How do i update an old bios on my Gigabyte x470 motherboard, it seems excessively complex

chickadee

chickadee

chickadee

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Hello, I have had my Gigabyte X470 AORUS GAMING 7 WIFI V1 since release and its currently got the F31 bios installed. I haven't had a need to update. I want to upgrade to a 5700x CPU so need to update my bios now.

The problem is it seems like because i have waited a long time there are other steps, here is a link to the download page for you to see https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X470-AORUS-GAMING-7-WIFI-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios

AS you can see F40 has a few steps that have to be done prior to updating to that version and subsequent versions have other instructions.

The problem i have is do i go from F31 to the latest and ignore the versions in between OR do i have to install them 1 after another until i get to the latest version? I dont want to end up bricking my system or anything so its making me a bit worried. I have updated bios in the past no problem but this just seems a bit more involved in what is a rather risky procedure if anything goes wrong. I think Gigabyte should have more documentation on how to proceed honestly.

Any help would be great.
 
Normally just go to latest BIOS (I'm on ASUS motherboard however), never had issues myself, also I recommend you do it in BIOS and NOT within Windows, much safer that way.

I just use a USB Flash drive in FAT32 and have latest BIOS installed on the USB and nothing else, boot into BIOS and do it from there, infact I have one USB flash drive just for BIOS updates only.

Most motherboard brands have how to flash correctly ie on YOUTUBE or Gigabyte website.
 
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Emlyn_Dewar said:
It does seem a bit confusing, but for me I'd install that EC Update tool and then update to F40. After F40 I'd go to the latest.
No idea if that's even necessary, but better safe than sorry.
You definitely don't need to install every one in order. :D

Utility | Service / Support - GIGABYTE Global

www.gigabyte.com www.gigabyte.com
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I just attempted this and it was a disaster. I ran the ECFWupdate tool which changed my bios to a very old bios, i think F4, i then flashed F31 then F40, so far so good, i do the latest and i get a black screen when it boots, nothing i could do got around it. I tried to swap bios trick where you hold the power button down and it will swap to the backup bios but nothing.

In the end i removed 3 of my 4 sticks of ram and hit the reset bios button as it booted and it got in but the weird thing was it went back to F31. I THINK when i ran the ECFW tool it swapped the bios to the backup bios since all my saved profiles were gone, when it booted up after the failure i had them back and was in my old bios version.

So i'm not sure what to do from here honestly. Does anyone have any idea? I dont know if now my backup bios is sitting with a broken bios on it which makes it scary, how would i go about flashing that back to a safe bios? Should i try the whole thing again but update the bios incrementally? I need to update since i want to get a new CPU so this is rather scary.
 
chickadee said:
The problem i have is do i go from F31 to the latest and ignore the versions in between OR do i have to install them 1 after another until i get to the latest version?
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In theory you drop to 2 DIMMs, install the F40 BIOS, then the latest BIOS.

chickadee said:
I THINK when i ran the ECFW tool it swapped the bios to the backup bios since all my saved profiles were gone, when it booted up after the failure i had them back and was in my old bios version.
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That sounds logical.

After installing a new BIOS you must reboot. And don't be worried about extended RAM training times. You can have several reboots.

Another way of doing it would be to take a new BIOS chip, flash that in a programmer, then replace the BIOS chip on the motherboard with the new chip. The Adamant IT channel on YouTube has examples of reprogramming BIOSes. He usually takes the existing BIOS chip, makes a backup of the content, then flashes the new BIOS.
 
Quartz said:
In theory you drop to 2 DIMMs, install the F40 BIOS, then the latest BIOS.



That sounds logical.

After installing a new BIOS you must reboot. And don't be worried about extended RAM training times. You can have several reboots.

Another way of doing it would be to take a new BIOS chip, flash that in a programmer, then replace the BIOS chip on the motherboard with the new chip. The Adamant IT channel on YouTube has examples of reprogramming BIOSes. He usually takes the existing BIOS chip, makes a backup of the content, then flashes the new BIOS.
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Do you or anyone else know how the dual bios works? Im at a loss for what ACTUALLY happened, here is the process of events, maybe someone can make heads or tails of it.

Ran ECFWtool which i THINK swapped to my second bios and restarted my PC with F4 bios on it (I already had F31 on my bios prior), when i got into the bios all my saved configs were gone.

I installed F40, F63i and after that i got a screen with a single white line and the pc didnt boot.

I tried restarting multiple times with nothing happening

I then turned my PC off, removed 3 sticks of ram and pressed the reset bios button on the back of my motherboard

Pc booted with F31 on it. All my configs were back when i went to load, this is what makes me think this was my original bios.

Does any of that make sense to anyone? And if so does that mean i still have a messed up secondary bios with the failed F63i on it?
 
Try Installing bios f62 that's what you need to get to to support the 5700x and seee if it's stable for a few days.
 
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I had a similar problem updating my bios on a Gigabyte AX370 K7 when moving from an 1800x to 5800x3D. Had to do it in several steps to get to the latest and at some point the bios got screwed. It has dual bios but on physical switches so pretty much followed this https://www.gigabyte.com/Support/Consumer/FAQ/3876 but I think I found the info on youtube or some other web page. Its a bit weird switching between bios when the PC is running but it does work and allowed me to recover the duff one. Perhaps your board has a similar capability?
 
Here is what i did for anyone in the future finding this thread and wondering what to do. I ran the ECFWtool, it rebooted my machine into bios #2 even though my motherboard had set bios #1 as default. When it booted it was in bios #2 on F4 which is what it shipped with. I then installed F31 then F40 and then F63i. After F63i my PC wouldn't boot, i hit the reset cmos button on the back of my motherboard and it booted on the allocated bios #1 which still had my F31 bios on it. I shut the PC down, flipped the switch to #2 (its a switch next to your ram that you can select bios #1 or #2) and booted and f63i booted perfectly. I then installed my new 5800x3d without any issues and what an amazing upgrade its been. Hope this helps someone.
 
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