[HN Gopher] Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboar...
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Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
Author : ingve
Score : 93 points
Date : 2023-02-15 07:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| zbrozek wrote:
| 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.
| noman-land wrote:
| This is hilariously cavalier. I love it.
| tfvlrue wrote:
| 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
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Haha that is a sad statement on the reality of motherboard
| firmware!
|
| Maybe they should just leave a JTAG header somewhere on there.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| My ASUS motherboard has a SPI header for BIOS flashing if
| need be, and I suspect other motherboards do as well.
| mastax wrote:
| 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.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I believe all modern boards allow flashing in-circuit using
| test pins.
|
| That's what they'll do if you RMA the board...
| whalesalad wrote:
| I was thinking about picking up this exact combo at microcenter.
| This is good to know.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Guess I was lucky then, I flashed a very similar new asus
| motherboard from this same generation for AMD ryzen 7000 cpu's, I
| used the first random usb stick lying around, wrote the bios
| update to it from linux, possibly had to rename the file to
| something specific (manually. Who needs a tool for that? Also why
| doesn't asus just give it the correct name in the zip file?), and
| flashing worked first try. May have been a usb 2.0 stick though.
|
| Rebooting after that does take a while though (minutes) since it
| needs to re-learn the RAM. And this is a painful process indeed,
| especially when I originally just had the mobo since I had
| probably not seated the RAM to the fullest extent (DDR 4 seems to
| require pressing it very well even after it already clearly
| clicked in, after pushing it harder it worked well), and the only
| feedback from the mobo was very similar LED codes as when it
| "learns" the RAM, and sometimes even half working...
| xattt wrote:
| Is using flashrom(1) in-situ not an option?
|
| (1) https://www.flashrom.org/Flashrom
| mjg59 wrote:
| Firmware will typically configure the SPI controller such
| that flash can't be written directly from the OS, both as a
| self-protection mechanism (there's been malware in the past
| that deliberately bricked boards by overwriting the firmware)
| and as a security boundary (if you can modify flash directly,
| you can replace the set of keys trusted by secure boot).
| scruple wrote:
| 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
| fine. This board "learned" the RAM sticks very quickly, maybe
| because the board never had RAM to begin with. It took seconds.
|
| I was originally going to pick up an Asus Strix Z690-A but read
| about a variety of problems with that board, especially with
| regards to RAM. Many anecdotes I had seen online had similar
| complaints about need to really press hard to get the RAM
| sticks properly installed. I had no issues with the MSI. My
| previous build had an Asus mobo and it had strange issues, too.
| _rs wrote:
| 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
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| IF you read the special notes about a not-too-big flash
| drive and FAT and all that.
|
| IIRC I also had to try several USB ports in back and
| something else hacky to get the flash going. It was still
| half black incantation and performative dance learned from
| the internet, and about 5% directions provided by MSI on
| their website or within BIOS.
|
| I've used Gigabyte and Asus/ASRock in the past, and I think
| a Biostar ... and I'll be going back to those in the
| future.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| 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.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| 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 work at all however
|
| - BIOS update required undocumented help from the internet: need
| a FAT system on "not too big" of a flash drive.
|
| - OK, so try a new minimalist video card ... doesn't get
| recognized, but an old video card does work.
|
| - On the linux side, the kernel support for 5600G took another
| six months, the HDMI-over-displayport-adapter I DID get to work
| for 4k is now flickering and dropping signal... there are some
| support notes in arch linux about switching from y color space to
| others, or some EDID hack, or some thing with fooling DRM. None
| of this is configurable in text files of course, some systemd
| binary or direct bin file hacking....
|
| I've never had to do even one of these problems building other
| PCs (this is probably my seventh or eighth box build in my
| lifetime).
| toast0 wrote:
| 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 get supported by the software you want to
| use also helps let other people find the problems with the rest
| of the package.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| 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.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I did an AMD APU back in the A8/A10 days and that was the
| crankiest and most annoying build I did until that point.
