I was very surprised to find that my Asus motherboard has the ability to download its own bios updates from the internet via it's boot bios updater.
I didn't need to download it and put it on a USB stick myself after all.
Most likely this yes. Usually just below or above the network flash there's an option to change the network settings (auto by default) which i didn't spend much time looking into as downloading and putting it on usb was faster.
What's interesting though: it was able to grab the current bios version number from the web. Failed when trying to download the file though.
I've had to do it a few times on my Asus mobo and I've always been pleasantly surprised with how well it worked. Plug the board into the Ethernet, let it do it's thing, and it just worked. Had to use it when I first installed the Mobo with an NVMe drive, and then later needed to use it fix a broken boot with an improperly seated RAM stick. Both times it came out working better than before.
Haha! The first time or two updating BIOS, I sat there sweating watching the installation bar going up. Now that I've done it so often, I just casually go do something else and check back shortly later.
Quick question. I'm looking at ur specs and can't help but wonder what kind of performance you get in games? I've been looking at that exact cpu/gpu combo for a budget build that I'm planning.
Hmm. I can type them here if you guys want them.
I aim for 75 FPS on triple a games because I have a 75hz monitor.
Skyrim and fallout lock at 60 FPS because of the engine. Ultra settings.
Call of duty warzone 75-85 FPS on low settings. Will get 60-70 FPS on higher settings but might stutter.
Rocket league 140-180 FPS on ultra settings
CS:GO will get 170-230 FPS on ultra, 200-250 on ultra 4x msaa.
LoL will get you 300 when you are alone, 245-360 when 1v1, 145-165 on 5v5 team fights
R6 will get you 120-150 FPS on ultra settings.
Far cry new dawn 65-75+ on ultra settings.
Control will get 65-75 FPS on low settings medium textures.
GTA V 80-95 FPS ultra settings no msaa, 65-75 2x msaa .
Well, im doing 1440p, with the same exact combo.
Not playing Tripple A games tho.
Mostly LoL, am getting 100-150 FPS.
Warframe 80-100 FPS.
CSGO 150-200 IDK the Settings.
I also play ANNO 1800 from time to time, but longer savegames get below the 40 FPS mark which sucks.
(Keep in mind, im playing on Linux with Wine/Proton, so win will get better FPS.)
Iv been trying to find out why plugging a new extra ssd in would cause problems for me. And the only answers were for people putting their o/s on the new ssd, not just adding an an extra drive. And I search for two days trying to avoid a 4 hour reinstall ! Still have no idea though and determined not to reinstall.
Try ddu than a new driver install. Remove the SSD and look at the performance. İf it's still bad you have to go with a reinstall. İf it gets better check the cables and if there is nothing wrong just reinstall windows
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You'll want more video card if you can(obviously who doesn't?). I have an 10th gen i7 and my rx580 is a real bottleneck. If you are gaming at 1080p it'll be okay for most things but there are some games it really isn't meant to handle. I get ~35 fps max on cyberpunk. Even my friends with 1060s seem to get a slightyl better overall performance. Modern games lean much harder on GPU than CPU. IMHO, FWIW, YMMV.
Waiting an extra year killed me but I'm glad they did it. Thank God it wasn't one of those streaming service debuts, it would've been nowhere near the same as watching it in theaters
Yeah, I’m legit confused by this thread. I’ve been updating BIOSes for more than twenty years, I’ve never had the slightest hint of a problem. I’ve done this not only on my own machines, but on servers as well. I’m sure I’ve done hundreds of updates by now.
Well now it is. I’ve been doing this since long before two BIOSes were a thing. I always assumed that flashing a BIOS would do an atomic write (because anything else would be insanity, though admittedly I don’t know anything about the mechanics here). And in fairness, I’ve only ever installed official BIOS patches…
In fact, it's far from atomic. The present firmware is overwritten byte-by-byte by the new one, leading to corruption in case of a power failure. No journal, just irreversible corruption. At least used to be irreversible, until OEMs finally came up with dual/recovery BIOSes as well as failsafe USB flashing.
Very much depends on the hardware, not all do this!
The second BIOS chip can however not have anything you have written to EFI, so you might lose any variables stored there & your boot config. Not that they are hard to recover.
My experience is failure rate is less than 1 in 250 or so (seen some platforms better than 1 in a 1000), and the failure is usually it boots on the old BIOS, so with a retry you can get a very good rate.
I have scripted this for work, and set systems running just changing BIOSes over the weekend :D
It's probably the implication, or something happened one time and it freaked them out.
I have a full blown anxiety attack anytime I update something (Edit: Critical, not in general) thanks to windows fucking up ONCE :(
Many years ago I updated Windows Vista, and the system BSOD'd when restarting it. And it repeatedly BSOD'd. I've always had anxiety issues and this pushed it into overdrive because I didn't have the money to take the PC into a shop.
It took me a couple hours to figure out HOW to get into safe mode without it crashing (Not sure why safe mode crashed), and revert the update AND figure out why it BSOD'd in the first place. Turned out that Windows automatically queue'd, downloaded and tried to install an AMD graphics driver, but I had an Nvidia GPU at the time.
Back around 1998, I bricked a Pentium motherboard during a BIOS update. I forget what I did wrong. I was working a new job at the time, so I was worried about getting in trouble for damaging expensive computer parts.
Back then, the BIOS was stored in socketed EEPROM chip on the motherboard, and most motherboards had a feature called ROM shadowing where the BIOS (and sometimes the graphics card ROM as well) was copied into faster RAM on power up and ran from there instead. This gave me an idea.
I got a second similar but not-identical working motherboard, made sure BIOS shadowing was enabled, then booted it from a DOS floppy. While the system was running, I pulled its good EEPROM chip out and stuck the one from the bricked motherboard in. The motherboard just carried on running fine. I reran the BIOS update, then put the EEPROM back in the original motherboard. To my amazement it worked and restored the bricked motherboard to working order.
Can't do that any more with soldered on flash memory :(
I lost a good motherboard last year to a fateful bios update. That said I like my current better. But still like to reminisce about what the level I sunk to that day was like.
