[motherboard] Bricked motherboard after bios update
I was updating my CPU to a 7700k which required a bios update I did the BIOS update it says completed but will not post anymore using a gigabyte z170x gaming 5. I think it took out both chips is there a method of recovery or do I need to send a board in for repair. I noticed the both chips are soldered to the board unlike Asus where they will send you a replacement bios chip for whatever version that you need.
I have the exact same board. How did you brick it? Were you going from F5 to F20 bios?
Did you do it in Windows or Q-FLASH via USB stick? I did the BIOS update in Windows and it flashed just fine ...
Explain whats going on. This board has a dual-bios so if the 1st one failed it should post to backup.
edit: Did you check the REVISION on your BOARD? This board has 2 revisions 1.0 and 1.1. If you downloaded the BIOS for the wrong revision you could have f**ked it up. I have revision 1.0 of this board. I doubt anyone has 1.1, I haven't seen those around. You sure you didn't download the wrong revision?
You can obtain bios chips/roms but you have to desolder the one on the board and solder the new one in. Very few motherboards have plug n play roms for bios anymore.
Bios updates have to be be specific and correct - I've done a similar thing with a laptop.
Also try the following, take out the battery for 15 min or so and put it back in and see what happens.
Did you try clearing the CMOS?
Page -21- in the manual .pdf
Use this jumper to clear the BIOS configuration and reset the CMOS values to factory defaults. To clear the CMOS values, use a metal object like a screwdriver to touch the two pins for a few seconds.
Always turn off your computer and unplug the power cord from the power outlet before clearing the CMOS values.
After system restart, go to BIOS Setup to load factory defaults (select Load Optimized Defaults) or manually configure the BIOS settings (refer to Chapter 2, "BIOSSetup," for BIOS configurations).
Correct I was going from F5 to F20. I was using a USB stick. I think I killed both chips. It said flashing to primary then it said flashing the secondary. Turns on for 5 seconds then turns off and it keeps on doing it I even tried resetting the CMOS with a battery removed and reseated
Manufacturers will tell you that when you flash your motherboard you are flashing it at your risk and that they assume no responsibility. Some manufacturers will make you agree to it before you can flash your motherboard. How ever if you screw up then they'll give you the option of mailing in your motherboard and they'll fix it but, at your own expense.
If both the primary AND secondary chips got a bad flash, then yeah, I'm afraid you may be screwed. This is where it would be helpful to have an ASUS board with USB BIOS Flashback. Just plug in a flash drive with a known good BIOS into the specific BIOS Flashback port, press the BIOS button on the rear I/O panel, and all is well. Saved me from a bad flash on my Maximus VIII Hero. Love or hate ASUS, that's one thing that they should be praised for.
as mentioned, try also, clearing the cmos capacitor, with power unplugged, by not just removing the cmos battery but also shorting out the battery terminals or cmos shorting pins, say 15 seconds or more. that discharges any cmos capacitor that might be maintaining cmos voltage even with power off.
I always thought that the 2nd (Backup) BIOS on Dual-BIOS Motherboards was a Non-Writable ROM, since it is intended to be a "Fail-Safe" for just this circumstance?...
(Edit): Checking online, I found this:
1. Shut off the power supply using the switch on the back of the PSU, wait 10-15 seconds. 2. Press and hold the case Power On swtich, then while still holding turn on the power supply from the switch on the rear. 3. Still holding the case power on switch, the board will start, once it does release the case power on switch and shut off the power supply via the switch on the read of the unit. (Do the latter two parts as quickly as you can once the board starts) 4. The board will shut down. 5. Turn the power supply back on using the switch on the rear of the unit. 6. Turn on the motherboard by pressing the case power on button.
Once the board starts this time you should see the Gigabyte splash screen, or POST page, then the Auto-Recovery from Dual BIOS will kick in. You will see a checksum error, and then recovery from BACKUP BIOS will begin. Once it is done reboot your machine and enter the BIOS and load optimized defaults then save/apply/reboot back to BIOS.
I love asus for that. they have a removable bios chip you can order a chip from them for $15 pre flashed. The Asus board was more expensive than this one.
Correct I was going from F5 to F20. I was using a USB stick. I think I killed both chips. It said flashing to primary then it said flashing the secondary. Turns on for 5 seconds then turns off and it keeps on doing it I even tried resetting the CMOS with a battery removed and reseated
Oh man, I've never seen it do that before flash both, but I know that lockup mode. Boot-loop in the Gigabyte BIOS. SMH. On for 5 off for 5, repeat, infinite loop. Argh!
Do you have a PC speaker attached to the pin headers to see if you can get any BEEP CODES?
