I had to flash the BIOS on a Gigabyte board to support the Ryzen I bought for it. It was a crazy procedure where the CPU and RAM couldn't be installed, and like others here the only USB drive I could get to work was an ancient 4GB USB 2.0 unit. Mine was an Angry Birds novelty drive, not something I wanted to trust a firmware update to.
Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
51–60 of 76 posts
Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
#52I 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…
I also recall some IBM xservers had specific revisions to be at to flash forward.
Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
#53> tl;dr: Use an old-fashioned USB 2.0 flash drive, format it FAT32, download the firmware, make sure it's named correctly, and use the motherboard's 'BIOS Flashback' option after powering off the computer.
Also: Ensure the flash drive only has one partition. (Mine was previously a partitioned bootdrive, and formatting leaves the partitions intact!). And for good measure ensure the firmware is the only file, including hidden files. FWIW the manual does specify it must be USB 2.0 and 1+ GB (though for me it worked with a 256MB drive; the firmware was only 32MB).
Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
#54Earlier 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!
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).
The monitors are nearly identical (slightly different Acer models) but the settings are identical (same resolution, refresh rate, depth/bpc.)
VRAM clocks are 1990Mhz.
Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
#55I 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.
My ASUS motherboard has a SPI header for BIOS flashing if need be, and I suspect other motherboards do as well.
Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
No need? It's one of the major use cases for it existing.
Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
#57I 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.
Reminds me when I did something similar back around 2008. The motherboard was made by ECS and came with a "Top-Hat" -- essentially a second flash memory chip that you can snap on top of the board. No desoldering required! More details here: https://www.pcstats.com/articles/1835/3.html
Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
#58I 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.
Some motherboard makers (Gigabyte, I think?) would include a socket for the BIOS EEPROM chip, even in relatively mid-range motherboards. I thought that was really cool, but a bit strange. It makes sense on high-end overclocking motherboards where some customers might actually use it and where there's not much of a cost constraint. But it seemed a bit extravagant to spend ~$0.30 on something that almost nobody would ever use. Maybe their service department used it to fix some RMA'd motherboards more quickly.
It looks to have gone out of fashion, I can't find any modern motherboards that have it but I didn't look that hard. Probably because BIOS flashback has gotten more common and because the tall socket would interfere with all the SSD heatsinks they have now.
Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
The monitors are nearly identical (slightly different Acer models) but the settings are identical (same resolution, refresh rate, depth/bpc.) VRAM clocks are 1990Mhz.
I had a similar situation with two identical monitors except for some reason one of them was a slightly newer revision (same model!) and had an EDID that made it look as an 10bpc panel instead of 8bpc like the older revision. Setting both to 8bpc reduced the idle power consumption by 4x. If you are on windows, you may need some additional tool to be able to change the bpc (the AMD control panel applet works too).
Re: Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
#60I also had some trouble with BIOS flashing on my Gigabyte X670 motherboard. I can't remember the specifics but at one point my display output stopped working so I tried to update with BIOS flashback since the update was supposed to improve memory stability. The first attempt failed. The flashback light stopped and I waited several minutes. A second flashback attempt worked. Pretty nerve-racking because they tell you to never ever ever interrupt the flashing process.
The X670 platform was a bit under-baked, in my opinion. There were a lot of strange issues, especially with memory reliability. It took until a BIOS update in January for me to be able to reliably run at DDR5-6000 CL30 with a memory kit that was on the QVL and was marketed as EXPO AMD Compatible. Yes, it's AMD's first iteration with a new socket and DDR5 but meanwhile Intel has been running reliably at DDR5 7200, and AMD still can't do that. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth especially when $250 is now "low-end" for AMD motherboards.