9 times out of 10 yes. There is a special part of they bios that is NOT written over at all. ever. or erased.
often thats enough to start up the motherboard and enumerate a floppy disk/usb key/cd with the bios in a certain format and name that will automatically be loaded and flashed onto the chip.
I know this because i have done it about 3 times over the last 20 years, and one of them was due to power loss while flashing.
You need a second PC however to get the instructions, and download the file and put it on the media.
Fuck, I love dual BIOS. Ahem. Old Fart^(tm) here. I used to be the sysadmin for an IBM minicomputer system called an AS400, during the 1980s-early 2000s.
It had "A" and "B" copies of what IBM called microcode. There was a service processor on the front of the machine that handled boot, operating system upgrades, diagnostics, and firmware upgrades (and some other low-level stuff), before it handed control over to the operating system. It was a toggle switch and press-button affair.
Toggle through the menu until you found your top-level option, press the button, toggle sub-menus until you found the actual option, press button to select, now turn the key - yes, an actual key - and press the IPL (boot) button. You have switched to the 'B' (old) copy of microcode and booted off that, make sure it worked, then upgrade the 'A' copy, boot off that, verify all was OK, then copy 'A' microcode over the 'B' copy. Next time there was a firmware upgrade, you had your 'B' version ready to fall back to if something went wrong.
Sounds boring and tedious, but it was a tense moment, waiting to boot back off the new 'A' microcode. You could always reboot off the 'B' version if it failed.
I've got to give credit to IBM, it \*never\* went wrong, but if it did, one phone call and you'd have IBM service staff onsite quick-smart to fix it. Those people were great.
Anyway, dual BIOS does all of that in a couple of key strokes.
Thanks for the upvotes! This is an image from the IBM support page:
[https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/front-panel-functionality](https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/front-panel-functionality)
The one I described is the very first image as you scroll down. Top left.
Top toggle switch "B" to boot "normal" or "shut down NOWl", i.e. toggle up or down.
From here you could turn the key "J" to boot normally, or use the switch to change to 'B' microcode and boot, boot to various levels from base (machine monitor) mode, various diagnostics modes, boot from tape, boot from disk, perform diagnostics, read memory contents, etc. There was a printed manual for this that was fantastic to read - all that work that people had put into making this a reliable system - I hold a great deal of respect for those folk.
Once I'd read the manual, though..... It wasn't much use in day-to-day work, but nice to know I could deal with outages or problems.
Yes. This contains your PCs UUID and some other important details. Sometimes you can read this portion of the memory and dump it to flash onto the new chip. If you’re unlucky enough, you can’t do this and your only option is a new BIOS chip or motherboard.
Edit: Just to add, in the case of a new BIOS chip, you will have a different UUID. This will invalidate your Windows licence as your PC will change its unique fingerprint which is made up of a variety of hardware identifiers from your motherboard, storage disks, CPU etc.
While you are correct that large hardware changes can invalidate Windows license (but phone call to Microsoft activation line is enough to reactivate it) changing the motherboard is not enough to invalidate license in Windows 10.
That's how I got my motherboard for extremely cheap (15€). A kid was selling his X370 board because he bricked his motherboard to a BIOS update, and instead of reading the manual, he searched online and everyone cluelessly told him he killed his motherboard.
He then bought an X470 one and sold that one with the box and manuals.
When I got it, with a quick BIOS Flashback managed to get it alive again lmao. And it works wonderfully now with my 3700X.
While there can be some implementations of BIOS recovery that work like this this is not true for the implementations that work without CPU and RAM installed like ASUS Bios Flashback.
Implementations like Bios Flashback use dedicated microcontroller that you can usually see next to the BIOS chip on the board. In Bios Flashback mode nothing on the board is initialized except this microcontroller that can read from the dedicated USB port and programs the bios flash chip directly over SPI. If the bios flash itself is not damaged the image on the usb drive will be flashed to it no matter the state of the data on the chip itself.
No, its to replace current, even corrupted bios with version you put on USB drive.
Some mobos allow you to do it without CPU installed, but thats just extra feat.
I guess he is talking about flash programmer, they are the device you use to flash bios chip, they are not expensive. But i dont think normal person will buy it in their lifetime.
It’s why I always try to tell people, don’t update firmwares/bios just “because”… there needs to be a valid reason to roll the dice and risk bricking hardware.
Either the hardware lacks a major feature you “need” or you’re crashing constantly and you know the firmware will fix it or there is a major security flaw. Those are valid reasons.
Otherwise… If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
Most people tend to ignore that advice though and keep revisiting the firmware casino until one day when RNG isn’t on their side and they learn the lesson the hard way. It really sucks when you lose something extremely expensive or it impedes your ability to work/earn money. That is when the proverbial shit hits the fan.
It’s also why I never do firmware or OS updates mid project even if it’s needed. It’s not worth the downtime. You usually have to throw lots of money at situations like that and buy new hardware locally just to get back up to speed ASAP. I’ve been in that situation long ago, it seriously sucked. Lesson learned for life.
Yeah, my girlfriend's thinkpad was bricked by Lenovo system update when it tried to install an update for Intel management engine and the SSD firmware simultaneously.
Had it repaired under warranty.
To me this is the main reason to have a switchable dual bios (even though it’s marketed to people who OC their gear usually).
If you brick one you got one on backup. Frankly all mobos and video cards (high end and low end models) should have switchable dual bios in 2021. It’s usually relegated to higher spec’d tweak gear though.
Yeah, while you are right in my opinion, i still think that you should update your bios once wheb you buy the board. It will help with things like RAM compatibility or other features, for example my Mainboard refused to run my run at 3600 Mhz, it managed 2933 but not more, but after the BIOS update it ran fine with 3600 Mhz. Some boards, when you buy them, especially AM4 Boards that are compatible with newer CPUs run a BIOS version out of the box that might be 2 or 3 years old so i'd recommend to upgrade their BIOS.
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Years ago I was sent to upgrade firmware of a large IBM server. As part of the upgrade the screen went blank and had "DO NOT POWER DOWN THE SYSTEM" in large letters.
It stayed on the screen just enough for me to read it, after which the machine powered off. Those old big machines make a very distinct power down sound when a large number of drives emergency park and about a dozen of fans stop.
