Assist in boosting the locked Xeon ES CPU on an Asrock x299 Taichi Xe by Asrock.
Assist in boosting the locked Xeon ES CPU on an Asrock x299 Taichi Xe by Asrock.
I purchased an i9 7900X from eBay, but it isn’t unlocked and isn’t an i9 model—it’s an early low-frequency version of the Xeon W-2155, not part of the i9 series. It does support ECC register, and ECC mode is functioning properly according to hwinfo, confirming it’s a Xeon E-series processor. (I own a lot of ECC registers from older servers and Chinese X99 rigs; I use 7x8GB 2666 and one 16GB 2666). There’s a method to overclock non-K or non-X Skylake CPUs on motherboards that allow custom clock generation. My board supports BCLK overclock and hybrid clock generation. I can reduce RAM speed but not increase it above 2666 MHz, anything over that is ignored. (On my other rig the RAM stays steady at 2933MHz.) I’m able to push BCLK up to 104 after that, but the system starts looping. It seems BCLK OC is also locked—still stable and impressively quiet at stock speeds. I have a 6/12 heatpipe thermalright Extreme with Arctic P12. Very low 2.8GHz all-core turbo and 3.2GHz for a few cores turbo. If I could raise BCLK to at least 4GHz all-core, that would be great. If I set any multiplexer, it just stays at 2.8GHz all-core, even with the multicore boost enabled. The latest BIOS is 1.90B, and I swapped the microcode from 1.10 in the newest release, so it should handle ECC registers and REBAR (required for Intel Arc A770). The Intel ME engine blocks BCLK OC on this CPU?
The seller is avoiding paying for returns. I filed a claim, but only receive a partial refund when sending the item back—excluding customs VAT and shipping costs. This means half the value is lost if I return it. (Original price was 100 USD: https://www.ebay.com/itm/125658410632)
Ebay or PayPal? In PayPal just mention you were scammed and got a wrong product. The seller doesn’t want to refund everything and charge more. Often means you keep the item because the seller would have to pay their own fees. Last week it was a new phone that looked perfect—no signs of damage. I received it and the screen burned severely, visible even in dark or colored backgrounds. Ebay refused PayPal, and the seller didn’t want it returned due to costs. Now I have a functional phone but with a broken screen.
The seller mentions some problems with feedback on chips. They specify that the chips are either ES or QS versions, meaning you're getting a sample rather than a guaranteed product. Despite listing 7900x in the title, their description suggests it's just an ES version, which can be unreliable for performance and accuracy compared to the official releases.
Can't resolve the issue. I believe closing the return case was the cause. I’m unsure how to reopen or start a new case. No clear options available. However, it seems challenging to push this CPU to 4GHz across all cores. I thought Skylake CPUs could be overclocked with a custom BCLK if the motherboard supports it.
ES chips frequently cause issues. It's hard to tell what you're receiving, and they might not even be fully finished silicon—potentially containing defects. This alone can cover most problems you face. Even more concerning is that these are still Intel products. The seller’s reluctance to return the item suggests something is off. You’re likely aware that the final clock speed of your processor is set by a specific formula: CPU frequency equals baseclock frequency multiplied by the CPU multiplier. On xeon chips and other locked processors, this multiplier is fixed, so overclocking mainly depends on the baseclock. The issue arises because the baseclock serves as a reference for other system speeds (like PCIe and DDR4), which often can’t be pushed beyond their limits. Usually, you can only boost the baseclock by a small margin—often just a few percent at most. Your board includes an external clock generator, marketed by Asrock as enabling higher bclock speeds than usual. The extent to which this is possible remains uncertain, and since CPU speed ties into other components’ frequencies, it’s unclear if this will actually change.