Offical Coffee Lake Refresh Upgrade Guide For MS-16L1/L3 (Eurocom Tornado F5) & MS-1T11 Vortex PC

DISCLAIMER: This mod is NOT officially supported on the MSI 16L1/16L13 laptop and MSI 1T11 Vortex, YOU assume all the risk and liability by attempting this on your own laptop. This thread was created merely to show how I completed the MOD on my own laptop successfully.

PLEASE NOTE: i9 processors are NOT supported sadly as these laptops as well as several other clevos are limited to 12 THREADS ONLY. A 16 thread i9 9900k or any other i9 16 thread variant WILL NOT WORK in the above stated computers you will be stuck on the bios splash screen!

Also remember: The CPU mod only works on skylake, kabylake and coffee lake/refresh CPU's as of now, future cannon lake CPU's MAY be supported with an updated BIOS mod.

The modified BIOS has been included!

Things you WILL need:
A USB stick, preferably formatted to fat32, to flash bios firmware
A SPI flasher with BIOS 8 pin clip (pomona clip) just in case BIOS cannot be flashed through firmware update due to 'fpt error message'
The BIOS of course, choose the one compatible with your model, you may have the msi 16l1 or msi 16l13 laptop or the msi 1T11 vortex mini pc you can check on the back of the laptop/mini pc or in dxdiag in windows to view the model name.
A coffee lake refresh CPU, preferably a tested one, such as an i5 9600k or i7 9700k, although all coffee lake refresh cpu's in hindsight SHOULD work EXCEPT FOR ALL i9 VARIANTS as all microcodes have been added for pentium, i3, i5 and i7 coffee lake refresh cpu's.

BEFORE YOU START​

Make a backup of your bios, or have a backup ready just in case anything goes wrong.
Make sure you have a SPI flash programmer handy, you may not need it but it is always useful to have if you brick the laptop bios.
Make sure you DO NOT UPDATE your Intel management engine firmware at all, this will block coffee lake CPU recognition!

THE PROCESS​

You will first need to try and flash the bios through the USB method as listed below:

1) Enter BIOS , and press Right Ctrl->Right Shift->Left Alt->F2 to unlock options.
2) Change 4 values
a) Security->Secure Boot->Attempt Secure Boot->Disabled
b) Advanced->PCH-IO Configuration->Security Configuration->BIOS Lock->Disabled
c) Advanced->PCH-FW Configuration->ME State->Disabled
d) Boot->Boot mode select->UEFI
3) Unplug all your SSD and HDD
4) Put EFI folder to your FAT32 USB Flash Disk , put bios file to EFI/Boot folder , and boot to it
5) Wait for startup.nsh executes, and then type "open", press enter.
6) Shutdown and wait 3 seconds , then boot to USB Flash Disk again.
7) Wait for startup.nsh execute, and then type "fpt -d backup.bin" , press enter to backup .
8) Type "fpt -f BIOS.bin -rewrite -y" , press enter to flash new bios .
9) Type "fpt -greset" press enter to let ME and BIOS install.

If you cannot do this (you keep receiving fpt error message), try the SPI programmer , make sure to backup before you flash.

If the above method DOES NOT work you will need to use the SPI flash programmer, I used a SkyPro specifically but any bios programmer should work, just remember to note down the details of your bios chip so they can be entered into the flashing software as shown below:
Please note: Your BIOS chip details will be different to the ones shown below!



You will need to find the location of the BIOS chip which is marked by a 'red' dot as shown in the image below, put the clip on the bios chip, the first red wire on the 8 pin clip should face the small embedded circle you can see on the chip:
Please note: The 'embedded' circle is NOT the red dot!




Now all you have to do is open the bios file from the EXTRACTED .7z folder and flash it, click on 'auto' as it does the whole process manually including erasing, writing and verifying.

And that's it for the software!

Time for the pin mod:

This is practically very simple to do and I will show a diagram of it here, you need to isolate two pins as shown below:





You can isolate these 2 contact pins using kapton tape, or any tape for that matter, just DO NOT COVER ANY OTHER PINS. I accidentally did that and got many bsods on load!