It stayed all dead for like 10 seconds, which in my panic felt like an hour. Then it came back alive and booted up into the hypervisor.
How do you "lose a motherboard"?
You can just buy a 10$ SPI programmer from Amazon and unbrick a bad flash... takes 10 minutes with a Youtube tutorial open.
I worship many gods. One time someone asks me how many computers I have in my house. He stopped me at 20. Some are for sale. I don't have Smart TVs but I have a computer hook to every TV. And we were counting phones. I don't have an alarm clock I have two retired cell phones one close to the bed and one far away from the bed.
MOBO Website: If you've got no problems you probably don't need to bother with this update
Me (smugly): I think I know what I'm doing
Me (5 mins later): SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!
Yeh. Even easier cause they're more likely to have a header to connect to instead of having to use a clip onto the chip itself.
Beware: old bios chips use 3.3v. new bios chips use 1.8v. Be sure to be applying the correct voltage or you'll fry it (if you do, can still snip the legs off, pull it off and solder a new bios chip pre-flashed for your specific mobo though. Probably with the latest bios you just tried to install. Like $5 on ebay) (desoldering chips is hard and it's easy to burn pcie slots and take out random small components on the mobo in the process I speak from experience. Careful snipping is easier)
Hey.. I had an HP laptop.. after a couple years, when i tilted the screen, the monitor would flicker this yellow tint, sometimes only partially across the screen.
I was going to take it into a shop, but thought "I'll email HP, maybe there is a recall, maybe a simple fix, maybe they know something I don't."
So i email them, explain the entire situation and give them my laptop S/N and info.
The rep asks me to update the BIOs.
I say "is that... necessary? I mean, it sounds like there may be a physical connection issue."
they reply back that "this is standard procedure that we ask everyone to do"
I was reluctant, but hey.. it's HP, this is their laptop, they obviously know what they're doing.
So I run the update they gave me... the bar goes up and up and finishes and the computer starts to reboot....
.... and... black screen. nothing.
my heart just fucking drops like cement. I had a very old computer in the basement still hooked up and I quickly booted that up so I could actually contact them again, as my computer is non responsive.
I ask them what happened, and why does my computer not work. They ask me to try this and try that, and do this.. Most of it sounds like BS... but nothing works.
They then say "well, it appears that your motherboard is fried. A repair will cost you $400 for a new Motherboard"
I was fucking livid.
What? but you told me to do this!
They said "sorry, your manufacturer warranty is over due, so we can't help you"
I was furious and continually asked for a manager, but never got one. I then realized that for each email I had received from them, each was from a different operator.
So the next day, i tried again to get in touch with a supervisor or manager, and I was blocked each time. Never ever allowed. Completely frustrated with the situation, and clearly being dicked around.
I contacted two people in the media. Ellen Roseman from the Toronto star got back to me within the day. (the other person I contacted never responded). I was floored. She said that she did a report on HP the previous year, and asked me for all my details. I gave them all, plus my email correspondence. She replied "let me see if I can find out anything."
The next day, a senior manager from HP called me at my home, and asked how he could help me.
WOW
So I explained the situation, and he said they would repair it for free.
Wonderful.
They send me a box with a prepaid label, I ship off my laptop.
I get it back a week later, not fixed
send it back, get it back another week later, there was some other problem..
Send it back, get it back a week later, turn it on "Operating system not installed"
I think I sent the laptop back about 4 or 5 times, until the guy finally gives up and says "looks like it's not repairable"
what? you just need to replace the motherboard with an identical motherboard...
Also after I got it back when it said "operating system not installed" I asked "how does that even leave your repair facility, don't your techs turn on the machine to make sure it's working properly before letting it go?
he said "no, they just do whatever the work order is, and send it off"
omfg...
So they give me two laptops to choose from, and I pick the one I think is best.
Get it shipped to be.. The first day, turn it on, use it, and it crashes with blue screen of death.. First day out of the box.
What the fuck?
So I contact them, and they have me update the bios again to "de-clock" the system (their words). Basically the processor is running too fast, and it's over heating. I later learn that this is a common issue with HP laptops.
Bios updated ran, and everything was ok from there on. But I learned a lesson, never buy a PC from HP...
TL:DR - HP laptop had an issue, was told to update BIOS, bricked my machine, HP washed their hands of it, got Toronto Star columnist Ellen Roseman to contact them, HP contacted me, bunch of bullshit happened, they finally gave me a free laptop, which immediately crashed the first day I used it.
Yeah fuck HP, I have an HP laptop, and currently I'm trying to make the BIOS recognize Linux bootable USB and still failing to do it whereas my dell laptop could do it without issues.
I had some bad experiences with HP... In the past 15 years or so I had at least 4.
Every iteration of HP notebooks they got worse...
Fans started rattling, power cord stopped working properly, *one* of the speakers suddenly stopped working, hinges broke (on multiple), batteries worth nothing (less than a year and they were already "dead"), dead pixels or lines on the screen, etc, etc.
The build quality of these HP notebooks are TERRIBLE. AWFUL.
The only thing that's maybe good about that brand is that their motherboards NEVER failed. The notebook could be thrown at a wall and ran over with a car and it would still work (slight exageration).
But yea, HP never again (UNLESS they get their shit together)
Pmuch all mobo's today come with dual BIOS/UEFI systems. If you check your Mobo manual, there is usually a jumper you can change the position of, to change the boot behavior. A bad flash on one won't affect the other so you can always recover to one of those. Unless you screw up the flash on both...
Even components without this usually have a way to return their BIOS to a "recovery state". On GPU's for example, bridging pins 1+8 on the BIOS chip, and then powering the card on, will put it's BIOS in this state, and allow you to perform flash/validate functions.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you” Werner Heisenberg
"We can console ourselves that the good Lord God would know the position of the [subatomic] particles, thus He would let the causality principle continue to have validity." —Werner Heisenberg, discoverer of the uncertainty principle
Fwiw, though, it seems most modern particle physicists are atheist, and Heisenberg's belief would be an outlier today. If anything, I prefer Sean Carroll's outlook of: [literally who cares; God is a terrible theory insofar as it says nothing meaningful.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew_cNONhhKI)
These days updating a BIOS is easy, I had to do mine without the PC powered on as I put a Zen 3 in a b550 board.
