MSI MAX motherboards 32Mb ROM

Plec said:
That above Pro Carbon results are disconcerting - but hopefully it's a result of a developing BIOS - rushed execution - to get a viable release that will appease the masses. Clearly, it's back firing with a lot of users (percentage will be user error) - but in theory they should have the physical space to resolve this, with a 16MB eeprom (streamlined GUI). But, makes sense to wait rather than BETA test a buggy BIOS...


The pre-orders are ~£99 - so it looks like MSI are perhaps trying to redeem themselves with price, given their issues - bad publicity...
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Unless you take an inordinate amount of time then generally any release, even for the MAX board people will still be 'beta' testers.

You are doing well to find the MAX board for pre-order in the UK. I can't see it for any of the main etailers. Tthe price of the standard B450 Tomahawk has gone up to £100 when I purchased mine for £90 a couple weeks ago and it has been as low as £80 earlier this year.
 
Matmulder said:
Taken from Reddit:

"If you just bought any B450 Board, you should return it and buy a MAX board instead. Its more "futureproof" for upcoming BIOS updates and its no hassle with Ryzen 3000 Series. (Official statement on livestream from MSI, wow.) Timestamp on stream: 1:40:29, you can watch it here ->
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They also say later basic functions will be exactly the same on both boards. The issue that people are having is nothing to do with the smaller bios chip that will automatically fixed because it is now a 32Mb bios. All it means that the MAX boards will come pre-flashed with the latest Ryzen 3xxx bios so no need to use Flashback etc. Though there are those with correctly flashed bioses that are still having problems.
 
MartinPrince said:
Unless you take an inordinate amount of time then generally any release, even for the MAX board people will still be 'beta' testers.
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True - given the speed/number of updates/AGESA with previous releases.

MartinPrince said:
You are doing well to find the MAX board for pre-order in the UK. I can't see it for any of the main etailers.
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There is an etailor but forum rules etc.. - but expect OcUK to follow if the pricing stays the same (big IF - as expected release late August early September <---- guestimate from chatter).

The board will be a bit of anomaly - as it may step on the toes of some b550 sales - depending on their features/pricing - and the fact it's fanless (b550 hopefully will be fanless too, even if it does have limited PCIe 4)

MartinPrince said:
Tthe price of the standard B450 Tomahawk has gone up to £100 when I purchased mine for £90 a couple weeks ago and it has been as low as £80 earlier this year.
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Yeah, was anticipated as soon as we started speccing them in 'New To PC Forum' - knowing that they were the only boards with flashback feature - even over their x470 Carbon Pro. Real shame - as spoilt what should have been a real coup for MSI rather than an isolated PR exercise in damage limitation.

Joys of early adoption...

Yours flash OK?
 
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Plec said:
Yeah, was anticipated as soon as we started speccing them in 'New To PC Forum' - knowing that they were the only boards with flashback feature - even over their x470 Carbon Pro. Real shame - as spoilt what should have been a real coup for MSI rather than an isolated PR exercise in damage limitation.

Joys of early adoption...

Yours flash OK?
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True. I also managed to find that MAX board. ;) Though it did prove my point as they also sell the non-MAX board for £5 less. ;)

My 3900X arrives tomorrow so I'll find out if it will work without issue though my expectations are low. I already knew I was going to be riding the early adopter wave which I normally avoid but my 'video' computer motherboard died so I needed to sort something sooner rather than later.

I don't see the MAX board getting here for another month at least which will give MSI time to find a fix for both boards.

Also the Gigabyte X570 boards only have 16MB ROM's and they are working fine so MSI are doing a bit of misdirection by alluding that getting the MAX board will fix the problem just because of the larger bios.
 
MartinPrince said:
My 3900X arrives tomorrow so I'll find out if it will work without issue though my expectations are low. I already knew I was going to be riding the early adopter wave which I normally avoid but my 'video' computer motherboard died so I needed to sort something sooner rather than later.
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Best of luck!

