ASUS Strix Z690-F Bios 1720 Undervolt protection is enabled preventing undervolts

[Bigglet]

Dear all,

As title says, ever since upgrading to the 1720 BIOS version of the chipset, I can no longer undervolt my CPU. It's absolutely stupid. XTU blocks anything that goes into the negative with the message "prevent voltage from being set below the boot-time voltage", thereby preventing any undervolts and efficiency gains.

Moreover, it has also completely removed the V,F curve option and even when adding negative offsets in the BIOS nothing happens.

I find it utterly broken that this feature has been blocked for whatever reason. I therefore also don't recommend to upgrade to the latest BIOS version and I'm hoping others can share their experience or get an official statement from ASUS on how to work around this issue?

Specs:
CPU: i7 12700KF
CPU Cooler: Corsair HX150i ELITE CAPELLIX Liquid cooling
MOBO: ASUS Strix Z690-F GAMING
GPU: ASUS Strix RTX 3080Ti
PSU: Corsair HX1000i
RAM: G.SKILL TRIDENT Z DDR5-5600

[Nate152]

Hi Bigglet,

I'm using the same motherboard, it's probably better to roll back to bios version 1601 for now.

[carlisle97]

Nate152 wrote:
Hi Bigglet,

I'm using the same motherboard, it's probably better to roll back to bios version 1601 for now.

Hi! The same problem is occurring on BIOS 1620, the same as 1720 but for Asus PRIME Z690-P D4. Is there a way to communicate to Asus about this one too?

I reported the problem in more detail on this forum

[RimuruTempest42]

MSI mobo users have been complaining about this since the latest update to Windows. The problem is with the VBS (Windows 10 & 11 call it Memory Integrity) turning on. When enabled on their systems it causes the BIOS undervolt or overvolt to be ignored. Here's an article in Tom's Hardware about the issue. This sounds very similar to what's occurring on our ASUS motherboards. I recently noticed my idol temps and load temps have increased and when doing a stress test to check my temps were easily 6-8 C higher than they should be. Turned of Memory Integrity in Windows Defender. Suddenly my undervolt is working again. Sadly I think the solution is turn off Memory Integrity or roll back the BIOS to 1603.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-11-update-kills-overvolting-msi

[thecoconut]

I just built a new system with an i9-12900K and ROG Strix Z690-E. I had to flash to the most recent during the built process to get things compatible. So I am running 2004 bios. In order to undervolt, I too had to disable memory integrity and was able to do it either via Intel extreme tuning or ASUS AI suite. I could do it via software with the memory integrity disabled. I never tried to do it via BIOS though. Using intel's tool, it worked well enough.