MSI has confirmed that it is working on a BIOS patch that will address the recently-revealed Skylake crashing erratum, releasing a beta version today for its Z170A Xpower Gaming Titanium and Z170A Gaming M7 motherboards.
The flaw in Intel's latest Skylake architecture was discovered late last year by Mersenne prime hunters who found that Prime95 would reproducibly crash when performing long-running computationally-intensive calculations - in other words, its standard operating mode. Having confirmed that only Skylake parts were affected, Intel was contacted and issued a statement
confirming the problem earlier this month. It has, thankfully, already figured out how to work around the flaw, but the issue - baked as it is into the hardware itself - won't be resolved until motherboard manufactures have integrated the flaw into BIOS updates which are then issued to customers.
MSI is just one such manufacturer, and for anyone who has built a Skylake rig around one of its Z170 motherboards there's good news: the fix is in progress and will be released as soon as possible. For those using the MSI Z170A Xpower Gaming Titanium and Z170A Gaming M7, the news is even better: beta-status BIOS files are already available which include Intel's fix for the erratum, preventing the systems from hanging under heavy workloads. Naturally, as the updates are beta-status, they should only be used by technically-proficient types who don't mind the occasional sharp edge - and if that describes you, the files are available now from
MSI's OneDrive account and will be appearing on the company's website shortly.
Those with other MSI motherboards or boards from other manufacturers are advised to either wait for the appearance of a new BIOS release compatible with their boards or to contact the relevant support department to enquire as to an ETA.
