Maximus IX Apex headache

[Bones]

First off the boards I got are working, no problems with them related to them doing what they are supposed to do.
However.....

I am having trouble getting the one I'm working with to run my 6600K beyond stock.
It's the Intel "Thing" that makes them stay at stock regardless of changing the CPU multiplier manually or whatever. I've been able to solve this with my OCF, Impact and Hero boards but the one I'm messing with is being stubborn about it.

I've tried enabling/disabling Turbo, C states, Speed Step and everything else I can think of and it's ALWAYS running at it's stock speed of 3.5GHz, sometimes dropping to 800 MHz. I've figured out how to stop it from dropping the speed more or less but not how to make it run what I set it for.

Has to be a setting I'm missing somewhere, just can't seem to figure out what it is.

[Vinster]

did you flash the bios?

how is the battery?

Vin

[Bones]

Haven't messed with flashing the BIOS yet, it's using the 1301 BIOS ATM.
I will have to see if this is an older or newer version, not wanting to run the newest with the crippling microcode updates. If it is such a file I'll have to do a little modding and flash it back to an earlier version.

Battery I believe is fine but will have to doublecheck that too.

EDIT: It has the newest file so..... I guess it's time to flash it back, already grabbed a few older files to do it with including the file right before this one.

[georgekokovinis]

It is certainly not a bios issue and not a battery issue.

It is a microcode compatibility issue that regards the ME part of the bios. This can be addressed thru windows with the ME upgrade ASUS tool.

In any case Asus Apex IX has not been made to work flawlessly with skylake cpu's. It is a Z270 board, partially backwards compatible with

Z170 boards.

[Bones]

Thank you George, will look into the ME upgrade tool and try it.

[georgekokovinis]

Jun 27, 2019 5:39:24 GMT -5 Bones said:

Thank you George, will look into the ME upgrade tool and try it.

You are welcome

I sincerely hope this solves your issue.

I have to note though, that a google search unveils many incompatibility issues of Z270 chipset with skylake cpu.

[Bones]

Ah!
I did find a few things about it and downloaded some stuff.
Will try it later and see what happens, however the Tool itself doesn't seem to be readily available from Asus, at least within the Apex IX download page(s).

[georgekokovinis]

Indeed, I checked and they removed it

Possibly ME updates now thru latest bios.

There is a work around - Set the board at slow mode and set the multiplier at a ridiculous number - say 60x

Boot at slow mode and upon entering windows, open Turbo Vcore and LOWER the multiplier to your desired number.

Disable slow mode and see if it holds the multiplier desired.