Has anyone updated their BIOS to F24? Did your experience go smoothly?
I thought I brick my motherboard after a failed F23 update but after hours of troubleshooting, it finally booted up and I was able to recover to F23 version (after a successful Q flash plus update). Here is the outline of what happened (from the beginning). Skip to step 9 if you only wanted to know the details of this BIOS update.
My part list available in this post
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/gigabyte-z690-aero-g-i5-12600k-amd-rx-6800-xt.317179/post-2372060
Maybe this could help someone else in the future? Gigabyte BIOS update is dangerous!
- I have a PCB Rev 1.3 Motherboard. MOBO came with F6 version.
- After assembled I installed Windows 10 without a BIOS update. I wanted to confirm everything worked first before tinkering with the BIOS (since it can be fatal if not done right -- while it's easy, it can fail)
- After installing drivers, benchmarking, and even playing some games, I confirmed the build was really good.
- I updated BIOS to F23 using the Q Flash method. It wasn't smooth but it worked eventually. See this post above https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/gigabyte-z690-aero-g-i5-12600k-amd-rx-6800-xt.317179/post-2374395
- This will be relevant later. I used a 64GB Samsung Flash Drive but I had to reduce it to around 32GB so I could reformat it to FAT32 so the MOBO could read it for BIOS update.
- Enabled XMP, the MOBO took its time to bootup. Also see post above as well.
- In the end, everything worked. BIOS F23 was good.
- I followed @CaseySJ guide to install MacOS Montery (really appreciate your detailed post but this is worth a separate appreciation comment). I chose Monterey due to stability vs Ventura. I am using OC 0.8.3. No mini guide for newest OC update. There was a generic guide but didn't have time to play around with that so I went with what seemed to be more stable.
- Install went smoothly. Didn't experience any issues during the install.
- On Monday, I attempted to update my BIOS to F24 (from F23). The problem started from this BIO update.
- The BIOS somehow froze at the verification step. In previous update, I would see a message saying that the BIOS was updating but I didn't see that. I only saw "verifying File..." and then it froze at 79%. I waited over 10 minutes without any progress so I probably rebooted my PC around 15-min mark.
- After the restart, I think I pressed "Del" to go to the BIOS but when I got there, my BIOS alerted me that the firmware was being updated. See image below.
- I'm not sure if a firmware needed to be update. I thought it was updating the BIOS?
- The firmware update finished successfully but the BIOS never POSTed (or I would think after the firmware update, it would continue with the BIOS update but that never happened). I think the CPU LED light on the MOBO was red the whole time. I waited a while but eventually rebooted the machine. Each reboot never reach the BIOS screen.
- I tried to use another monitor with HDMI (the one dedicated to this PC has DVI with an adapter to displayport so I connect it to my GPU displayport) but that didn't work.
- Here is the fun part:
- After a while, the RGB lights on my front fans stopped working. The RGB fans were connected to the ARGB hubs (from bequiet)
- Eventually my computer shut down by itself
- My case power button stopped working
- thought my hacking life was OVER before it even started
- I tried clearing the CMOS but that didn't work either. I even took out the MOBO battery and re-inserted but nothing worked. The power button wasn't working.
- I thought the power supply went bad
- I thought I shorted the power switch button when I shorted the CLR_CMOS
- I wasn't too sure anymore and thought about returning this MOBO since I'm still within the return period but wanted to try the Q-Flash plus method.
- I used the same USB flash drive I mentioned in 4.1 above. Of course, I had to update the file to comply with the Q-Flash plus method (download the BIOS and rename it to gigabyte.bin).
- After I plugged this flash drive in the right port and pressed the Q flash plus button, the motherboard booted up and the LED was flashing orange (I think the CPU LED was red -- I can't remember if it was VGA or CPU)
- I had everything plugged in (CPU, CPU cooler, GPU, etc), so I was worry it could short something. Does it?
- Based on docs (and some youtubes), it should be flashing for about 6-8 minutes. Mine flashed for 1.5 mins and stopped.
- So I unplugged the CPU power cable and GPU power cables and then tried again. This time, I think it flashed a bit longer and then there was a solid orange light so wasn't sure what happened. It shut down the machine after 8 minutes (actually I can't remember the exact detail here).
- After some more troubleshooting and some Googling, I thought the BIOS couldn't take the large flash drive (even though it's FAT32 and under 32GB).
- I looked around the house and luckily found an ancient flash drive that was probably around 4 GB in size. I reformatted it to FAT 32 and added the F24 BIOS file.
- Tried the Q flash plus again and BOOOOM, the orange LED flashed for 6 minutes and 15 seconds (I timed it).
- Note, I tried this with the CPU and GPU power cables unplugged.
- Now that didn't really resolved the power button and RGB lights on my fans not working but it gave me some hope.
- I was tinkering with the power switch on the case and also the RST_SW. That didn't really work.
- I tried shorting the RST pins but it didn't boot up the system as well.
- FINALLY, I just unplugged the ARGB from the BeQuiet ARGB hub and replugged it back in.
- I think this did the trick. My PC finally booted up using the power button.
- The BIOS was able to POST and back to version F23. The BIOS threw a BIOS reset info message.
- I was able to boot into Windows without much reconfiguration in BIOS (I avoided MacOS due to the setting wasn't optimal for MacOS setting). I verified a few things to ensure everything was operating as normal.
- I think I updated the F23 BIOS so that MacOS could boot but can't recall.
- After that I retried F24 update using the Q-Flash method (and 4 GB flash drive).
- This time it only took around 6 minutes and was able to boot successfully.
- I updated all configuration and turn back on the XMP.
- MacOS Monterey is running like normal now and I did some benchmarking to ensure it was performing like before the BIOS update (and hopefully I didn't short anything during this entire ordeal)
Based on this, does anyone think my motherboard is still fine? I am still within the return period. A bit concern I could short one or more components (CPU, GPU) even though everything seems to work now (Cinebench shows a score of 23,100 multi core and close to 2,000 for single core).
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