What technologies are required for modern motherboards (6thgen - current) to post?

[AJ847.63e]

Hi All,

Need a bit of assistance digging up some information on current technology support required for modern motherboards to post? By modern let's say 6th gen skylake to current intel and all of the Ryzen series. You would think this would be on the ARK product page, but nope. Besides saying dedicated graphics required it doesn't really tell you squat.

Reason I ask is I've ran into this a few times now (first on 6th gen SkyLake and now on 12th gen AlderLake) where if I use an intel F SKU CPU multiple different boards refuse to post with multiple different graphics cards despite confirming everything works fine in other systems. If I put a non F SKU CPU in any of the boards with any of those GPUs it works first go. So, there's obviously something upsetting specifically the F SKUs on boot.

I've got down UEFI support is important, PCIE 4.0 would help since most boards ship these days in auto mode and despite being backwards compatible a lot of boards refuse to post, a lot of people ran into this issue including me with my 7700K and 3080ti. No post till I removed the GPU, manually set the PCIE slots to 3.0 instead of auto and boom she worked fine with my 3080ti. Unfortunately, auto is not so auto...

So what other things do you need to look at for it to "just work"? Like the non F SKUs do, never had a single issue with those to the point where I've always restricted myself to buy the x100's instead of the x100F's but recently the non F has become hard to find. We've got a few F SKU CPUs and it would be nice to buy a "minimum spec" GPU in order to be able to use them. I'm looking at ali express and vega GPUs are extremely cheap ATM but their only PCIE 3.0.

Thanks for the assistance.

[stj]

Re: What technologies are required for modern motherboards (6thgen - current) to post

nobody needs UEFI, it's just an excuse to install more spyware and tracking.

the real problem is microcode - if the bios doesnt have it for the cpu you want to use then good luck.
i noticed on the newer ryzen boards they try to get around this by putting a button on the back that forces a microcontroller to flash the bios from a usb stick even if the board wont post.
infact it does it from standby - you dont even turn the machine on!

[AJ847.63e]

Re: What technologies are required for modern motherboards (6thgen - current) to post

Yeah, bios flashback comes in clutch especially when you don't even need a CPU. That got me out of a bind when my Z490 Aorus Master wouldn't boot with my 9900KF, turns out F SKU support wasn't added till the third BIOS revision, and I was on the launch bios. Pretty cool you can update the BIOS even without a supported CPU. That's why I only buy ASUS boards now, there the only ones who put the bios revision installed on the board onto the box. MSI, gigabyte, asrock, no one else does it' so your only confirmation option was to use a launch day supported CPU or desolder and read the BIOS chip!
I believe ASUS were the first to offer that back in the 4th gen days, but pretty much everyone offers it now.

It's definitely not a microcode issue though. Usually, a BIOS update is the first thing I check for. Current system I'm using is a gigabyte B660M DS3H, BIOS is fully up to date so I could run 14th gen. Still same issue. I brought in my 3080ti to try, and it booted first go with my 12100F. Seems like there's something with older GPUs modern platforms do not like.

It would be nice to get an $80 GT710 or GT1030 or something as these are just office boxes, anything else seems a waste. Especially when RX6400s, cheapest current card, is over $200! But every time I try something from that 7th,9th,10th gen range it does not post with modern CPUs, slap in my old 4770K and they work fine.