Octane III Bios and Software Updates

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Hewhoist

Enthusiast
Hi all,

I've got an Octane III with a 6700k and 1080. I check every so often on the PCS website under my order/downloads section. There are no downloads there except one for intel wifi, noticing more people with updated BIOS and CCC yet nothing for me? I don't want to search for them myself as I'd prefer to have them from PCS so I know my warranty is safe and that I'm installing the correct software/firmware. My current bios is 1.05.01
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Why do you want to update the BIOS? There is never any need to do that unless you're having an issue that is (or might be) BIOS related or because you need a new feature introduced in the updated BIOS. You certainly should not even consider updating your BIOS without having spoken to PCS. They will tell you whether you need a BIOS update or not.
 
A

Archway

Member
I certainly agree that BIOSes should not be upgrade without a reason. I am running 1.06.04. Having said that, while the BIOS works perfectly well and the machine is extremely fast and stable (7700K overclocked 47/46/46/46 and undervolted with a voltage offset of -0.136) doing this was not helped by the current BIOS. Firstly, the voltage offset made available appears as though it is positive but in fact is negative. In fact, as it turned out, it seems that there is no facility to increase the voltage above stock, perhaps not unreasonable given the question of overheating. I then found that altering the undervoltage tended to not stick, i.e. even if it was changed in the BIOS, it would then revert to -100. While some of the CPU core overclocks stuck, some of the later ones did not and eventually I dealt with all of this by using ThrottleStop 8.40. It turns out that the BIOS undervolt setting does not change the system agent voltage. Also available with SkyLake and later processors is Speed Shift, an updated version of SpeedStep, which is not made available through the Clevo BIOS but which can be turned on using ThrottleStop.

Consequently, while the current BIOS performs adequately it has some faults and limitations and the overall impression is of a rather rushed effort.

If the BIOS appears a bit rushed and ready, then the Control Centre is worse. In particular, the available fan speed adjustments are very limited. With the automatic profile the fans gently ramp up over many steps but with any manual configuration there appear to be only three steps which are presumably off, half speed and full speed. While experimenting with undervolting I also had the impression that these different fan settings, even though they should only be fan settings, may actually also affect processor voltage as sometimes thermal throttling appeared while testing with the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility with manual fan speeds when no throttling appeared with the automatic fan speed setting under otherwise identical circumstances.

Doubtless minor revisions of the BIOS or the Control Centre will not make much difference but hopefully, in due course, there will be revisions which improve upon these issues.
 
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Q

qqdc

Active member
Very interesting; as I'm planning to get almost the same system (but 1070 instead of 1080). How much performance improvement did you get from all the overclocking experiments, and what was the heat increase? I was thinking throttling due to over-heating was going to make even getting the baseline performance unlikely in real situations. (Which for me isn't games, but data mining: 2hr jobs with all cores at 100% is a typical (hard) workload.)
 
H

Hewhoist

Enthusiast
if there was no need to update the BIOS why would they continue to develop it? I'm on 1.05.01 and I can't even add a negative offset to my cpu for temperature control. Before anyone chimes in telling me to use CCC that facility is almost as buggy as XTU and isn't the solution I'm looking for. I want my bios to be able to let me do these simple things.
 
keynes

keynes

Multiverse Poster
Hewhoist said:
if there was no need to update the BIOS why would they continue to develop it? I'm on 1.05.01 and I can't even add a negative offset to my cpu for temperature control. Before anyone chimes in telling me to use CCC that facility is almost as buggy as XTU and isn't the solution I'm looking for. I want my bios to be able to let me do these simple things.
Click to expand...

BIOS update are not always essential and may add features that the average users don't need and the comments before were meant as a warning to go ahead with a BIOS update as it could brick your laptop. If you are certain the BIOS update can help fix the issues you indicated then you have a justification to go ahead.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Hewhoist said:
if there was no need to update the BIOS why would they continue to develop it? I'm on 1.05.01 and I can't even add a negative offset to my cpu for temperature control. Before anyone chimes in telling me to use CCC that facility is almost as buggy as XTU and isn't the solution I'm looking for. I want my bios to be able to let me do these simple things.
Click to expand...

There is a reason why your existing BIOS works the way it does, Clevo are not providing you with a back-level BIOS just to be awkward and they know a lot more about what the BIOS is doing and how it interacts with the hardware than you do. That said, if you are really want to update your BIOS I would strongly suggest that you talk to PCS first, they may well know why your laptop has the BIOS version it does and they can probably tell you whether flashing the newer version will give you any problems.

It is a huge mistake to think of the BIOS as just another bit of software that you need to keep updated, for one thing it's more closely matched to the hardware than you might realise, and for another flashing the BIOS is not without risk.
 
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