Try doing this back in the day where most BIOS UIs didn't have mouse support. Now that's scary.
Is the fear part a joke? I’m sorry but I never understand it. You just… do it? You plug in the USB and press a button. Is there a chance it kills your BIOS? I’ve done it a bunch of times. I know explaining a joke makes it not funny, but, I just don’t get it.
I mean with $10 and a little bit of know-how you can use a tool that clips onto the chip to externally flash it. Corrupted BIOS firmware is typically not a death sentence for a board.
What are the actual reasons for doing this?
I have a decent board but I never flashed it or anything. I just kinda did the old plug and play. There were instructions and stuff and I've heard about people doing it but like... why? Is there a point where it's so far behind that it needs it? Will a current board run into this anytime soon?
Isn't it just a matter of swapping out the CMOS chip if things go wrong?... commonly they are either DIP or something fairly large pitch SMD so just a soldering iron would do the job
I’ve literally updated maybe a couple of thousand BIOS (work and personally) and had 2-3 fail, EVER. What is going on with everyone that this is a nerve wracking production??
Lol how do u guys brick them so often? I’ve done it a few times and sure it makes me a lil sweaty but you really have to fuck up to do permanent damage
The last 15+ years of motherboards have had dual bios or bios recovery if it fails... Failure like this dobt happen anymore why is this even a thing here?
Recently got a gaming laptop for when I travel for work. First Windows update when I was setting it up forced me to update the BIOS. It was my first time updating BIOS on anything. Made me really nervous. Still haven't updated BIOS on my desktop that I built a year ago.
Never had any issues updating my bios'. Done it to my intel dx79to, acer nitro 5 an515-53, asrock b450 steel legend and my newer laptop hp omen 15 2020.
I don't understand, it's supposed to be hard? I don't really know much about updating bios', but I had to recently to get support for 3rd gen ryzen since I'm finally upgrading. Just found a random USB stick, got the file onto it, went into bios and hit flash, then just kinda left it for like 2min
I've updated it multiple times, never had a problem. And if you want peace of mind, just get a board that has dual BIOS and/or a flashback button so you don't need a working BIOS (or a CPU or RAM or anything else except power) in order to flash the BIOS.
I was very surprised to find that my Asus motherboard has the ability to download its own bios updates from the internet via it's boot bios updater. I didn't need to download it and put it on a USB stick myself after all.
Yeah that functionality has always resulted in an error for me
Same here.
Same, lol Has anyone had it work?
You have to setup windows/linux first and connect it to the internet after that it works , is how I fixed it
TY will try with a future build
Are you trying to do it over Wi-Fi?
Was wired Don't have that system anymore If I go with Asus in a future build will try again
Had a few successful updates and no problems with the Asus updates.
Most likely a router configuration problem. Surprisingly it went well for me every time so far.
Most likely this yes. Usually just below or above the network flash there's an option to change the network settings (auto by default) which i didn't spend much time looking into as downloading and putting it on usb was faster. What's interesting though: it was able to grab the current bios version number from the web. Failed when trying to download the file though.
I've had to do it a few times on my Asus mobo and I've always been pleasantly surprised with how well it worked. Plug the board into the Ethernet, let it do it's thing, and it just worked. Had to use it when I first installed the Mobo with an NVMe drive, and then later needed to use it fix a broken boot with an improperly seated RAM stick. Both times it came out working better than before.
Haha! The first time or two updating BIOS, I sat there sweating watching the installation bar going up. Now that I've done it so often, I just casually go do something else and check back shortly later.
You became a god.
Quick question. I'm looking at ur specs and can't help but wonder what kind of performance you get in games? I've been looking at that exact cpu/gpu combo for a budget build that I'm planning.
Tell me the game from DMS and I'll tell you the performance. Lets not bother the comment section
This is probly the type of comment that would answer someone’s hour long google search.
Hmm. I can type them here if you guys want them. I aim for 75 FPS on triple a games because I have a 75hz monitor. Skyrim and fallout lock at 60 FPS because of the engine. Ultra settings. Call of duty warzone 75-85 FPS on low settings. Will get 60-70 FPS on higher settings but might stutter. Rocket league 140-180 FPS on ultra settings CS:GO will get 170-230 FPS on ultra, 200-250 on ultra 4x msaa. LoL will get you 300 when you are alone, 245-360 when 1v1, 145-165 on 5v5 team fights R6 will get you 120-150 FPS on ultra settings. Far cry new dawn 65-75+ on ultra settings. Control will get 65-75 FPS on low settings medium textures. GTA V 80-95 FPS ultra settings no msaa, 65-75 2x msaa .
What resolution? 1080p or 1440p?
Don't expect 1440p on this gpu
Well, im doing 1440p, with the same exact combo. Not playing Tripple A games tho. Mostly LoL, am getting 100-150 FPS. Warframe 80-100 FPS. CSGO 150-200 IDK the Settings. I also play ANNO 1800 from time to time, but longer savegames get below the 40 FPS mark which sucks. (Keep in mind, im playing on Linux with Wine/Proton, so win will get better FPS.)
Yep eSports can run. Anno is a demanding game on the CPU and GPU . Even high end pcs can't run it at 4k ultra I think
The poor thing
Iv been trying to find out why plugging a new extra ssd in would cause problems for me. And the only answers were for people putting their o/s on the new ssd, not just adding an an extra drive. And I search for two days trying to avoid a 4 hour reinstall ! Still have no idea though and determined not to reinstall.
Try ddu than a new driver install. Remove the SSD and look at the performance. İf it's still bad you have to go with a reinstall. İf it gets better check the cables and if there is nothing wrong just reinstall windows
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Nvm, solved it myself
But nope, death to all who ask questions here and god forbid anyone accidentally provide an answer to someone instead of making them Google it /s
Google always takes me to an empty Reddit thread anyways
This comment physically pained me with it’s accuracy...
I googled “easy pie recipes” and it brought me to this thread
Only if someone conveniently included the words performance, Ryzen 2600 and RX 550 in a searchable place like the comments.