|
| It is so appealing to a non-hardcore gamer to get an AMD +
| graphics integrated chip, and it makes so much sense with all
| that excess silicon real estate, but the obvious lack of
| attention in the entire chain of software and hardware and
| firmware support is unacceptable.
|
| The board (a B550) seemed to have gigantic amounts of support
| issues from what I can tell, because there were far too many
| people with similar issues, and they couldn't have been all
| refurbs. And obviously, a refurb/open box means there are
| lots of returns.
|
| It was a bad decision on my part, but why is the board
| accepting an old PCI graphics card but not a "modern" one,
| even after the most recent BIOS (which is five months old at
| this point, so it looks like MSI is just abandoning this
| board from a support perspective, even though the advertised
| processor support was only enabled in one of the more recent
| BIOS releases)
|
| I should have built it while I was close to a MicroCenter,
| but I'm not a person that likes to remount a CPU, so once the
| CPU is mounted, I'm pretty reticent to swap out a
| motherboard.
|
| I'll just make it a containers / VM hosting box.
|
| Finally, I just booted up my previous "fastest" box that I
| upgraded (problematically) to the latest Ubu and wow is it a
| lot slower than it was. I've had problems with snap update
| daemons and maybe all the snaps are eating available RAM with
| all their copies of libraries.
|
| People, serial speed improvement is dead, it is the deadest
| of the dying "Moore's law" patterns.
|
| The software industry has to start making its code more
| efficient. We need to loopback and start improving the stacks
| and execution environments to squeeze more from less. I'll
| know when we stop putting our heads up our you-know-wheres
| when OS releases make old machines faster, rather than
| bogging them down with Javascript Electron monstrosities and
| memory-is-cheap containers with complete OS's in them to run
| a web server or web browser.
|
| Linux in particular probably needs to start repackaging
| libraries into stability-focused libraries. Sweep the
| libraries for parts that have not changed much in 5-10 years,
| and start moving those into "mature" libraries, and have
| "volatile" libraries. But then again the constant churn in
| GPU compute, vector extensions, etc means that just is not
| going to stabilize.
|
| We might still be 50 years from where hardware "wringing" is
| done and the hardware interfaces stabilize for decades rather
| than years.
| yrro wrote:
| 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'.
| cricalix wrote:
| 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.
| mkopec wrote:
| You can actually use `fwupdtool install-blob` to update the
| UEFI if the board supports and uses UEFI capsule update. I did
| that with my Asus B550-I and it just worked, it reboots to ASUS
| EZ-Flash and does the update automatically.
|
| All Asus would need to do is publish updates on LVFS.
| dev_hugepages wrote:
| How do you know if the board supports it? Asking because I
| want to update my firmware for my lenovo legion
| smileybarry wrote:
| I would just try it, honestly. Knowing the huge amount of
| SKUs Lenovo has, it might be a grid of models & "factory
| BIOS version" that support it.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I've updated my Thinkpad through the GNOME Software Store
| at some point, it was listed as a "system update" that
| automatically used fwupdmgr to install the latest UEFI
| image.
|
| I don't know if the Legion line has the same level of
| support, but you may just be able to ru "fwupdmgr update"
| and get prompted to reboot for an UEFI/Intel ME/SSD
| firmware update.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Anecdotally, my work Thinkpad just works with fwupdmgr.
| Lenovo do support this.
| yrro wrote:
| Ooh that's very interesting. I had to reverse engineering the
| firmware update process for my work laptop[0], I'm guessing
| the update process there doesn't use capsule updates
| though...
|
| [0] https://robots.org.uk/ToshibaX30X40FirmwareUpdate
| nubinetwork wrote:
| I updated my x399 board a few weeks ago using the built-in
| updater from the BIOS screen... all I had to do was plug a
| network cable in and select online update.
| mastax wrote:
| I 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.
| rev_null wrote:
| 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 read back
| through all of them to figure out which ones to install.
| throw7 wrote:
| I also recall some IBM xservers had specific revisions to be at
| to flash forward.
| [deleted]
| geerlingguy wrote:
| The annoying thing about the release notes is whether buying
| new or used, the BIOS is usually wildly out of date, so you end
| up in an unwinnable scenario.
