Flashing Bios - Myths??

[Nitefly]

Hi there - I'm contemplating flashing my bios before I commence a new build. I apologise in advance my for noobish post.

Looking on forums / YouTube there seems to be an army of people suggesting that flashing without a CPU either didn't work or borked their MB completely... so I'm a little nervous.

The points that I keep coming across are as follows: the USB drive has to be FAT32, 2.0 and as small as possible. Another one is that the USB much be MBR... I'm not really sure what that means :s

FAT32 seems to be mandatory but the others I'm not so sure. I only have a Mac so formatting the USB to FAT32 is possible but maybe it's worth waiting until I've after built the PC to avoid completely nuking the MB by accident before installing the CPU.

Any thoughts on the above 'myths'?

EDIT - my USB 2.0 is 4gb.... is that too big?

 

[Begbie]

By flashing, do you mean updating?

Last time I done it, I installed on USB and the Bios software just done it for me. Didn't think about anything, it's very easy compared to yesteryear.

 

[Nitefly]

By flashing, do you mean updating?

Last time I done it, I installed on USB and the Bios software just done it for me. Didn't think about anything, it's very easy compared to yesteryear.

I probably do mean ‘updating’ yes... I suspect I’m confusing terminology with the old colloquial use of ‘flash usb’.

 

[cuke2u]

No you were using the correct term, even mother board manufacturer's use 'flash' https://www.google.com/search?q=fla...l4j0i395l3.7229j1j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[jwsg]

I tried Qflash+ with a B550i AX and although there was a little activity on the USB stick LED the Qflash+ m/b LED never started. This was with a range of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 drives in size from 1GB to 32GB. There is no harm in trying - it would be clear from the m/b LED that the process has started even if the USB drive has no LED and the PSU has fan stop.

The drive normally needs to be formatted FAT32 MBR but this ought to be default when formatting a drive of that size. More people have success with USB 2.0 drives of less than 16GB but Qflash+ success is too random to be classed as a useful m/b feature.

Fortunately my 5800x POSTed with the installed F3 even though it doesnt officially support zen 3 and from the BIOS it was then easy to flash using conventional Qflash from one of the drives.

 

[Nitefly]

Many thanks for the replies.

I tried Qflash+ with a B550i AX and although there was a little activity on the USB stick LED the Qflash+ m/b LED never started. This was with a range of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 drives in size from 1GB to 32GB. There is no harm in trying - it would be clear from the m/b LED that the process has started even if the USB drive has no LED and the PSU has fan stop.

The drive normally needs to be formatted FAT32 MBR but this ought to be default when formatting a drive of that size. More people have success with USB 2.0 drives of less than 16GB but Qflash+ success is too random to be classed as a useful m/b feature.

Fortunately my 5800x POSTed with the installed F3 even though it doesnt officially support zen 3 and from the BIOS it was then easy to flash using conventional Qflash from one of the drives.

If I format a usb to FAT32 on a Mac using simple Mac terminal commands, would this be in “MBR”? I find this a bit confusing and it’s really hard to google for an answer as it brings up so many irrelevant results.

 

[Purgatory]

You can flash the BIOS with the cpu in or not, makes no difference if flashing with the flash button on the back of the motherboard. If you have any issues just remove the ram and try again if the cpu is installed. Just plug in the power for cpu and the motherboard even if no cpu installed plug the 8pin cpu power cable in.

Yes you need to format to FAT32 and extract the bios file from the zip and stick it on your formatted USB stick in the root. The motherboard will start updating and the flash button should be flashing, after it is done it will restart the pc.

For any reason it won't flash it means it doesn't like the format of the usb stick or the stick itself. So have a few sticks ready in case that happens. The button at the back for flashing can unbrick boards thats the whole point of it. Anyone bricking their board is not using it right and unbricking it correctly. Also does your motherboard have dual BIOS ?

MBR is just a standard format so yes the mac will do that when you format to fat32. EFI format will show a EFI folder on the stick.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

You can flash the BIOS with the cpu in or not, makes no difference if flashing with the flash button on the back of the motherboard

Out of interest there is a small difference on my board - the manual says if you flash using Qflash button without a CPU installed it’ll only update the primary bios, if you do it with a CPU installed it’ll then go on to flash the secondary bios too.

 

[Purgatory]

Out of interest there is a small difference on my board - the manual says if you flash using Qflash button without a CPU installed it’ll only update the primary bios, if you do it with a CPU installed it’ll then go on to flash the secondary bios too.

I'm guessing not an MSI board then ?

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Gigabyte

 

[Jamin280672]

Gigabyte

If you have access to the bios, or your system is currently working fine and you just want to update the bios to the latest, then use qflash, the feature built into the bios itself, there will be a tick box giving you the option to update the backup bios, download the correct bios onto a USB stick, and plug it into any usb port on the back of the motherboard, enter the bios, select qflash and then select the bios file, leave it to do its thing.

Bios flashback as it's properly known, where you plug a usb stick into a specific usb port and press a button on the back of the board is really for people who have installed an incompatible CPU and need to update the bios to get it to work or as someone else said, bricked there board.

this is what I had to do with a board I brought as used and put a Ryzen 5000 CPU into, it didn't work out of the box, so had to use bios flashback to get it to work, I used a 16gb usb stick, just formatted normally to fat32 in Windows on another machine, I didn't do anything special or confusing, and the system was fully assembled, everything was connected, CPU, ram, GPU etc, plugged in the usb stick, pressed the button and left it alone for 10 mins, it did everything for me, and then posted itself.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

If you have access to the bios, or your system is currently working fine and you just want to update the bios to the latest, then use qflash, the feature built into the bios itself, there will be a tick box giving you the option to update the backup bios, download the correct bios onto a USB stick, and plug it into any usb port on the back of the motherboard, enter the bios, select qflash and then select the bios file, leave it to do its thing.

Bios flashback as it's properly known, where you plug a usb stick into a specific usb port and press a button on the back of the board is really for people who have installed an incompatible CPU and need to update the bios to get it to work or as someone else said, bricked there board.

this is what I had to do with a board I brought as used and put a Ryzen 5000 CPU into, it didn't work out of the box, so had to use bios flashback to get it to work, I used a 16gb usb stick, just formatted normally to fat32 in Windows on another machine, I didn't do anything special or confusing, and the system was fully assembled, everything was connected, CPU, ram, GPU etc, plugged in the usb stick, pressed the button and left it alone for 10 mins, it did everything for me, and then posted itself.

Yes I know, I was having CPU internal error codes after a CPU swap on boot (on both the new and old CPU!) and couldn't get into BIOS when I did it. Flashing was part of my troubleshooting, and the inability to progress past the error code necessitated a flashback.

Anyway, my point wasn't about what is the best way to do it, just addressing the point that it's not necessarily completely irrelevant whether you have a CPU etc installed or not, as on my board for example it does change how the QFlash button on the board works.

 

[Alternateline]

What if you don’t have the bios flashback button?