Help understanding BIOS requirements

[Nitefly]

Hi team - I only infrequently dabble in computing and I find some terminology extremely tedious to understand, it seems to be needlessly convoluted… I was hoping that somebody could very kindly explain what something means.

I have an Asrock B550 Tachi Razer edition board and I was thinking of updating the bios due to historic instability issues. I have a 5950x processor.

Here’s the bios download page:

ASRock X570 Taichi Razer Edition

Supports AMD AM4 Socket Ryzen™ 3000, 4000 G-Series, 5000 and 5000 G-Series Desktop Processors; 16 Power Phase Design, Digi Power, Dr. MOS; Supports DDR4 4666+ (OC); 3 PCIe 4.0 x16, 1 PCIe 4.0 x1; Graphics Output Options: HDMI; AMD 3-Way CrossFireX™, NVIDIA SLI™; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC1220...

www.asrock.com

The latest bios update says:

*To support Renoir/ Ryzen™ 5000 processors, it requires to update the BIOS with Matisse CPU.
*To support Ryzen 5000 G-series processors, it requires to update the BIOS with Matisse, Renoir or Vermeer CPU.

Wtf does that mean?! The 5950x is a Vermeer cpu as far as I know, so the bios is unsupported.

… does it mean I’d have to update the bios with a 3000 series processor?

Edit: wait, but the compatibility list here says the 5950x is compatible with all bios updates… so it’s compatible?! This is so contradictory…..

Please help thanks in advance.

 

[pastymuncher]

Asrock's bios details have always been as clear as mud. It's all rather pointless anyway as your board has bios flashback were you don't even need a cpu to update the board. To be honest unless you are on custom water I would remove the cpu and use USB Bios Flashback to update to the latest version. Don't use Instant Flash that flashes the bios in Windows.

 

[Nitefly]

Asrock's bios details have always been as clear as mud. It's all rather pointless anyway as your board has bios flashback were you don't even need a cpu to update the board. To be honest unless you are on custom water I would remove the cpu and use USB Bios Flashback to update to the latest version. Don't use Instant Flash that flashes the bios in Windows.

Thanks so much for the help!

Well, as silly as that Asrock info is… I was pulling it from the x570 page and not the B550 page, derp.

Annnnndd… the B550 page was seemingly fine with the info, so… BIOS updated…

I found a problem that I never had to deal with

Edit: For completeness, I flashed in the BIOS menu as Asrock recommended. Was easy and no issues.