Have you removed all the RAM modules and tried with that?
Do you have 2 processors? Can you try booting with a Skylake chip and then switch back to a Kaby Lake chip ....
This is so weird.
So you have no access to anything?
I flashed in Windows via @BIOS. I downloaded the F20 from the site, closed all apps and ran the @BIOS and "update from file" and it updated just fine to F20. Support for Kaby Lake, new GUI and wider range and separate NVMe control panel inside BIOS SETUP for the M.2 ports.
I had no issues. I have my computer plugged into a UPC. Are you on a UPC? No power surges? Strange that you used Q-FLASH and it wrote to both BIOSes. Very weird. And now you don't have access to a recovery .... I don't get what went wrong.
That's why I update from Windows. I don't trust those USB Q-FLASH methods. Trying to think of what else you can try/do
I thought that most motherboards have dual BIOS for backup in case of a bad flash?
This board does and the user even posted the steps above to enter recovery mode and it does work, I've tried it on mine, I own the same board and updated the BIOS from F5 to F20 for Kaby Lake support and NVMe Control Panel, basically the same features that are on the Z270 chipset version of this board are given to the Z170.
I don't understand what went wrong. I flashed mine from Windows using @BIOS software from a BIOS file. I didn't do the USB Q-FLASH method.
nothing works pulled out ram tried booting with one dimm still no go blank screen it wrote to both chips said writing to bios 1 done then writing to bios 2 done. The PC will restart. I have updates bios for years and have never bricked a board but I was using a ASUS boards this maybe my 1st and last gigabyte board going back to asus and AMD when it's upgrade time. I told gigabyte they need user replaceable bios chips like asus does it would be a win win for gigabyte and the consumer send a chip and be done.
nothing works pulled out ram tried booting with one dimm still no go blank screen it wrote to both chips said writing to bios 1 done then writing to bios 2 done. The PC will restart. I have updates bios for years and have never bricked a board but I was using a ASUS boards this maybe my 1st and last gigabyte board going back to asus and AMD when it's upgrade time. I told gigabyte they need user replaceable bios chips like asus does it would be a win win for gigabyte and the consumer send a chip and be done.
For what happened to you, I don't blame you. The same goes for me as well. This is my 1st Gigabyte board, and its a gaming board and to be quite honest, I don't know why I switched as so many people were pushing me to get this board instead of ASUS and I figured I would give it a try.
Certain things I don't like about GB, like you mentioned the non-replaceable chip, the fact that your BIOS went to shit, which is stupid, it should have never wrote code to the 2ndary one, and the fact that it does random "warm-ups" to check the hardware inside.
eg. Sometimes I hit power and it posts and boots instantly, other times I turn it on and there is a 15-20 second delay before it posts. I've been told by other GB owners that this is normal behavior for the board, and it's "randomly" checking the hardware.
I've also updated BIOSes before on ASUS branded boards and never had a problem, strange that this happened to you, its so weird.
To be quite honest with you its rather annoying. Never had that issue like that or any issues rather with ASUS, only once on an old system,
It was a Socket 478 P4 system, board went bad in 18 months. Replaced it with another ASUS Socket AM2+ »www.asus.com/Motherboard ··· VM_HDMI/ --- this board a champion still up in 2017. Wow!
I think like you, my next upgrade will most likely be another ASUS branded board, I think I'm done with GB as well, as much as people push them, to be quite honest I'm not to crazy about GB, and its behavior and weird beep codes. I should have listened to myself and bought a gaming Z170 by ASUS. If EVGA still made boards I would get EVGA as well.
EVGA used to make hell-a awesome and reliable boards back in the day, wow.
If your Z170X is still under warranty have you considered RMA? Don't mention anything about bad bios just say, won't post, boot-loop and see if they'll send you another one?
I'm out of options for you to try, like posted above by others to get you out of that loop. If you could only get it to POST so we could re-flash the damn board.
If you're board, pull the battery for the rest of the night. Short the CMOS again, unplug everything but the CPU and PSU and try again tomorrow? Maybe we can get a post for you?
The board is still under warranty had only for a few weeks. I talked to gigabyte I told them what happened they said they would repair it for me got a RMA number doing a last effort before I tear the PC down. I will do the cmos battery pull for the night. but I think
Darn, ok good. At least GB is saying they will repair it for you, but what a nuisance to send it out and get it back. At least tell those morons to load F20 on it for you and that the secondary BIOS works so you can throw in your Kaby Lake and be on your merry way.
Then like you said, next upgrade go back to ASUS. I will probably do the same.
