MSI has started rolling out its new Z790 BIOS which implements the “Intel Default Settings” profile for 14th & 13th Gen CPUs.
Motherboard Vendors Start Following Intel’s Recommendation, MSI Rolls Out Latest BIOS Profile For Its Z790 Boards To Resolve 14th And 13th Gen CPU Stability Issues
Following the official statement from Intel which recommends motherboard vendors from using the “Intel Default Settings” over the “Baseline Defaults”, MSI has quickly rolled out its latest BIOS, first for the Z790 motherboards, which helps set the power limits according to the default profile provided by Intel.
The new BIOS implements two main features, The first is the cautionary message which states that setting the cooler type to “Tower Air Cooler” or “Water Cooler” profiles will reduce system stability on 14th & 13th Gen CPUs. After this, you can enter the “CPU cooler type” BIOS setting which gives you three options:
- Intel Default Settings: 125W PL1 / 253W PL2 / 307A Current Limit
- Tower Air Cooler: 288W PL1 / 288W PL2 / 512A Current Limit
- Water Cooler: 4096W PL1 / 4096W PL2 / 512A Current Limit
Following are the official “Intel Default Settings” profiles provided officially by Intel. You can also differentiate between the “Baseline”, “Performance” and “Extreme” modes. The baseline default has been removed entirely and all of its values have been passed over to the “Performance” profile.
The Intel Default Settings profile on MSI motherboards was previously known as “Boxed cooler” which set the PL1 to 253W by default. So you can already tell that there’s a significant reduction in power limits in the latest BIOS which had to be done to comply with Intel’s recommended default profiles.
Now setting your Intel 14th Gen & 13th gen CPUs to their default profiles will definitely result in lower performance versus the “Performance” and “Extreme” configurations. You will notice lower power consumption and lower temperatures but one should expect trading performance for CPU stability.
The new MSI BIOS is already available across their Z790 and Z790 MAX series which you can grab from the official support page here.