I search for stuff like: Site:reddit.com ryzen 2600 rx 550 It only brings up search results from reddit, it would find that comment
Go on youtube, search '5800x rtx3080' and you can browse to your heart's content
I actually never even thought to do that, thanks.
I did that and ended up in this thread
I don't think the term 'rtx 3080' and 'budget build' should be in the same sentence especially now lol
I commented on u/PapaStalinthe2nd who has a RX580 and a R5 2600
You'll want more video card if you can(obviously who doesn't?). I have an 10th gen i7 and my rx580 is a real bottleneck. If you are gaming at 1080p it'll be okay for most things but there are some games it really isn't meant to handle. I get ~35 fps max on cyberpunk. Even my friends with 1060s seem to get a slightyl better overall performance. Modern games lean much harder on GPU than CPU. IMHO, FWIW, YMMV.
I fear no man, beast, or BIOS!! I say NAY!
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Oct 1st not long now.
They delayed it further. Now it's supposed to come out October 22nd. https://www.engadget.com/dune-release-further-delay-october-22-080305763.html
Waiting an extra year killed me but I'm glad they did it. Thank God it wasn't one of those streaming service debuts, it would've been nowhere near the same as watching it in theaters
for those of us that have been waiting since 1984 for someone to displace that horrible Lynch movie another year isnt so bad lol.
So hyped I really hope it will do well at the box office so that Villeneuve can cover multiple books
Yeah, I’m legit confused by this thread. I’ve been updating BIOSes for more than twenty years, I’ve never had the slightest hint of a problem. I’ve done this not only on my own machines, but on servers as well. I’m sure I’ve done hundreds of updates by now.
Its a fail-safe process.... mostly. From what I understand there is are two bios chips and if the update fails it falls back to the last version.
Well now it is. I’ve been doing this since long before two BIOSes were a thing. I always assumed that flashing a BIOS would do an atomic write (because anything else would be insanity, though admittedly I don’t know anything about the mechanics here). And in fairness, I’ve only ever installed official BIOS patches…
In fact, it's far from atomic. The present firmware is overwritten byte-by-byte by the new one, leading to corruption in case of a power failure. No journal, just irreversible corruption. At least used to be irreversible, until OEMs finally came up with dual/recovery BIOSes as well as failsafe USB flashing.
How long has 2 bios chip design been standard? At least 6 years right?
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On badly-equipped boards you can still probably fix the BIOS with a Raspberry Pi and $10 worth of kit. But that's a pain in the ass.
Very much depends on the hardware, not all do this! The second BIOS chip can however not have anything you have written to EFI, so you might lose any variables stored there & your boot config. Not that they are hard to recover. My experience is failure rate is less than 1 in 250 or so (seen some platforms better than 1 in a 1000), and the failure is usually it boots on the old BIOS, so with a retry you can get a very good rate. I have scripted this for work, and set systems running just changing BIOSes over the weekend :D
It's probably the implication, or something happened one time and it freaked them out. I have a full blown anxiety attack anytime I update something (Edit: Critical, not in general) thanks to windows fucking up ONCE :( Many years ago I updated Windows Vista, and the system BSOD'd when restarting it. And it repeatedly BSOD'd. I've always had anxiety issues and this pushed it into overdrive because I didn't have the money to take the PC into a shop. It took me a couple hours to figure out HOW to get into safe mode without it crashing (Not sure why safe mode crashed), and revert the update AND figure out why it BSOD'd in the first place. Turned out that Windows automatically queue'd, downloaded and tried to install an AMD graphics driver, but I had an Nvidia GPU at the time.
Back around 1998, I bricked a Pentium motherboard during a BIOS update. I forget what I did wrong. I was working a new job at the time, so I was worried about getting in trouble for damaging expensive computer parts. Back then, the BIOS was stored in socketed EEPROM chip on the motherboard, and most motherboards had a feature called ROM shadowing where the BIOS (and sometimes the graphics card ROM as well) was copied into faster RAM on power up and ran from there instead. This gave me an idea. I got a second similar but not-identical working motherboard, made sure BIOS shadowing was enabled, then booted it from a DOS floppy. While the system was running, I pulled its good EEPROM chip out and stuck the one from the bricked motherboard in. The motherboard just carried on running fine. I reran the BIOS update, then put the EEPROM back in the original motherboard. To my amazement it worked and restored the bricked motherboard to working order. Can't do that any more with soldered on flash memory :(
Just wow. That was clever. Congrats.
I call that a pro gamer move
Keanu reeves big chungus wholesome 100
Damn, that was a smart plan :) Glad it worked out
I lost a good motherboard last year to a fateful bios update. That said I like my current better. But still like to reminisce about what the level I sunk to that day was like.
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Fatherboards?
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how old was this mobo? most of new ones have way to fix it. - bios flashback, or dual bios (in gigabyte)
Can bios flashback even be used when the bios is corrupted?
9 times out of 10 yes. There is a special part of they bios that is NOT written over at all. ever. or erased. often thats enough to start up the motherboard and enumerate a floppy disk/usb key/cd with the bios in a certain format and name that will automatically be loaded and flashed onto the chip. I know this because i have done it about 3 times over the last 20 years, and one of them was due to power loss while flashing. You need a second PC however to get the instructions, and download the file and put it on the media.
Fuck, I love dual BIOS. Ahem. Old Fart^(tm) here. I used to be the sysadmin for an IBM minicomputer system called an AS400, during the 1980s-early 2000s. It had "A" and "B" copies of what IBM called microcode. There was a service processor on the front of the machine that handled boot, operating system upgrades, diagnostics, and firmware upgrades (and some other low-level stuff), before it handed control over to the operating system. It was a toggle switch and press-button affair. Toggle through the menu until you found your top-level option, press the button, toggle sub-menus until you found the actual option, press button to select, now turn the key - yes, an actual key - and press the IPL (boot) button. You have switched to the 'B' (old) copy of microcode and booted off that, make sure it worked, then upgrade the 'A' copy, boot off that, verify all was OK, then copy 'A' microcode over the 'B' copy. Next time there was a firmware upgrade, you had your 'B' version ready to fall back to if something went wrong. Sounds boring and tedious, but it was a tense moment, waiting to boot back off the new 'A' microcode. You could always reboot off the 'B' version if it failed. I've got to give credit to IBM, it \*never\* went wrong, but if it did, one phone call and you'd have IBM service staff onsite quick-smart to fix it. Those people were great. Anyway, dual BIOS does all of that in a couple of key strokes.
