Some Guidance With Process Using To Update PRIME ASUS Z790 P WIFI BIOS

DeadricPrince

I bought a custom gaming PC with specs

CPU: 13th gen Raptor Intel 13900K CPU

MB: ASUS Z790 P WIFI

GPU: Nvidia 4090

When I purchased my gaming PC in August 2023, the voltage performance issue for the 13/14 gen Intel CPUs was well known. So my CPU hardware had all the latest patch updates. I also didn't design my system to overclock as I'm a PvE gamer (predominantly solo player Bethesda TES/Fallout, KCD, Sims, GTAO, RDR2 etc). And so don't play competitive PvP MMO games like Fortnite, COD etc. which have been known to push PC CPU/GPU to their max limits.

The only hardware intensive game I have in my Steam library is Hogwarts Legacy. Which wouldn't have been a potential issue if it hadn't been designed in UE4 engine. The issue I'm having is the shader building required by the UE4 engine. Which is a mandatory pre-requisite graphic processing before you can reach the main menu to launch the game. The shader needs to be rebuilt with every patch update and/or mods update.

I bought my gaming rig in Aug 2023 then installed and launched HL with zero issues. Played and completed HL within a month of starting the game. Then took a vacation from stressing my hardware with this game until the exclusive Potion DLC was finally released by Epic Games Store summer of last year. I downloaded the new update on Steam but didn't launch the game.

Fast forward to earlier this week when I finally had some time to play this released content. Unfortunately however (from the time this new DLC was released on Steam until now) Intel, NVidia and Warner Brothers (HL publisher) all released several updates associated with improving the performance of how HL was run on 13th & 14th gen Raptor CPUs.

When I tried to launch the game earlier this week, the shader process began running as it always did. Then suddenly crashed and despite verifying all game files/Steam and my Nvidia graphics card were updated, I remained unable to launch the game. After doing some research on the web, I found many 13/14 gen Intel Raptor CPU gamers were having the same issue. With the latest DLC update, the HL's patch did some extreme performance overhauls/tweaks of the game.

And as a direct result of this, created excessively high demands on the voltage for 13th/14th gen Intel CPUs. These high software demands were responsible for the CPU failure/issue with Intel Raptor CPUs. The majority of solutions gamers found for this was to manually enter the BIOS and tweak the PCore ratio and reduce it to a lower value eg from 57x to 53x etc. Some other gamers suggested using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility tool (shown in screen shot below). This tool provides a user friendly UI that lets you manually change the PCore ratio by entering the new text values. Which is easier than fiddling with the BIOS on startup. The screen shot showing the values for my (unaltered and not clocked) CPU is below. There are suggestions that the PCore should be tweaked/reduced to 54x or even 53x. But I wasn't comfortable directly altering my BIOS by using this OEM utility. Especially since it isn't overclocked to begin with:

Additionally, Intel has since responded to this game related hardware failure issue with several BIOS updates since last year. Which appeared to have addressed/resolved this performance issue for a lot of 13 and 14th gen Raptor CPU gamers who play HL.

Consequently, I need to update my BIOS and the reason for this wall of text post. I've since updated all my hardware drivers with the exception of my CPU to date. But I'm uncertain as to what version of the BIOS and/or Intel ME I'm supposed to download/install for my ASUS Z790 MB? The ASUS OEM site for it's motherboard is here:

https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/motherboards/prime/prime-z790-p-wifi/helpdesk_bios/?model2Name=PRIME-Z790-P-WIFI

1. Could someone PLEASE give me an idea which BIOS version and/or Intel ME versions are supposed to be downloaded? I didn't want to download an older/incorrect BIOS version, only to be unable to undo this update. Only to end up with the dreaded BSOD once I attempt to reboot the system.

2. Where is the OEM/Intel download for the BIOS update for the 13900K chipset itself? Will the BIOS update on the ASUS site automatically update the CPU so there is no need to download anymore software utilities from the Intel website?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!