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Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

jeffgeerling.com

41–50 of 76 posts

Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

#41
post #21

I once bricked a motherboard with a bad flash, probably around 2012. I ended up desoldering the SPI flash and reprogramming it from another computer. Worked. In hindsight, it was quicker to do that than to go through the "front door" with the manufacturer-provided utilities.

Haha that is a sad statement on the reality of motherboard firmware!

Maybe they should just leave a JTAG header somewhere on there.

Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

#42

How does the new setup compare to your Mac Studio, after you've dialed the power limit back to 105W?

Both single core and especially multicore in Geekbench and Cinebench R23 are 10-30% faster than the Mac Studio (though using about 100-300% more power (total consumption measured at the wall).

So it'll be nice for times when I need the power, but I definitely won't let this system stay on 24x7.

Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

#43
post #29
post #9

I updated my asus mainboard recently too. It was straightforward: Copy the new firmware image into the efi partition somewhere. Reboot. Select the efi fat32 partition and the firmware blob therein in ez flash. Update. Why format an usb stick when there is already a perfectly good fat32 partition lying around?

Some BIOSes (Gigabyte, I think) will also read NTFS, so if you've got a Windows install, that's another easy option.

ASUS also supports NTFS. No need for using FAT32 (what the EFI partition is)

Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

#44
post #28

Maybe it's just that the last motherboard I got (MSI, and ... it was a newegg refurb), but the last PC I built was BY FAR the worse experience ever. - RAM: only 2 of four slots worked, couldn't install in the "optimal" bank setting, just to get it to boot. Tried with two different stick brands, which various sites said would be compatible - Ryzen 5600G needed a bios update to ... kinda ... get work. The HDMI does not…

Refurb often means previously broken and hopefully fixed; sometimes it just means returned, but the box wasn't nice enough to sell as open boxed. Looks like your board probably still had issues after refurbishment. It would probably have been better to return it when you first got it, although newegg return processing isn't always easy. It's hard to be patient, but buying parts after they've been out long enough to g…

I bought my previous motherboard refurb, and found there was a capacitor barely hanging on near the first PCIe slot—someone had probably yanked a GPU and slammed it into that spot (there was also a little damage on the retention clip still).

After a few weeks the 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port stopped working, until I resoldered that capacitor.

Then a few months later it stopped working again, as one of the motherboard traces was also damaged and I couldn't repair it. Had to use a separate network card from that point on.

I didn't return the motherboard because of the hassle... it wasn't the end of the world using a different NIC.

Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

#45
post #15
post #4

I have an ASUS motherboard and recently went through the process of updating the BIOS. One of the things worth nothing is that it is not safe to just get the latest version and try to run EZ-flash. Some of the updates will update EZ-flash as well and those become required for installing later updates. The download page actually has release notes which specify when a certain BIOS is required, but you basically have to…

Similarly, I broke idrac on a Dell sever because I did not follow the proper upgrade path. I just assumed that the latest bios was good and the server happily bricked itsefl

the newer (8+) iDRAC's are nice now that you can point them at downloads.dell.com and it will figure out the updates for you

Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

#46
post #29
post #9

I updated my asus mainboard recently too. It was straightforward: Copy the new firmware image into the efi partition somewhere. Reboot. Select the efi fat32 partition and the firmware blob therein in ez flash. Update. Why format an usb stick when there is already a perfectly good fat32 partition lying around?

Some BIOSes (Gigabyte, I think) will also read NTFS, so if you've got a Windows install, that's another easy option.

The majority of BIOSes support NTFS. Incredibly enough more BIOSes support NTFS than they do exFAT.

(Yet another example of the unfairness of the playing field for non-MS OSes).

Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

#47
post #2

Good grief The ineptitude of firmware programmers continues to astound me. Asus should upload their firmware to the LVFS https://fwupd.org/ > and make firmware updates as simple as 'fwupdmgr update'.

They have two accounts on that service, and have uploaded firmware, but the one article I can find (Phoronix) indicates in 2020 it was only for a single board. Would indeed be nice if they'd expand that out to more boards.

Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: With me using my computer, 2 x 27" QHD 144Hz monitors, my AMD GPU is using 28W, while the CPU is using 18W. (Radeon RX 6700XT 12GB, Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core) I know the Zen 4 / Ryzen 7000X use a lot more power, as they are designed to pull power and use all available thermal headroom all day!

Which number are you looking at? 18 W idle for a 5900X is very low. 30-40 W is typical for these. Your system is probably not configured correctly, is using slow RAM or you're looking at something other than package power. GPU idle power seems quite high though, but as I understand most AMD GPUs struggle with power management with more than one monitor connected (no experience here, last AMD GPU was 2012).

18w idle is rather normal for what the ryzenmaster monitoring software will report (which I believe is PPT) . On Intel for PPT you will usually measure 0-5W -- AMD idle power consumption is really bad on desktops.

Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher idle power consumption is more common on AMD CPUs (I think it's inherent to their design). I don't think intel CPUs consume nearly as much power when idle. Oddly enough, AMD GPUs also have the same problem under certain conditions (multiple monitors, or high refresh rates can result in 100w idle GPU power ) But I agree that the power consumption figures under load are a bit nuts, and intel/amd now seem to be e…

Anecdote: With me using my computer, 2 x 27" QHD 144Hz monitors, my AMD GPU is using 28W, while the CPU is using 18W. (Radeon RX 6700XT 12GB, Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core) I know the Zen 4 / Ryzen 7000X use a lot more power, as they are designed to pull power and use all available thermal headroom all day!

A 6700xt should idle at 6-7w with only one monitor. If it idles at 28w it means there is something it doesn't like about your monitors that forces it to keep the memory clocks at max. Try setting them at the same resolution, refresh rate, and depth/bpc).

Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS

#50
post #20
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently updated an MSI Z690-A to the latest BIOS in preparation for installing a 13th generation Intel. I downloaded the updated BIOS file, put it on a thumb drive, renamed it to "MSI.ROM," put the thumb drive into the "Flash BIOS" port, had the motherboard connected to ATX and CPU1 power only, no CPU, or RAM, or any other hardware installed, flipped on power, pressed the "Flash BIOS" button and everything worked…

Yeah I’ll give a +1 to MSI, their BIOS firmware updates have been nothing but smooth for me and I haven’t had to think much about which USB sticks I’ve used. I’m about 80% sure I’ve used a USB 3 stick at one point but can’t be certain

MSI is not much better than the other choices when it comes to buggy firmware. Just grep on a z690 how many AE_ALREADY_EXISTS errors you get on a fresh kernel boot ( which indicates at the very minimum a total lack of attention to detail). It did not improve on the z790 despite the fact it was widely reported to them.
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