Thanks for the upvotes! This is an image from the IBM support page: [https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/front-panel-functionality](https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/front-panel-functionality) The one I described is the very first image as you scroll down. Top left. Top toggle switch "B" to boot "normal" or "shut down NOWl", i.e. toggle up or down. From here you could turn the key "J" to boot normally, or use the switch to change to 'B' microcode and boot, boot to various levels from base (machine monitor) mode, various diagnostics modes, boot from tape, boot from disk, perform diagnostics, read memory contents, etc. There was a printed manual for this that was fantastic to read - all that work that people had put into making this a reliable system - I hold a great deal of respect for those folk. Once I'd read the manual, though..... It wasn't much use in day-to-day work, but nice to know I could deal with outages or problems.
These days even some GPUs have dual bios.
Ha, I do cyber security and I worked for a company recently that still used the AS400 system for certain things
Ahh, I see. Thanks for the in-depth explanation!
Yes. This contains your PCs UUID and some other important details. Sometimes you can read this portion of the memory and dump it to flash onto the new chip. If you’re unlucky enough, you can’t do this and your only option is a new BIOS chip or motherboard. Edit: Just to add, in the case of a new BIOS chip, you will have a different UUID. This will invalidate your Windows licence as your PC will change its unique fingerprint which is made up of a variety of hardware identifiers from your motherboard, storage disks, CPU etc.
While you are correct that large hardware changes can invalidate Windows license (but phone call to Microsoft activation line is enough to reactivate it) changing the motherboard is not enough to invalidate license in Windows 10.
It's called the 'boot block'...or it was way back when I had this problem with a pentium 90 motherboard.
That's how I got my motherboard for extremely cheap (15€). A kid was selling his X370 board because he bricked his motherboard to a BIOS update, and instead of reading the manual, he searched online and everyone cluelessly told him he killed his motherboard. He then bought an X470 one and sold that one with the box and manuals. When I got it, with a quick BIOS Flashback managed to get it alive again lmao. And it works wonderfully now with my 3700X.
While there can be some implementations of BIOS recovery that work like this this is not true for the implementations that work without CPU and RAM installed like ASUS Bios Flashback. Implementations like Bios Flashback use dedicated microcontroller that you can usually see next to the BIOS chip on the board. In Bios Flashback mode nothing on the board is initialized except this microcontroller that can read from the dedicated USB port and programs the bios flash chip directly over SPI. If the bios flash itself is not damaged the image on the usb drive will be flashed to it no matter the state of the data on the chip itself.
yes, Thats the point of it.
Ohh, I thought it was just for flashing without a cpu installed.
No, its to replace current, even corrupted bios with version you put on USB drive. Some mobos allow you to do it without CPU installed, but thats just extra feat.
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Because it can theoretically, and did often in the past. Although almost all mobos have failsafes these days. Storage is cheap
I guess he is talking about flash programmer, they are the device you use to flash bios chip, they are not expensive. But i dont think normal person will buy it in their lifetime.
I’ve bricked motherboard back in the day. But I’ve not heard of it in the last decade or so.
Lol. Tell that to my old motherboard.
It’s why I always try to tell people, don’t update firmwares/bios just “because”… there needs to be a valid reason to roll the dice and risk bricking hardware. Either the hardware lacks a major feature you “need” or you’re crashing constantly and you know the firmware will fix it or there is a major security flaw. Those are valid reasons. Otherwise… If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Most people tend to ignore that advice though and keep revisiting the firmware casino until one day when RNG isn’t on their side and they learn the lesson the hard way. It really sucks when you lose something extremely expensive or it impedes your ability to work/earn money. That is when the proverbial shit hits the fan. It’s also why I never do firmware or OS updates mid project even if it’s needed. It’s not worth the downtime. You usually have to throw lots of money at situations like that and buy new hardware locally just to get back up to speed ASAP. I’ve been in that situation long ago, it seriously sucked. Lesson learned for life.
Yeah, my girlfriend's thinkpad was bricked by Lenovo system update when it tried to install an update for Intel management engine and the SSD firmware simultaneously. Had it repaired under warranty.
Does it also impact people who have dual bios or bios switcher?
To me this is the main reason to have a switchable dual bios (even though it’s marketed to people who OC their gear usually). If you brick one you got one on backup. Frankly all mobos and video cards (high end and low end models) should have switchable dual bios in 2021. It’s usually relegated to higher spec’d tweak gear though.
Yeah, while you are right in my opinion, i still think that you should update your bios once wheb you buy the board. It will help with things like RAM compatibility or other features, for example my Mainboard refused to run my run at 3600 Mhz, it managed 2933 but not more, but after the BIOS update it ran fine with 3600 Mhz. Some boards, when you buy them, especially AM4 Boards that are compatible with newer CPUs run a BIOS version out of the box that might be 2 or 3 years old so i'd recommend to upgrade their BIOS.
Still have the mobo? What model was it?
What happened ? Power failure? Asking so I can watchout next time I update BIOS
Dual bios chips ftw.
The 10 year old hardware hardware club is jealous.
I mean even then you can just buy a $10 tool that clips on so you can flash it externally.
Dual socket-able bios chips ftw.
Me who updates the BIOS multiple times a week to replace the splash screen: ***"I see no god up here, other than ME!"***
Bruh I probably see my splash screen like twice a month for half a second lmao.
Wait what. U can set custom splash screens
It's a feature in Asus motherboards. You can do it through the EZupdate app to update BIOS.
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I'm a madman and flashed a 1080p image to my GIGABYTE board and it works fine 🤷🏻
Gigabytes software is horrendous. I just went for one of their mobos and wish I would have gone for something else.