The reason we do not need to SHORT the two pins at the top is because we have already injected the bios and microcode into the motherboard, therefore the coffee lake cpu should be recognized just fine!

And that is it! You can now carefully put the processor into the socket, put the heatsink back on and watch as the computer boots with it's beastly new coffee lake cpu installed.

BENCHMARKS​

Benchmarks coming soon!

WHICH PROCESSOR SHOULD I BUY?​

Personally I only see two processors that are viable for this coffee lake refresh mod in the first place.
Those processors being the i5-9600K and i7-9700K.
The i5 has 6 cores and 6 threads whilst the i7 has 6 cores and 12 threads.

Advantages of the i5-9600K over the i5-8600K:
Literally 5 to 10% faster, I strongly recommend buying the i5 8600k and delidding unless you really want a soldered IHS and slightly higher base clock speeds!

Advantages of the i7-9700K over the i7 8700k (note the 9700k is the successor of the 8700k):
The processor has 8 'true' cores compared to 6 cores + 12 threads, can lead to overall better performance, especially in rendering and benchmarks (most people agree that a 9700k is slightly faster in most multi-core workloads than an i7 8700k).
Games run slightly better on the i7 1-5fps difference in most games, hyper-threading isn't utilised well.
Comes soldered, the coffee lake cpu's do not have this feature!
One of the best intel cpu's you can use right now, if you are an enthusiast this is the option for you!

Hope this can help you decide which CPU to buy!

LINK & CREDIT GIVEN​

Coffee Lake Refresh Bios is available here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1stpae3UChJe8rTuZICz7weA7jBeFW5W4

Credit is due to @dsanke for providing the BIOS, donate to him via PayPal, he worked hard to make a fully functioning bios for us: [email protected]

If you want to donate to me feel free, more BIOS mods coming in the near future :

http://paypal.me/ZeeshanAkhlaq

 

All ES coffee lake refresh processors are supported as the microcodes have been added to the new bios thanks @dsanke

i9 processors will still not work though!

 

Will this work for the Vortex G65 ?

 

Yes that is essentially the ms-1T11

 

Sweeeeet. So the Vortex can essentially go up to an i7-9700K ? And just required to do softmod?

 

Yep, if you do the mod please share some screenshots. It would be very useful for the thread

 

No problem. I have to get the cpu first. I have to see if I can get it for cheap. Hunting fleaBay lol

 

i5 6600k работает с этим биосом (16L1 прошивается через флешку)

 

I wish I could of had an 8700k in my Lenovo y910 all in one. Quite possibly the best all in ones I have ever owned, desktop gpu and cpu not to mention an 80 plus platinum rated psu.

Also I thought the vortex came with as a default option with i5 6600k?

 

Excellent write up @DaMafiaGamer !! Very useful for those looking to upgrade to Coffee Lake or Refresh 9th gen. The 9700K with a soldered CPU is an excellent pairing with this beast.

@dsanke Thanks again for your continued help and support.

 

Awesome project!

 

I’m still waiting around to find a good deal on a 9700K to start the project for my Vortex lol... the market is still expensive still for that model.

 

When modding the F5 bios to support Coffee lake, and so on, we notice a few things, for starters your bioses are all broken still. But not unfixable.

As a project someone wanted an F5 with a 8700K from me so we recently went down this path not too long ago ourselves. With our delidding and such, thermals were great, we got no higher then mid 70's when running cinebench and usually like 45-55C on the CPU when running synthetic benches like firestrike etc.

Anyways, until you catch the thing we caught in your bios, people won't be able to use it, but I commend your effort, and good luck on it. The F5's we sell with similar support added have really opened our eyes to what we should be doing next (thus why we are trying to address fixes for clevo rather then sell modded F5's)

And incase anyone thinks otherwise, we only started and used the stock bios, we didn't use anyone else's work. We can offer it, but we don't, or we have not decided what to do with it.

So just saying this laptop can still throw more punch then a P775 for example, when done right, but it's all aftermarket upgrades, but maybe we can help the Clevo's too.

