Bricked Gigabyte AB350 Gaming motherboard?

broona · 1 Oct 2022 at 15:05

We installed FIFA 23 on my sons PC yesterday, it came up with the secure boot is not enabled error, we went into the BIOS to enable secure boot, and now we've got nothing.

The 4 red LEDs for VGA, CPU, BOOT and DRAM just cycle continuously, no BIOS screen, nothing at all.

I've tried removing the memory, removing the M2 drive, disconnecting the SATA drives, everything I can think of, any ideas please?

Spec :-

AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Nvidia 3070FE
Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 CPU Cooler
Gigabyte GA-AB350-GAMING 3
Corsair Vengeance 16GB 3200Mhz
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500 GB
2tb Samsung mechanical HDD
2tb Crucial MX500
Corsair RM750i
Gamemax F15M
Hisense R43B7120 TV

Tetras · 1 Oct 2022 at 15:17

Did you pull the battery overnight?

Does it have bios flashback?

broona · 1 Oct 2022 at 15:22

Tetras said:
Did you pull the battery overnight?

Does it have bios flashback?

The battery has been out for 30 minutes, but not overnight, and it isn't a new enough chipset to have flashback unfortunately.

superleeds27 · 3 Oct 2022 at 23:18

Can you get back into the bios?

broona · 4 Oct 2022 at 06:18

superleeds27 said:
Can you get back into the bios?

I get nothing at all on boot, just the 4 flashing LEDs, no BIOS screen, tried pressing all the F buttons to no avail.

superleeds27 · 4 Oct 2022 at 07:21

broona said:
I get nothing at all on boot, just the 4 flashing LEDs, no BIOS screen, tried pressing all the F buttons to no avail.

I think the board you have has dual bios. It could be that it's switched to the other one?

What version bios you on?

broona · 4 Oct 2022 at 08:00

I think I last flashed to either F51b or F52e.

I've tried booting into the second BIOS, someone suggested holding power for 10 seconds on boot until the PC turned back off, then power on again, same result, unless I'm doing it wrong?

Glanza · 4 Oct 2022 at 09:49

Do you have another GPU you can put in to test booting with?

JollyJamma · 4 Oct 2022 at 10:15

You can just buy a new BIOS chip from eBay and boot from that. Just use that going forward. You could boot the system and put the old BIOS chip in to try flash it to save the chip but I wouldn't.

Sounds like a bad BIOS but it could be a bad board. The best way to figure out what's happening is to replace the BIOS chip first.

BIOS CHIP - GIGABYTE GA-AB350M-DASH / GA-AB350N-GAMING WIFI / GA-AB350-GAMING 3 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for BIOS CHIP - GIGABYTE GA-AB350M-DASH / GA-AB350N-GAMING WIFI / GA-AB350-GAMING 3 at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products.

www.ebay.co.uk

mickyflinn · 4 Oct 2022 at 10:37

@broona

How to force Gigabyte motherboard to boot in the backup bios by shorting pins on the bios chip?

I have a bios update for my motherboard on the Gigabyte website and flashed it using qflash (because I had problems with my old bios). After the update reached 100% my pc turned off automatically,...

superuser.com

broona · 4 Oct 2022 at 10:57

Glanza said:
Do you have another GPU you can put in to test booting with?

I don't think so, I always seek on when I upgrade, but I might have an old one kicking about somewhere.

broona · 4 Oct 2022 at 10:58

JollyJamma said:
You can just buy a new BIOS chip from eBay and boot from that. Just use that going forward. You could boot the system and put the old BIOS chip in to try flash it to save the chip but I wouldn't.

Sounds like a bad BIOS but it could be a bad board. The best way to figure out what's happening is to replace the BIOS chip first.

BIOS CHIP - GIGABYTE GA-AB350M-DASH / GA-AB350N-GAMING WIFI / GA-AB350-GAMING 3 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for BIOS CHIP - GIGABYTE GA-AB350M-DASH / GA-AB350N-GAMING WIFI / GA-AB350-GAMING 3 at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products.

www.ebay.co.uk

Does the chip just clip out and back in? I've got no way of soldering if it needs that.

broona · 4 Oct 2022 at 10:59

mickyflinn said:
@broona

How to force Gigabyte motherboard to boot in the backup bios by shorting pins on the bios chip?

I have a bios update for my motherboard on the Gigabyte website and flashed it using qflash (because I had problems with my old bios). After the update reached 100% my pc turned off automatically,...

superuser.com

I've tried method 1, I don't have a reset button on that case, could I just short the jumpers to pretend I was pressing reset? If not, I'll try method 3.

Thanks again for the replies, I'll have another play tomorrow.

mickyflinn · 4 Oct 2022 at 11:05

broona said:
I've tried method 1, I don't have a reset button on that case, could I just short the jumpers to pretend I was pressing reset? If not, I'll try method 3.

Thanks again for the replies, I'll have another play tomorrow.

Yes you can if doesn't work try method 3.

JollyJamma · 4 Oct 2022 at 13:12

broona said:
Does the chip just clip out and back in? I've got no way of soldering if it needs that.

It should be a fairly easy removal and install. It'll just be a socket like thing for the chip. It should be an easy fix but try the backup bios.

broona · 4 Oct 2022 at 20:27

Tried all 3 ways of booting into the backup BIOS again, no luck I'm afraid.

Think I'm just going to bite the bullet and buy another one, if a spend 20 quid on a chip and it doesn't work, then I'm going to have to buy a board anyway, many thanks for all the replies.