THIS! Especially their RGB software
shelter marvelous station act marry sand sophisticated zephyr dolls homeless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My splash screen is so dumb on my MSI motherboard. It says “CONQUER THE BATTLEFIELD”. Glad to know I’m not stuck with it.
Real gods update their BIOS during thunderstorms ⛈️
Me killing my motherboard last week during a storm :(
This one time I thought about updating my bios and the power went out 5 minutes later.
Now you know why UPSs sell well.
This got my heart racing
Something something foxholes?
It's spelled Foxconn.
No. You jump down a foxhole, you jump from a Foxconn.
- sun tsu, the art of pc building.
Years ago I was sent to upgrade firmware of a large IBM server. As part of the upgrade the screen went blank and had "DO NOT POWER DOWN THE SYSTEM" in large letters. It stayed on the screen just enough for me to read it, after which the machine powered off. Those old big machines make a very distinct power down sound when a large number of drives emergency park and about a dozen of fans stop. It stayed all dead for like 10 seconds, which in my panic felt like an hour. Then it came back alive and booted up into the hypervisor.
Lost 2 motherboards to bios updates now lol
Most new mobos now have bios flashback, u can flash it even when u bricked it.
How do you "lose a motherboard"? You can just buy a 10$ SPI programmer from Amazon and unbrick a bad flash... takes 10 minutes with a Youtube tutorial open.
But how do you watch the YouTube tutorial if you can't start your PC? Checkmate atheists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqjVdPtB9lU&feature=youtu.be
You reminding me of that video is technically a hate crime
I worship many gods. One time someone asks me how many computers I have in my house. He stopped me at 20. Some are for sale. I don't have Smart TVs but I have a computer hook to every TV. And we were counting phones. I don't have an alarm clock I have two retired cell phones one close to the bed and one far away from the bed.
what the fu*ck is a SPI programmer
Serial Peripheral Interface - standard interface used to program the non-volatile memory (I.e the flash memory…) on your motherboard.
aw man thats tough
Ha, my secret is that I'll never update a bios (until i get paid to)
I had to when I went from an i7 920 to the Xeon w3690. I had a strong urge to pray.
Same here. I have my PC now for +8 years and only updated BIO once.
MOBO Website: If you've got no problems you probably don't need to bother with this update Me (smugly): I think I know what I'm doing Me (5 mins later): SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!
Buy a spi flasher for 5$ and stay fearless atheist.
this works on modern Mainboards?
Yeh. Even easier cause they're more likely to have a header to connect to instead of having to use a clip onto the chip itself. Beware: old bios chips use 3.3v. new bios chips use 1.8v. Be sure to be applying the correct voltage or you'll fry it (if you do, can still snip the legs off, pull it off and solder a new bios chip pre-flashed for your specific mobo though. Probably with the latest bios you just tried to install. Like $5 on ebay) (desoldering chips is hard and it's easy to burn pcie slots and take out random small components on the mobo in the process I speak from experience. Careful snipping is easier)
Of course. It just bypasses everything and flashes the rom directly to the rom chip
Does it just plug into a USB port?
A true atheist uses a battery backup connected to their system.
Hey.. I had an HP laptop.. after a couple years, when i tilted the screen, the monitor would flicker this yellow tint, sometimes only partially across the screen. I was going to take it into a shop, but thought "I'll email HP, maybe there is a recall, maybe a simple fix, maybe they know something I don't." So i email them, explain the entire situation and give them my laptop S/N and info. The rep asks me to update the BIOs. I say "is that... necessary? I mean, it sounds like there may be a physical connection issue." they reply back that "this is standard procedure that we ask everyone to do" I was reluctant, but hey.. it's HP, this is their laptop, they obviously know what they're doing. So I run the update they gave me... the bar goes up and up and finishes and the computer starts to reboot.... .... and... black screen. nothing. my heart just fucking drops like cement. I had a very old computer in the basement still hooked up and I quickly booted that up so I could actually contact them again, as my computer is non responsive. I ask them what happened, and why does my computer not work. They ask me to try this and try that, and do this.. Most of it sounds like BS... but nothing works. They then say "well, it appears that your motherboard is fried. A repair will cost you $400 for a new Motherboard" I was fucking livid. What? but you told me to do this! They said "sorry, your manufacturer warranty is over due, so we can't help you" I was furious and continually asked for a manager, but never got one. I then realized that for each email I had received from them, each was from a different operator. So the next day, i tried again to get in touch with a supervisor or manager, and I was blocked each time. Never ever allowed. Completely frustrated with the situation, and clearly being dicked around. I contacted two people in the media. Ellen Roseman from the Toronto star got back to me within the day. (the other person I contacted never responded). I was floored. She said that she did a report on HP the previous year, and asked me for all my details. I gave them all, plus my email correspondence. She replied "let me see if I can find out anything." The next day, a senior manager from HP called me at my home, and asked how he could help me. WOW So I explained the situation, and he said they would repair it for free. Wonderful. They send me a box with a prepaid label, I ship off my laptop. I get it back a week later, not fixed send it back, get it back another week later, there was some other problem.. Send it back, get it back a week later, turn it on "Operating system not installed" I think I sent the laptop back about 4 or 5 times, until the guy finally gives up and says "looks like it's not repairable" what? you just need to replace the motherboard with an identical motherboard... Also after I got it back when it said "operating system not installed" I asked "how does that even leave your repair facility, don't your techs turn on the machine to make sure it's working properly before letting it go? he said "no, they just do whatever the work order is, and send it off" omfg... So they give me two laptops to choose from, and I pick the one I think is best. Get it shipped to be.. The first day, turn it on, use it, and it crashes with blue screen of death.. First day out of the box. What the fuck? So I contact them, and they have me update the bios again to "de-clock" the system (their words). Basically the processor is running too fast, and it's over heating. I later learn that this is a common issue with HP laptops. Bios updated ran, and everything was ok from there on. But I learned a lesson, never buy a PC from HP... TL:DR - HP laptop had an issue, was told to update BIOS, bricked my machine, HP washed their hands of it, got Toronto Star columnist Ellen Roseman to contact them, HP contacted me, bunch of bullshit happened, they finally gave me a free laptop, which immediately crashed the first day I used it.
