Z690 Gaming A and Bios's Above 1601 ?

[Adrian1983]

Does anyone know if the power and voltage issues introduced on Bios 1720 and above ie 2204 have fixed the voltage issues that arose with these bios's as there is still no mention of this on any of the bios's since that problem.

[JohnAb]

As far as I can remember, the problems were reported when 1720 was released. The situation with 2004 was less clear, so I decided to avoid both.

Then I upgraded to 2103 and although I don't overclock, all voltages seemed normal to me and my machine was rock solid. In fact, I seem to remember that when I went from 1601 to 2103, my CPU power consumption seemed to fall (sometimes as low as 16W). Yesterday I upgraded to 2204 and again, everything seems fine. No issues at all. Right now doing nothing special, the CPU power is hovering around 20-25W which I still think is lower than when I was on 1601. My PC specs are below and my VCore is showing an average of 1.107V right now (and falling slowly) in HWInfo, although the machine has only been on for 30 mins. Max VCore so far today is showing as 1.323V.

I can't speak for other's experiences, but 2103 and 2204 both seem good to me (I have the Hero, not the Gaming A). It's sad that the forums have not been working, there is a lot of feedback on 2204 probably missing. Remember that once you get to 2004 and above, you can't go back to anything earlier than 2004. If you are still on 1601 (which I also found to be good) then you must be using a 12900 or similar like me. My memory is quite slow at 5200, but it seems to be the guys with higher memory speeds that usually have the most issues. Hope my experience helps you to make a decision... if you take the plunge, make sure to update your ME Windows drivers and ME firmware first.

[Adrian1983]

JohnAb wrote:
As far as I can remember, the problems were reported when 1720 was released. The situation with 2004 was less clear, so I decided to avoid both.

Then I upgraded to 2103 and although I don't overclock, all voltages seemed normal to me and my machine was rock solid. In fact, I seem to remember that when I went from 1601 to 2103, my CPU power consumption seemed to fall (sometimes as low as 16W). Yesterday I upgraded to 2204 and again, everything seems fine. No issues at all. Right now doing nothing special, the CPU power is hovering around 20-25W which I still think is lower than when I was on 1601. My PC specs are below and my VCore is showing an average of 1.107V right now (and falling slowly) in HWInfo, although the machine has only been on for 30 mins. Max VCore so far today is showing as 1.323V.

I can't speak for other's experiences, but 2103 and 2204 both seem good to me (I have the Hero, not the Gaming A). It's sad that the forums have not been working, there is a lot of feedback on 2204 probably missing. Remember that once you get to 2004 and above, you can't go back to anything earlier than 2004. If you are still on 1601 (which I also found to be good) then you must be using a 12900 or similar like me. My memory is quite slow at 5200, but it seems to be the guys with higher memory speeds that usually have the most issues. Hope my experience helps you to make a decision... if you take the plunge, make sure to update your ME Windows drivers and ME firmware first.

Hi,

Yes I think around the time 2204 was released the forums went down but to be honest I haven't heard much about any of the bios's since 1710/20 regarding the voltage and power issue, yes my CPU is a 12900K when i tested the above bios it was way over volting at the same settings and power comsumption went up from around 195w to 236w.

Yes I do believe a lot with DDR 5 and higher ram speeds have been having issues since the release of Alder Lake, Not sure how Raptor Lake and Z790 is fairing but I'm only on DDR 4 at 3800 clocked up to 3900 Gear 1 so I don't think any of these bios's would be an issue for my memory it was the CPU I was more concerned about.

Thanks for that I'll try and dig up some more info around the web to see if I can find anything else more concrete out.

[Adrian1983]

Well I took the plunge and updated to 2204 and voltages are ok if not less than the 1601 with my same bios profile however all my scores are down.

Cinebench has lost almost 1k points and wattage has now dropped from 195w to 175 with this bios, So something funky is going somewhere, Not sure what though.

UPDATE...

Ignore above post I have now figured it out, It was TVB Thermal Velocity Boost causing the CPU to drop 1 bin ratio during heavy load, It's now back up to 5ghz all core and around 200w in Cinebench.