Even managed to fix some GPU related issues, but I don't have many links I can share, as the customer didn't really ask me to take notes nor did I ask to share everything, but as an example here is a firestrike, though with only a 8700 CPU and stock, it's not exactly the end setup, but you can see our 1070 beats a 1080 now too, and temps are great, but in this bench we didn't even hit full usage.

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/18779163

that's how things go, so while the merit of this sort of bios upgrade is great, we have a few people working on it to perfect it, and I advise people who are looking into this persons bios he is offering, to be warned he seems to be missing some things that might not only possible brick your system in the end, but if not, all your devices will not work. So I urge caution, until he at the least presents he has fixed the issue ( and he is a well known bios modder so he most likely will fix it in the end, he is not some newb), or get your upgraded bios from somewhere or someone who has figured it out, or do it yourself if your the next thing.,

 

This is the exact reason why I tell people to keep a sky pro handy just in case things get messy. Side note, no one has yet complained of any major issues with this bios, my friends and @dsanke being a few of them.

And yes the tornado f5 is such a capable device, with the right modifications this beast could handle a 9900k too. Just shows that things were made right since the beginning (overkill VRMs, amazing cooling etc) these things come in handy later on. I fully believe this machine is better than any other 15’’ Clevo laptop, main reason being the keyboard, sound quality and design. (If only the fans could be part of the advantages)...

Thanks for your info +rep

 

@DaMafiaGamer Have you heard of anyone that has successfully ran an i7-9700k? I had purchased a 9900k when they first came out and planned on testing it in the F5, but held off and looks like that was a smart decision. I am on the fence now if purchasing an 8086k vs the 9700k and really want the 9700k, but haven't seen anyone pop one in the F5 yet. Do you think the thermals will be able to handle it with stock clocks?

 

This laptop will successfully run a 9700k and I advise you stay with it too. The 9700k has very good thermals, no need to delid due to soldered ihs, it has 8 true cores which beat out a 8086k’s 6 cores and 12 threads.
2 more cores vs 4 more threads = cores out muscle the threads.
More power efficiency too due to no hyperthreading and newer architecture.
The 9700k is always going to be better than the 8086k which is more of an overclocked 8700k.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14128/intel-readies-new-stepping-of-9th-gen-core-processors

 

The bioses have been updated, some fixes have been made.

'TF' in the bios stands for Terrance-force laptops, basically the equivalent to our normal MSI/Eurocom laptops but with a chinese rebrand.

 

Tell me, what corrections were made? What has been fixed? I have already managed to put the previously exposed BIOS from 02/10/2019. Is it worth it to upgrade to the BIOS version of 04/14/2019? I have not bought all the necessary components for my laptop MS 16L1 so I did not have time to check how the laptop works.

 

Power limits have been optimised to stop crashes and potentially bricking these systems. It’s probably a good idea flashing this bios.

 

Agreed, it's there to make user experience better and more enjoyable.

 

Thank you very much for your time and effort that went into making this.
I have just installed the MSI GT62VR variant on my Tornado F5 and it was a really simple and smooth process
Now I just have to decide on which CPU to get, as I am still running my 6700K, which seems to be on the awful side of the silicon lottery.
(It manages 4.2 GHz on all cores in non-AVX conditions with a voltage of only 1.25 V)

 

Just to be perfectly sure the XOTIC G63 VALKYRIE 1070 is MS_16L3_GT62VR.rom correct ?

 

I don't have much thermal headroom but here's some 9700k results.

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/38988773

 

The old thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...de-guide-msi-16l13-eurocom-tornado-f5.821651/

link to the the BIOS is down but I am assuming that even if I wanted to upgrade my F5 to an 8 series CPU that the BIOS in this thread will still work?

Also, the pics in the old thread are also down but can I assume that the pin mod picture is the same between the 8 series thread and this 9 series thread? IE. the kapton cape would go on the locations marked in the pic in this thread on my 8086k?

Thanks!