| icefo wrote:
| 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
| milesdyson_phd wrote:
| 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
| adhoc_slime wrote:
| Same thing on my asrock MB, nothing worked until I did the
| classic usb flashback. Its frustrating really, considering the
| delicate nature of bios updates.
| justinclift wrote:
| How does the new setup compare to your Mac Studio, after you've
| dialed the power limit back to 105W?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| 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.
| greyw wrote:
| 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?
| TillE wrote:
| Some BIOSes (Gigabyte, I think) will also read NTFS, so if
| you've got a Windows install, that's another easy option.
| sebazzz wrote:
| ASUS also supports NTFS. No need for using FAT32 (what the
| EFI partition is)
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| No need? It's one of the major use cases for it existing.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| 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).
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Does anyone actually use exFAT? I know it's a simple cross
| platform file system and all, but every phone, tablet,
| laptop and desktop OS supports NTFS these days. Especially
| for read only stuff.
| psyklic wrote:
| > 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).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Interesting non-BIOS observations:
|
| > So I popped everything together, made sure it benchmarked as
| expected, tested an Intel Arc A750 in preparation for testing on
| a Raspberry Pi, and then decided the 7900x's egregious power
| consumption wasn't to my liking _the thing idled over 90W, and
| would eat up over 285W while compiling Linux!_
|
| > I wanted to enable AMD's 'Eco' mode, which limits the TDP from
| the stock 170W to either 105W or 65W. And in my own benchmarking
| (which happened later on, but I'm including the data here because
| it's kinda insane), _the CPU got about 96% of its 170W
| performance when I limited it to 105W. And at that level, it
| idled at 45W and maxed out at 206W._ Much better.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Yes, we're unfortunately back to an unhinged race for the
| performance crown at any cost.
| toast0 wrote:
| When were we not in an unhinged race? GHz sells chips, gotta
| get as many as possible; it's just AMD and Intel have gotten
| really good at pumping the watts through the chips lately.
|
| But you can buy CPUs with lower power limits, sometimes these
| are released later in the cycle though, or set the limits
| yourself. Or probably just leave it at defaults and not
| usually get up to the crazy high numbers anyway; most desktop
| use cases aren't going to scale usage so high, although
| there's plenty of examples that do.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Before Ryzen AMD was way behind for many years and Intel
| didn't have to compete. TDP was lower for a long time. The
| previous big run achieving speed by pushing power was in
| the Pentium 4 era if I remember correctly.
| jamiepenney wrote:
| Yeah I was going to say, this reminds me of the Pentium 4
| days when Intel ran into problems with both maxing out
| the clock speed and their huge instruction pipeline. I
| just want a machine that can perform well under pressure,
| but doesn't double as a space heater while idle...
| [deleted]
| joenathanone wrote:
| He may just have a well binned chip, they have to configure
| for the lowest performing chip otherwise yields would be down
| and prices would be through the roof.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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 eager to double max
| power use if it means they can squeeze 5% more performance
| out of the die.
| neogodless wrote:
| 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!
| formerly_proven wrote:
| 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).
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| 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.
| neogodless wrote:
| If you mean PPT then yes, that's closer to 40W.
|
| CPU Power is 15-20W. SOC Power shows 17W.
|
| The RAM is DDR4-3600 CAS16 running at 1800Mhz, which I
| don't believe is slow.
|
| GPU is "relatively" idly but just having Ryzen Master or
| Adrenaline open and displaying these values means it is
| not _truly_ idle.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| 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).
| neogodless wrote:
| The monitors are nearly identical (slightly different
| Acer models) but the settings are identical (same
| resolution, refresh rate, depth/bpc.)
|
| VRAM clocks are 1990Mhz.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| 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).
| [deleted]
| smileybarry wrote:
| I updated my Z390 ASUS board through the BIOS. I didn't use the
| online updater because for some reason it pulled the _2nd newest_
| version. So instead I just downloaded it off the website to a USB
| stick, booted into the BIOS, picked it, and done.
| duffyjp wrote:
| 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.
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