And from your informed replies you've probably read/seen all the below - but on the off chance you've missed one see below: (I will add my own personal tip from experience - and that is use pendrive below 16Gb)

MSI additional tips for b450 said:
Pro Tips:
  • Unplug the 24pin power cable from the motherboard and remove the CMOS battery from the motherboard for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, reinstall the CMOS battery and reconnect the 24pin power cable and CPU power cable.
  • Make sure your USB Flash Drive is formatted to FAT32.
  • Make sure to extract the contents of the B450 TOMAHAWK.7z file from the download, and rename the extracted file E7C02AMS.191 to MSI.ROM
  • Place the MSI.ROM file in the root directory for your FAT32 formatted USB Flash Drive.
  • Make sure you connect the USB Flash Drive to the correct Flashback USB port on the motherboard. Then press the Flashback button.
*Though it sounds like wizardry to me, some users here have had successful boots by not connecting the RESET switch from their case to the motherboard. It is worth a shot as well.
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Plus, this - Latest compatible boards/BIOS and walkthrough



MartinPrince said:
Also the Gigabyte X570 boards only have 16MB ROM's and they are working fine so MSI are doing a bit of misdirection by alluding that getting the MAX board will fix the problem just because of the larger bios.
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Oddly, enough been discussing this on another thread - Gigabyte; slimline BIOS, none of the needless bells and whistles GUI.
 
Plec said:
There is an etailor but forum rules etc.. - but expect OcUK to follow if the pricing stays the same (big IF - as expected release late August early September <---- guestimate from chatter).
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My new nickname can be Turing for being able to break the enigma code.
 
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Alan1969 said:
no release date on the MAX boards in this article.
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MSI - will have a lot of buyers with stock of previous 16MB flavour - so they 'may' be calculating the right balance of ****ing off their buyers with stock to sell and appeasing their user base.

May not be a factor - but once the MAX is released they'll have to drop the price of the standard b450 (not difficult as should be £80) and perhaps advertise its chip support differently (until BIOS sorted) - to benefit sales of both boards.
 
I think the bigger picture with none MAX boards is what happens when the Ryzen 4000 launches next year since that's still likely going to be on the AM4 platform.

The Tomahawk is a highly popular board and I think plenty of users with a 6 core CPU are planning on putting in an 8/12 core Ryzen 4000 series CPU in the future.
MSI did say they will support the AM4 platform into 2020 so I hope we are not going to get some excuse about the 4000 series requiring a (32Mb BIOS) MAX edition board when the time comes.
 
Plec said:
Best of luck!

And from your informed replies you've probably read/seen all the below - but on the off chance you've missed one see below: (I will add my own personal tip from experience - and that is use pendrive below 16Gb)
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Yes, I'd taken note of your previous posts on this subject, cheers. I have a standard 2Gb USB drive that I've used for a few years that has worked well so I'm hoping it will do so again. ;)
 
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Marsman said:
I don't really understand what you mean.

Are you asking about possible issues if you upgrade to Ryzen 3000, or are you referring to Ryzen 4000?
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I have Ryzen 3k on a B350-F, but in regards to future bios updates, will I have a bad day unless I upgrade the motherboard.
 
willhub said:
I have Ryzen 3k on a B350-F, but in regards to future bios updates, will I have a bad day unless I upgrade the motherboard.
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I'm guessing that is that an Asus board, so I don't see why there should be any problem. Seems only MSI are having BIOS issues with Ryzen 3000. Seems that MSI possibly need 32MB ROMs to get their over bloated BIOS onto without having to strip them down; hence the MAX versions of MSI's 450/470 boards. Other manufacturers seem to be getting along fine with 16MB ROMs on their boards with Ryzen 3000.
 
MartinPrince said:
MSI can guarantee that the MAX will be no hassle if they know what the problem is and have released a BIOS fix for it. They haven't.
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Well yes it would seem that the limited chip size isn't what's causing the compatibility issues. I myself am on my second B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC after the first one suffered from the well-documented no post issues. No doubt this is why there's still no release date announced for the MAX boards. It's all hypothetical really.

The live stream was laughable. They just kept repeating that they were making no guarantees. No guarantees that the board you bough believing it was compatible with Zen 2 is, or will be in the near future, compatible with Zen 2. Perhaps it isn't their fault they've been left in this situation because of the Agesa, but the way they've dealt with it has been absolutely horrible from a customer service point of view. Completely put me off ever buying MSI again.
 
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