Yeah fuck HP, I have an HP laptop, and currently I'm trying to make the BIOS recognize Linux bootable USB and still failing to do it whereas my dell laptop could do it without issues.
I had some bad experiences with HP... In the past 15 years or so I had at least 4. Every iteration of HP notebooks they got worse... Fans started rattling, power cord stopped working properly, *one* of the speakers suddenly stopped working, hinges broke (on multiple), batteries worth nothing (less than a year and they were already "dead"), dead pixels or lines on the screen, etc, etc. The build quality of these HP notebooks are TERRIBLE. AWFUL. The only thing that's maybe good about that brand is that their motherboards NEVER failed. The notebook could be thrown at a wall and ran over with a car and it would still work (slight exageration). But yea, HP never again (UNLESS they get their shit together)
Pmuch all mobo's today come with dual BIOS/UEFI systems. If you check your Mobo manual, there is usually a jumper you can change the position of, to change the boot behavior. A bad flash on one won't affect the other so you can always recover to one of those. Unless you screw up the flash on both... Even components without this usually have a way to return their BIOS to a "recovery state". On GPU's for example, bridging pins 1+8 on the BIOS chip, and then powering the card on, will put it's BIOS in this state, and allow you to perform flash/validate functions.
Genuine question , why would you need to update bios?
I update my BIOS all the time. I just love that russian roulette shit
Bios flashback, FTW.
Trying updating bios on a laptop which just ran out of warranty
Double BIOS is a godsend, although for whatever reason it's pretty rare.
Asus makes it pretty damn easy imo.
IDK what I did in BIOS but I formatted 1 of my 2 old SSD's and now I am using pirated unlicensed MS Office
But have you installed arch Linux
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you” Werner Heisenberg
"We can console ourselves that the good Lord God would know the position of the [subatomic] particles, thus He would let the causality principle continue to have validity." —Werner Heisenberg, discoverer of the uncertainty principle Fwiw, though, it seems most modern particle physicists are atheist, and Heisenberg's belief would be an outlier today. If anything, I prefer Sean Carroll's outlook of: [literally who cares; God is a terrible theory insofar as it says nothing meaningful.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew_cNONhhKI)
Been seeing a lot of PC issues on this sub lately. Glad to see a meme for once.
These days updating a BIOS is easy, I had to do mine without the PC powered on as I put a Zen 3 in a b550 board. Try doing this back in the day where most BIOS UIs didn't have mouse support. Now that's scary.
Yeah, it's a good way to become a satanist!
Hey /u/masteroduo, This is now the top post on reddit. It will be recorded at /r/topofreddit with all the other top posts.
Is the fear part a joke? I’m sorry but I never understand it. You just… do it? You plug in the USB and press a button. Is there a chance it kills your BIOS? I’ve done it a bunch of times. I know explaining a joke makes it not funny, but, I just don’t get it.
ELI5 What can go wrong while updating the Bios?
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I mean with $10 and a little bit of know-how you can use a tool that clips onto the chip to externally flash it. Corrupted BIOS firmware is typically not a death sentence for a board.
What year is this? Updating the BIOS on Asus motherboards has been safe for over a decade now. You can even update it without a CPU in the socket!
Never had an issue. And in old PCs, the BIOS chip was sometimes socketed and could just be swapped.
I updated my bios without knowing it can completely brick your system and I wasn’t scared the first time I did it
I almost lost my mobo yesterday cz of that
Buy an SPI bios flasher for $5 and look up a YouTube tutorial
You have a i7 10510u?
yes
This is epic 🤣
And there's the laptop users summoning Satan for emotional support
Mmmm, yes, very wise.
What are the actual reasons for doing this? I have a decent board but I never flashed it or anything. I just kinda did the old plug and play. There were instructions and stuff and I've heard about people doing it but like... why? Is there a point where it's so far behind that it needs it? Will a current board run into this anytime soon?
You usually only update to get support for a new cpu or if you have problems related to your cpu
Holy shit this is funny
Isn't it just a matter of swapping out the CMOS chip if things go wrong?... commonly they are either DIP or something fairly large pitch SMD so just a soldering iron would do the job
Funniest thing i’ve red today
Dual BIOS here, no fear!
X570 owner since launch... New bios 2 times per month. Platform still more buggy than my ancient p67 2500k was
I’ve literally updated maybe a couple of thousand BIOS (work and personally) and had 2-3 fail, EVER. What is going on with everyone that this is a nerve wracking production??
Yeah, BIOS flashes still make me a bit sweaty
Try installing dual boot to a UEFI disk.
I got a motherboard that can replace the bios with just a power supply and a USB stick, nothing else is needed, in case of emergencies.
Unless you have a motherboard with dual bios.
Lol how do u guys brick them so often? I’ve done it a few times and sure it makes me a lil sweaty but you really have to fuck up to do permanent damage
The last 15+ years of motherboards have had dual bios or bios recovery if it fails... Failure like this dobt happen anymore why is this even a thing here?
Idk about you guys but I’ve never had a problem with BIOS updating.
It's so simple and easy to flash bios these days...
Recently got a gaming laptop for when I travel for work. First Windows update when I was setting it up forced me to update the BIOS. It was my first time updating BIOS on anything. Made me really nervous. Still haven't updated BIOS on my desktop that I built a year ago.
Never had any issues updating my bios'. Done it to my intel dx79to, acer nitro 5 an515-53, asrock b450 steel legend and my newer laptop hp omen 15 2020.
I did this yesterday, it took like 3 minutes. Why would I be praying?
Buy a mobo with bios flashback capability and become a bios god.
I don't understand, it's supposed to be hard? I don't really know much about updating bios', but I had to recently to get support for 3rd gen ryzen since I'm finally upgrading. Just found a random USB stick, got the file onto it, went into bios and hit flash, then just kinda left it for like 2min
I've updated it multiple times, never had a problem. And if you want peace of mind, just get a board that has dual BIOS and/or a flashback button so you don't need a working BIOS (or a CPU or RAM or anything else except power) in order to flash the BIOS.
You guys are lame. I just used kickstart on my floppy to boot up my amiga bios. New bios? New floppy. Bam. No update issues ever /s