Below I will give you a tutorial on what BIOS settings to change to improve system stability. It focuses on the Intel i9-14900KS CPU on a ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 DARK HERO motherboard but the steps are often comparable with those for other Intel CPU's and motherboards. Just lookup the stock values for your CPU and set them accordingly.

Important: before making changes to your BIOS, make sure no driver updates are needed as drivers can also be causes for BSOD's.

Even More Important (for us): you tweak your system at your own risk! You cannot make any claims against us. If you desire to do so, stop reading at once! And, more importantly, ask yourself these questions: "Why am I the type that does not want to be responsible for my own problems, and prefer to make my problems someone else's problems? And where can I get help/therapy for this?" A therapist is generally cheaper than a lawsuit.

How to enter the BIOS

First you need to enter the BIOS/UEFI setup. To do that, startup/reboot your PC (which shouldn't be difficult if you have BSOD's...) and during the BIOS/UEFI splash screen, which says that you can press F2 or DELETE to enter setup, this time really press that key to enter setup. Don't be slow as you only have a short time to press it. Otherwise just keep holding DELETE. The splash screen would look something like this:

After having entered the BIOS setup, you will be greeted with a very user-friendly screen and you will likely feel right at home here... But before you start twiddling with your BIOS settings, keep in mind that changing these can cause issues. So, make sure you remember/write down your current BIOS settings before changing them so you can revert to them later.

The start screen of my ASUS BIOS looks like this:

You can navigate the settings by using your mouse and keyboard. Navigating the keyboard works using the arrow keys. To navigate through the top sections (Main, Extreme Tweaker, etc) use the LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys. To navigate the settings of each section, use the UP and DOWN arrow keys. You can select or change the value of a setting by pressing the ENTER key.

The tweaks for stability

Follow the instructions below to make your Intel system stable again:

• First, Load Optimized Defaults from the Exit tab. Yes, we know, this is bad. But we are going to tweak things afterwards so don't worry.

  

• Then, navigate to the Extreme Tweaker section in your BIOS.

  

• Under Intel Defaults Settings select the Performance profile instead of the Intel Extreme profile. And under ASUS MultiCore Enhancement select Disabled - Enforce all limits.

  

You'll also see the Intel Adaptive Boost Technology setting. You can usually leave this to Auto or Enabled. You can choose to set it to Disabled to make sure your system is as stable as possible.

• Scroll down a bit (either by using the mouse or pressing the DOWN key on your keyboard) and select Internal CPU Power Management.

  

  Open it and you can see several other settings:

  

  We will tell you which settings are important to tweak.

  Maximum CPU Core Temperature and Fast Throttle Treshold. For the Intel i9-14900KS I recommend to set the maximum temperature at 98 (degrees Celcius) and the throttle temperature at 90 (degrees Celcius).

  These are the temperature values at which you want the CPU to throttle down (downclocking) to prevent too high temperatures, which is good for your CPU but decreases performance.

  CPU Core/Cache Current Limit Max. Set this to 307.00 for the Intel i9-14900KS.

  CPU Core/Cache Current Limit Max is the maximum electrical current the CPU is allowed to draw. If the CPU reaches that limit, it reduces its clock speed to stay within it. Lowering the limit may improve system stability (lowering heat and electrical load), but also decreases performance.

  Long Duration Package Power Limit and the Short Duration Package Power Limit. Set these to 253 (Watt) for the Intel i9-14900KS for both the Short and Long Duration.

  The Short Duration limit determines how much power the CPU is allowed to draw (in Watt) during short boost operations. After that, it falls back to the Long Duration limit.

• Scroll a bit further down and you will see the Specific Performance Core setting.

  

  Open it and you can see several other settings:

  Core Specific Ratio Limit: the Intel CPU has Performance cores (P-cores, used for demanding tasks) and Efficient (E-cores, for general tasks). The default setting for the core ratio is Auto. On an i9 14900KS the Auto settings means a ratio of 59x for the Performance-cores. I suggest to lower the core ratio to 55 for each of your Performance-cores to improve system stability. You can keep the ratio on Auto for the Efficient-cores.

Final steps

Now save and restart your system by opening the Exit section and selecting Save Changes and Reset.

If you still got stability issues, try lowering the values for the mentioned settings.

You can also try a memory test by selecting MemTest86 in your BIOS to check if your memory is the culprit.

And if nothing helps, request a RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) from the shop where you bought it so you can resend it to them for a check and repair.

You can Unify's System Information tool to monitor your CPU/motherboard and get information about them. This way you can see what voltages and clock the components are running at and compare these with what Intel recommends.

If you want to know if your Intel CPU suffers the dreaded degradation, do this:

1. Download Intels Processor Diagnostic Tool. There are several versions for each architecture. If you do not kow what version to download,m try the 64-bit version first.
2. Install the tool using the downloaded executable.
3. Run Intel Diagnostic Tool. You can startsit by clicking on the desktop icon created by the installer or by searching for it in the Windows Start menu.
4. Run the test
5. Evaluate. If all is well everything should say Pass. If you see a Fail this obiously means there are issues. It does not necessarily mean your CPU suffers from degradation, but it's not running well. So, maybe it's time to get a replacement or refund.