After my laptop served its life I wanted to turn it into a server, however, due to the severe power and cooling restrictions, I heavly modified the laptop to allow for more performance.
Warning
This tool is potentially dangerous and may brick your PC. Use at your OWN risk. Due to secure flash and the Matebook X Pro's flash chip being LGA, this is a runtime mod which unlocks access to all BIOS settings. The bios modifications lasts until reboot though settings are saved.
This unlock/mod uses SmokelessRuntimeEFIPatcher(SREP) which uses the SREP_Config.cfg to patch the BIOS.
SmokelessRuntimeEFIPatcher is a (unsigned) EFI binary and can be ran using any standard method.
The mod should be compatible with different BIOS versions as long as the SetupUtilityApp DXE has not changed. I have tested it with 1.30 and 1.37. Using Inysde's H20 EZE, you can compare a BIOS version to know if the DXE has changed or simply try running it.
The SREP_Config.cfg file must be in the root of the drive where SmokelessRuntimeEFIPatcher is ran from.
To boot from a USB drive:
- The USB drive must be formated in a filesystem supported by your BIOS (Fat, Fat33, exFat usually work)
- Create the folder structure below where BOOTX64.efi is the SREP binary renamed:
SREP_Config.cfg
EFI\boot\BOOTX64.efi
- Boot the USB drive
When booting into the Insyde BIOS it must determine what "forms" (the pages or submenus you see in the BIOS) to load/display. In the SetupUtilityApp DXE, you find this:
ASM
CMP BL,0x1
JNZ LAB_8000099c
LEA RDI,[OriginalMainGUID]
MOV RBX,RAX
LAB_8000099c:
LEA RDI,[CustumMainGUID]
MOV RBX,param_1 if (local_res18 == '\x01') {
pGVar9 = &OriginalMainGUID;
pcVar7 = &DAT_80002820;
}
else {
pGVar9 = &CustomMainGUID;
pcVar7 = &DAT_80002848;
}All it does it choose between using Insyde's default main page or Huawei's custom main page. By default it will always choose Huawei's custom main page. To force it to choose the default main page we can patch the jump instructon from a JNZ to a JZ. Subsequently the BIOS will then load Insyde's default main page and for unknown reasons it will also load all the other pages fully unlocking the BIOS.
This is a runtime mod, as such, it lasts until the system is rebooted, however, settings changed are saved and stay in effect. It may be possible to fully patch or swap BIOS drivers or even the CPU's microcode but I have not tried it.
Warning
This config exceeds the design characteristics of the VRM which may cause, overheating, laptop failure, fire, burns, or other damages. Use of this config is at your OWN risk. The repository owner and contributers are at not way responsible for any damages incured. This config was made with the laptop caseless and with substantial cooling upgrades for all components.
Since the BIOS can only set MSR limits not the MMIO power limits (and the CPU always chooses the lowest set limit), PowerMonkey is used to set the limits. It must be compiled with the desired settings and as such, I have only uploaded CONFIGURATION.c. Follow the instructions from PowerMonkey for more info.
Note
CONFIGURATION.c may be out of date. You should compare and combine it with the most recent version.
Like SREP it is a EFI binary and can be ran the same way, however, it does not boot the next EFI automatically. To apply the config at startup I set a EDK-2 shell (you can find pre-built binaries on google) to boot which then runs the startup.nsh script. The script runs PowerMonkey.efi and then runs grubx64.efi. The shell will find all EFI files that are in any folder within the EFI folder.
I was able to push the CPU and VRM quite far getting up to 36W (CPU Package) or 42W limit, however, it is a bit temperamental. At some points, due to unknown reasons a component sends a BD Prochot message to the CPU causing it to throttle. It's important to note that a component can send that message for any reason. I was not able to acertain the trigger for the message but I can confirm it is not temperature based. Frustratingly, as I continued to work on the BIOS mod and run tests, the limit at which the message would trigger changed to some degree. In the end I was no longer able it to run at a limit of 42W but settlest for 41W. Disable BD Prochot caused an immediare hard shutdown (underload).
Look at the README in the BIOS archive folder for more information.
For production I am running proxmox and booting to shellx64.efi (EDK-2 shell).
\
SREP_Config.cfg
EFI\
BOOT\
BOOTx64.efi
fbx64.efi
grubx64.efi
mmx64.efi
efi-shell\
shellx64.efi
startup.nsh
proxmox\
BOOTX64.csv
fbx64.efi
grub.cfg
grubx64.efi
mmx64.efi
shimx64.efi
tools\
PowerMonkey.efi
SREP.efi