So BIOS unlocking was successful for me, on 1.07.07.and 1.07.08
And, to continue where I left off
(maybe helpful to those who suffered a crash and can not find any SSD anymore,
or none of the SSDs sitting in one of the 3 Gen3 slots):
The minimum requirements should be POST sucessful, so EC healthy,
and BIOS still able to start up splash screen.
Here you go into BIOS holding and repeatedly pressing F2.
If you see all your SSDs listed there there is hope.
(I had 4, so all 3 PCH Gen3 slots populated plus the CPU-driven Gen4 slot)
In my case it was as simple as disable the Intel RAID driver and enable AHCI.
Exit saving defaults, and pop: I was back in business.
I don't run any RAID inside that laptop, so AHCI was completely fine for me.
Who needs to run a RAID using Intel driver got to be aware that since Version 17.x
Intel reportedly had to submit to MS to handle the rollout of their RAID drivers.
Maybe incompatibilities ?
The other cases describing instability:
I had inadvertently fried my first motherboard by using the damned Control Center and choosing silent mode.
This would fit the bill as others described: more forced C states ?
and overheating while trying to achieve the impossible: a beefy system cut off the cooling air.
During a Prime95 run it went pop, and since then not even POST would run.
Warranty repair followed.
Since then I give lots of air to both fans, at +60°C both run at 80%, and at +70C both run 100%.
since the GPU fan is the only one that can pull a tiny air stream across the 3 Gen3 SSDs
each consuming 3,3V 3A so 30W in total at full throttle,
but only barely touching the stock common tiny sheetmetal non-heatsink.
There is a chinese harware supplier who is well aware of this stock flaw,
he offers heatsinks with fins and he even sells a water cooled CPU/GPU heatsink combo.
Today 4 SSD heatpipe coolers come in (be quiet MC1 Pro)
The 3 coolers for Gen 3 slots I will have to tailor a bit to get these snug fit and toothed into place.
Well this applies only to those who will need a constant date rate while huge transfers,
but there came UHD files, and then uncompressed,
and whoops here we are, wanting to write TBs @1,6GB/s or even 3,6GB/s in one go,
that figures, and heats up so quickly the you can not hold the SSD in your hands anymore...
P.S. As I see right now, this confirms what ymsv found out from January 5th on.
