BIOS updates for motherboards and mini-PCs aren't generally important enough to warrant explicit coverage. However,Intel's latest release for the Skylake NUCs (the Core i3 and Core i5 versions - NUC6i3SYK, NUC6i3SYH, or NUC6i5SYK and NUC6i5SYH) deserves special mention for a number of fixes that have been made.
Intel's launch of the Skylake NUCs was quite muted,with review units making it to the press a few months after market availability. In the meanwhile, consumers were beset with problems ranging from memory incompatibility issues and Wi-Fi flakiness to unexplained BSODs. We encountered a bunch of these in our own review, and went to the extent of recommending the unit only if the reader wanted to be a beta-tester for Intel.
Fortunately,Intel has been tough at work to get to the bottom of all the reported problems. The final two BIOS releases (0042 and 004) have solved a number of serious issues, including, and but not restricted to:Improved electrical overstress protection in the voltage regulator circuitry - this was the reason for BSODs with WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR reports. Changed default value for Round Trip Latency to Enabled - this was the reason for incompatibility with some memory modules fabricated by SKHynix. Improved BIOS update function to disable keyboard and power button during flash/recovery process - this could have helped me in avoiding the bricking of our first review sample of the NUC6i5SYK. Fixed issue where Wi-Fi access point occasionally drops out during warm boot - this solves the peculiar case of the missing 5GHz SSID upon restarting the NUC
Changed FITC setting,OPI Link Speed to GT4 - this is the performance fix for PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDs
If you are facing issues with a Skylake NUC, updating to BIOS v0044 should resolve nearly all of the problems. Readers curious approximately the OPI link speed and its effect on the performance and power consumption characteristics of a Skylake-U system can peruse our detailed coverage posted final week. [http://dynamic1.anandtech.com/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=24&cb=359082647&n=a1f2f01f]
Source: anandtech.com