Funny thing is I built a budget business computer for my sister with an ASROCK Z170 board and an i3 6300 processor and the damn board posts faster then my GB board. LOL, for ASROCK being labelled as "cheap" or "budget" it seems like a decent motherboard and she's happy with it.
This is the board I used for my sisters build, cost only $99 and ton of features: ASROCK Z170 Pro4S »www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z170 Pro4S/index.us.asp
While I paid $230 for my GB Z170X Gaming-5 with it's random POST times, from instant to that 15-20 second delay when it decides to randomly check the hardware when nothing was touched inside.
ASRock actually makes pretty damn good boards. I usually use ASUS for my personal builds, but if I have a client that's budget conscious, I definitely try to steer them towards ASRock. Never had one fail, in all the builds I've done with them. And great features and build quality, for the price.
on another note I had a bad stick of G skill ram I sent the whole kit in (I own 2 of 2x8 DDR4 2133 they did not have anything that match my other kit so they are swapping for 2 16 GB dimms. and I get room for expanding the system to 64 GB if I wanted to. so far I love G Skill as a company. Here is the ram they are sending me
ASRock actually makes pretty damn good boards. I usually use ASUS for my personal builds, but if I have a client that's budget conscious, I definitely try to steer them towards ASRock. Never had one fail, in all the builds I've done with them. And great features and build quality, for the price.
Agreed, personally ASUS but you're right. ASR is not bad for someone that is budget conscious, as my sister was. I must say I was quite impressed at the frills and features at that price point. For that price you usually get sub-par or basic features if you were to go ASUS, MSI, GB, the more you spend the more frills you get but ASR loaded up that board for $99, including M.2 NVMe slot/support and all the frills, I was quite impressed.
The only thing I found dumb about this specific board Z170 PRO4s is that it has 3 CHA_FAN headers for the case if you wanted 3 case fans (e.g. 2 x 120mm front, 1 x 120mm for rear/exhaust) if your case supports it, but only 2 are 4-pin PWM. LOL. CHA_FAN 3 is not PWM for whatever reason. So if you plug in a 120mm @ 2200rpm fan it will spin @ 2200rpm making a ton of noise, its insane. I tested myself. LOL. So basically CHA_FAN 3 is pretty much useless, unless you purchase a low RPM fan like the ENERMAX SILENT 900RPM for example. Only SYS_FAN 1 & 2 allow SMART FAN control where you can manually adjust the speed wither it be a 3-pin or 4-pin 80, 120, 140, 200mm case fan. So I ended up doing 1 x 120mm in the front (instead of 2) on her case and 1 x 120mm on the back. On the silent profile they run around 650~700rpm.
on another note I had a bad stick of G skill ram I sent the whole kit in (I own 2 of 2x8 DDR4 2133 they did not have anything that match my other kit so they are swapping for 2 16 GB dimms. and I get room for expanding the system to 64 GB if I wanted to. so far I love G Skill as a company. Here is the ram they are sending me
Nice, at least it gives you the option to go to 64GB. I'm maxed out at 4x8 32GB, exact same kit except the XMP 2.0 version 3000mhz, voltage 1.35V. Same timing.
I wanted to upgrade to 32 GB 3000 later but I have no reason to now I would not see the speed difference anyway.
Only reason I grabbed them is because Newegg was selling a 16GB kit for $94 in March of 2015 so I had to hop on the deal. Now the same kit is $150. So I got a 32GB kit for $188 rather then $300 (CAD) is what they are going for now. So for me the price point was the selling factor.
That, and the fact that those modules were QVL for the Gaming-5 which meant I could give shit to GB or G.SKILL if they didn't work as advertised as they were QVL listed in GB's motherboard support manual. Otherwise, I would have bought any old regular 2133/2400/2666 kit at the time. Plus it's my 1st time trying out XMP ram anyways. Wanted to see what the difference is.
Correct I was going from F5 to F20. I was using a USB stick. I think I killed both chips. It said flashing to primary then it said flashing the secondary. Turns on for 5 seconds then turns off and it keeps on doing it I even tried resetting the CMOS with a battery removed and reseated
Did you remove the Power cable while resetting it for 60 to 90 seconds
you can always find a parts and solder another bios chip your self
yes removed it from the wall. I don't want to risk losing a warranty on a brand new board I had the board for 2 weeks.
Hey j, if you only had it 2 weeks, how come you grabbed the Z170-Gaming 5 to go with Kaby Lake CPU? I would have went straight for a Z270 chipset board.
8+2 cpu phase setup at the lowest cost The newer boards coast more for the same amount of phases. I will not overclock on a 4+2 phase design most of the $150 ish boards are 4+2