MSI and Asus release first Intel stability fix for a variety of motherboards that have 0x129 Microcode BIOS

Many PC gamers are waiting with bated breathe for a non-bandaid solution to Intel's 13th and 14th Gen instabilities. After months of reported issues, investigations, workarounds and Intel's own investigation, Intel finally announced in July that it had cracked the problem and would be releasing a BIOS Microcode Fix by mid-August. The first of these fixes are now being rolled out by MSI and Asus.

MSI reports it will release BIOS updates for Intel 600 and 700 series motherboards that include a 0x129 update to "mitigate instability."

There are also apparent 0x129 bios updates on the Asus RoG forum that Asus motherboard owners can download. However, these updates haven't been pushed out to official support pages yet like some MSI updates.

The previous interim 0x125 microcode updates that motherboard vendors released messed around with voltages and eTVB settings (enhanced thermal Velocity Boost), to keep things running safely until a root cause fix could be delivered. It would appear that this latest 0x129 update is meant to be the root-cause solution.

Here is the "first batch" (or first batch) of motherboards that MSI has released the latest BIOS for:

• MEG Z790 MAX GODLIKE
• MEG Z790 Ace MAX
• MPG Z790 CARBO MAX WIFI II
• MPG Z790 CARBON Wifi
• MAG Z790 MAX TOMAHAWK WIFI
• Z790MPOWER

Do not worry if your motherboard isn't listed. MSI has announced that all 600 and 700 series motherboards will receive a BIOS update by the end of August.

Visit the official msi.com site and click on Support -> Downloads -> Firmware/BIOS.

I cannot confirm what this microcode update actually does, but I can say that it fixes the "elevated operation voltage" which is the root cause of instability issues. We will be testing the 0x129 update and will let you all know what it does to the latest high-end Intel processors as soon we are done.