems as-if the increment of the minor version number reflects the number of different and unique feature (or bugfix) changes. That have been made since the last update. For this update, if we ignore and discount the "Improve System Performance" at the top. And assume that point 1 references the points 2 & 4 being the things that are 'improving' the performance. Then that leaves us with 3 different / unique changes in the clangelog here... And the last 2 digits are '03'. Wheras in the previous BIOS update, it was '01' and there was only 1 unique change. And then the 1st 2 digits counting and incrementing the major BIOS version (18, 19, 20). So therefore 2003 = "the 20th BIOS update, and it includes 3 new changes". Would appear to be the ASUS naming scheme is here. And for all of their other motherboards (and other types of devices too!). Unless I am mistaken about that. Anyhow thanks to @dsanke for continuing to update this BIOS. Keeping it current with the latest. Although he still seems to be unable to register an account at this forum, for whatever technical reason(s) he cannot be here. ROG-MAXIMUS-IX-APEX-ASUS-2003.7z