Support for HUANANZHI X99 PD4?

[LimesKey]

I bought this motherboard from AliExpress and I'm wondering if it will work for this.

https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DlFODNb

[miyconst]

This X99-PD4 looks to be be another revision of X99-QD4. There is no guarantee before testing but very likely that it's compatible with the X99-QD4 BIOS.

[wberube]

Hi Kostiantyn, I am a great fan of your content, really pleased to contribute if this can be of any help! I can notice one thing right out of the box on this board, there is a PLL clock generator IC right beside the cell battery holder, showing they are using a chipset series that doesn't generate its own bus frequency.

I don't know about the pool of used chipsets manufacturers have their hands on in China as we speak, but this would lead to a H55/P55 or HM55 PCH because 1st gen Intel were still depending on these, this seems like a pretty recent change to me. I have just bought an unbranded X99-8D3 mobo+CPU+RAM kit but haven't received it just yet so I cannot correlate on the BIOS compatibility.

I hadn't had much luck tweaking the BCLK in the past with Z series chipset since the Management Engine is generally unusable on Chinese X99 motherboards, hopefully I can abuse this feature with SetFSB/lfsb or anything based off the WinRing0 driver and gain a little more performance from lower-end Xeons and cheap DDR3 sticks that are hanging around at home,

[miyconst]

@wberube thanks a lot for the info, that sounds interesting! Could you please make some high-resolution pictures and specify the chip's marking (if there is any) so I can ask competent people for input as my knowledge in motherboard schematics is rather limited.

[wberube]

@miyconst The one I bought reminds me of this one from a brand I haven't heard of before, ZSUS, and I found a picture that was quite clear. The PLL clock generator has the part number 932SQ420D, here's a datasheet that matches it.

[miyconst]

@wberube thank you for the info. I talked to a PCB engineer and he says that this 932SQ420D chip:

• Has nothing to do with the CPU base frequency (FSB).
• It is installed to reduce latency and improve signaling on the PCI-E X16 slot.
• It is used due to horrendous quality of PCB that loses PCI-E signal.
• The PCB quality is so bad because Chinese are too greedy to use thick quality copper traces.

[wberube]

@miyconst Oh, that's good to know... I guess you must always keep your expectations low at such a price point! Thank you very much for the insight!

[wberube]

@miyconst I have a feeling there is more to this story looking back at the connectivity. Every Sandy Bridge chipsets but H61 had SATA III and Ivy Bridge ones had USB 3.0. But X99-PD4 and the one I have purchased don't have back USB 3.0 ports, neither is there an ASMedia bridge to fulfill its support. Some sellers on eBay only report USB 2.0 speeds on similar boards so maybe the FUSB3 connector is partially wired to allow the use of front USB headers on newer computer cases.

I also wanted to confirm the fact that CK505 clock generators got eliminated around the time 2nd gen Intel Core CPUs came out. I haven't been able to pinpoint the internal document that reveals this but I did find these leaked pictures that do. They still can be used as we've seen in some Alder Lake boards, but they are not essential as they did on Intel 5 series chipsets.

If the chip really does what it is supposed to do, I suppose by looking at the datasheet, specifically the section that covers the register at byte 6 that it must be compatible with lfsb and most possibly one of the old freeware versions of SetFSB. In theory, this wouldn't have changed a thing on boards with 8- and 9-series that support BCLK overclock IF we could communicate with the HECI interface.

I am particularly interested because the sellers like bundling them with chips affordable but that perform poorly in single-threaded operations like the 12-core E5-2676 v3 (2.4GHz base, 3.0GHz 1C turbo) that could benefit from a little uplift.