 

Got a secondhand 9600k and here's some results on stock settings prime95 with AVX off (with AVX on it power limits to 95W)

 

Hey there,

I have recently started to wonder what microcode is actually in this BIOS.
So in case anyone else is wondering that as well, I would like to share my results

You can find the tools I used in this forum: Microcode Modding @ Win-Raid
After extracting the Microcode file with UEFITool, I had MC Extractor analyze it and got the following information:


To look up the CPUIDs you can either use a website like CPU-World or consult one of the many Guides Intel provided.
For example, I have used this one: Intel's Microcode Revision Guide (August 2019)

Cheers

 

Great work guys!!! Thank you!!!

I updated the bios several days ago and now have the TF logo All great but I miss all the unlocked options in the bios to control the CPU/RAM etc..
Is it just me or these "advanced" options are not available in this BIOS? The only options to overclock the CPU is ThrottleStop or the XTU?. Before that I was using custom unlocked bios from SVET for 3+ years.
Just played with my 7700k yesterday … waiting for 9700k and custom water loop.
The issue is voltages are totally off when set in ThrottleStop. I remember I had this issue before and set the settings directly in BIOS according to Mr. Fox's guide.
For example I followed one of his TrottleStop guides. Set everything as he suggests. Set Voltage to 1.200 and multi to 49 … runs all benchmarks ok and goes to 1.222V according to TS and HWInfo but then when idle it goes to 1.4V+ and emits a lot of heat.

Edit:
9700К arrived but it won't boot. I think the pins are properly isolated (check photo). Any suggestions apart from non-working CPU?

I installed the MS-16L1_TF_S5.rom
Should I have installed the MS-16L1_GT62VR.rom

 

Ok officially bricked my bios with the MS-16L1_GT62VR.rom
Waiting for CH341 to debug
@DaMafiaGamer please advise which is the correct bios for Tornado F5 and how can I make the 9700k work (eventually these days will test it on a z390 motherboard)

 

What colour is the motherboard pcb in your tornado f5?

Is it green or black?

 

Green.

 

You will need to use a programmer to flash the bios chip now, please flash this bios file: MS-16L1_GT62VR.rom

The TS one is not for our eurocom models only for the China ones. Although it shouldn’t make a difference. I believe that your 9700k maybe having trouble working as that is what I ran in my f5 a year and a half ago.

Have you got any bios programmer at hand?

 

Waiting for the programmer to come. Guess I should have waited, but I became impatient.
I have one back home and have used it many times, but moved to another country.

Interesting enough this is the last rom I flashed... It seemed successful
MS-16L1_GT62VR.rom

The TS bios worked well with my 7700k apart from missing most options.

 

Hmm strange, check cpu pins also if the programmer flash doesn’t work...

 

OK, turned out to be RAM issue. The 9700K works perfect in the laptop now.
Now only one of my Ram sticks (16gb@3200mhz|CL22|1.2v) works in only one of the ram slots (Slots 3/4 not tested).
However I still do not have any advanced settings in the BIOS.

Could the reason be that I did not remove my SATA HDD and NVME during the BIOS update?

 

At this point I’d ask @dsanke but I believe this has something to do with the bios not being flashed properly.

 

Hi guys, do you know Pentium G5600F need to isolate the pins for Coffeemode? I read information that revision B0 (906EB) to which it belongs does not require isolate

 

@dsanke can you help me, i will pay you if it's needed, i've a tornado f5 with custom bios by eurocom, if i send you the rom extracted with a spi flash, can you unlock the coffe lake and es cpu's... contact me in dm

 

You can do it on your own pretty easy, let me know and ill let you know how if still relevant.

 

[QUOTE = "Yevgeny Stalinsky, post: 11080362, member: 702083"] Puoi farlo da solo abbastanza facilmente, fammelo sapere e ti farò sapere come se fosse ancora pertinente. [/ QUOTE]
i am talking with @DaMafiaGamer on whatsapp about that a lot of time ago, dsanke is still work on that, if you want contact me in dm i will send you the bios

 

I read on a Chinese social forum that someone has successfully used 16 threads on both MS-16L1 MS-16L3 models, does anyone have the two bios files?