GA-Z87-OC & Intel Core i7-4790K

[Harha]

So, I ordered these parts yesterday:

Item Price
Gigabyte Z87X-OC, ATX 163,79€
Intel Core i7-4790K, LGA1150 300,95€
16GB Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series DDR3-1600, CL9 125,53€
Crucial MX100 SSD 256GB, 2.5" 89,64€
Corsair Hydro Series H60 62,99€
TOTAL 742,88€

And at first I was sure everything was gonna be compatible with eachother and with OSX but then I read up some more about the 8 Series motherboards and the new Haswell Refresh 4790K chip and found out that the damn CPU isn't supported by the motherboard on older BIOS versions.

http://www.gigabyte.co.nz/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=4514

I'd really like to get that particular motherboard for this build so do you guys think that if none of my friends has a CPU that they can lend me for a while to just update the BIOS to get the 4790K working it's better to cancel the order and select some other board, probably from the not-so-supported by OSX 9 series? I'd imagine a computer tech shop could do this kind of thing probably as well, hopefully that won't cost too much...

I tried to also research about updating the BIOS without CPU with no luck so that's obviously impossible...?

 

[Stork]

You might get lucky...try this way first (I've never had to try this, but I don't see why it should work).

Assemble your computer, but don't boot it up. On a friend's or some other computer:

download the new BIOS version;
uncompress the downloaded BIOS file;
prepare a USB thumb drive formatted as FAT32; and
copy the BIOS to the USB thumb drive.​

Now, on your computer:

plug in your USB thumb drive into the Back Panel of your motherboard;
boot the computer into the BIOS; and
use the Q-flash to update the BIOS.​

Hopefully, this work for you. It's worth a try. If it does work, you can then proceed to install your OS(s).

 

[Harha]

You might get lucky...try this way first (I've never had to try this, but I don't see why it should work).

Assemble your computer, but don't boot it up. On a friend's or some other computer:

download the new BIOS version;
uncompress the downloaded BIOS file;
prepare a USB thumb drive formatted as FAT32; and
copy the BIOS to the USB thumb drive.​

Now, on your computer:

plug in your USB thumb drive into the Back Panel of your motherboard;
boot the computer into the BIOS; and
use the Q-flash to update the BIOS.​

Hopefully, this work for you. It's worth a try. If it does work, you can then proceed to install your OS(s).

Thanks for the quick response!

So are you implying that the motherboard will boot into BIOS with an unsupported chip installed on it? If that's true then there's absolutely no doubt it'll work that way, I just automatically assumed that it won't even let me enter the bios without a supported cpu... If the latter is the case then hopefully some pc part shop around here can do it for a reasonable price.

Anyways, thanks again! I was so unsure about this.

 

[Stork]

...So are you implying that the motherboard will boot into BIOS with an unsupported chip installed on it?...

I don't know for sure. But, since the first thing you're doing is only updating the BIOS and not actual OS computing, you will probably be able to update the BIOS. Try it.

 

[wildwillow]

I don't know for sure. But, since the first thing you're doing is only updating the BIOS and not actual OS computing, you will probably be able to update the BIOS. Try it.

I think that this could work. I also read a post yesterday that I can't seem to find that a user not stating that he tried to update the BIOS, using a Haswell refresh chip with an 8 series board took it into a local computer shop and they updated the BIOS for $20. On another note I installed on my families Z87x-OC just last week when the hardware arrived and it came with the latest BIOS. But this all depends on the original stock of the supplier and how many units they've moved.

 

[DCFanatic]

Not with a Gigabyte board, you'll have to install an older processor to complete the BIOS update.

 

[FriedPixel]

I concur. I had to buy a cheap Celeron just to get the machine to boot so that I could update the bios on my GA-Z87X-UD5H. Once I'd flashed the bios everything was fine.

 

[Harha]

Not with a Gigabyte board, you'll have to install an older processor to complete the BIOS update.

I concur. I had to buy a cheap Celeron just to get the machine to boot so that I could update the bios on my GA-Z87X-UD5H. Once I'd flashed the bios everything was fine.

God damnit... Well, I did some research and asked about this from a few computer part stores near where I live and one of them promised to do it for 20€ so I guess that's my choice IF I happen to get a MB with older BIOS version.

Thanks for all the responses, people.

 

[Harha]

The PC booted fine with old BIOS version. The version the mobo shipped with was F6 which according to gigabyte shouldn't support this CPU, however it worked fine so I attempted to flash the latest BIOS and boom, I was set.

I flashed using the HP Win98 DOS utility booting via USB, safest way.

BIOS had set the CPU Freq multiplier to 42x for some reason with stepsize of the normal 100MHz, I changed it to 40x and frequency switched to 4.0GHz from 4.2GHz. Temperatures are a bit too high idle (42.5c), however I know that the reason for that is simply my poorly added thermal paste, some air got in it for sure because I shaked a bit. Haven't assembled computers before myself so I was a bit nervous while attempting to install the cooler. I will fix that some day to get even lower temps, probably around 25-30c idle I hope.

Also thanks to my awesome friend this all went quickly, I wouldn't have known to flash the BIOS in DOS myself simply because I've never done that and so on.

 

[wildwillow]

The PC booted fine with old BIOS version. The version the mobo shipped with was F6 which according to gigabyte shouldn't support this CPU, however it worked fine so I attempted to flash the latest BIOS and boom, I was set.

I flashed using the HP Win98 DOS utility booting via USB, safest way.

BIOS had set the CPU Freq multiplier to 42x for some reason with stepsize of the normal 100MHz, I changed it to 40x and frequency switched to 4.0GHz from 4.2GHz. Temperatures are a bit too high idle (42.5c), however I know that the reason for that is simply my poorly added thermal paste, some air got in it for sure because I shaked a bit. Haven't assembled computers before myself so I was a bit nervous while attempting to install the cooler. I will fix that some day to get even lower temps, probably around 25-30c idle I hope.

Also thanks to my awesome friend this all went quickly, I wouldn't have known to flash the BIOS in DOS myself simply because I've never done that and so on.

I used the HP Win Dos Utility to update my BIOS and it worked like a charm!