[SOLVED] ASRock BIOS flash

[scadh]

I bought a new Ryzen 5 3400G APU for my sons's computer. His existing motherboard, an ASRock AB350M Pro4 required a BIOS update in order to work with the new CPU. Per the instructions on ASRock's website, I downloaded the BIOS flash utility to a usb drive and performed the upgrade. It seems to go smoothly and reported "success" at the end. After resetting to BIOS defaults per ASRock's instructions, I went ahead and launched Windows 10 with his old processor, a Ryzen 3 1200, just to ensure everything still worked, and it did. I swapped out the processor, and it hasn't posted since. No video output at all. I have tried it using the on-motherboard video out, as well as with a standalone GPU (some flavor of Radeon, can't remember which). I have tried re-inserting the flash drive, thinking it might have reset the boot priority when I reverted to default settings, but it made no difference. Am I overlooking something?

 

[Darkbreeze]

BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 30 seconds. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

It is probably also worth mentioning that for anything that might require an attempt to DO a hard reset in the first place, IF the problem is related to a lack of video signal, it is a GOOD IDEA to try a different type of display as many systems will not work properly for some reason with displayport configurations. It is worth trying HDMI if you are having no display or lack of visual ability to enter the BIOS, or no signal messages.

Trying a different monitor as well, if possible, is also a good idea if there is a lack of display. It happens.

If that fails to move things along, try the old CPU again to see if the system will POST with that installed or not.

 

[scadh]

@Darkbreeze Holy smokes! In the last 20 years, I've written 1 billion forum posts from topics ranging from digital audio to stage lighting to automotive to video games. I wish every one of them got a response as thorough and articulate as that one! I will try removing the CMOS battery per your direction after work tonight. I hope it works because my son is losing his mind with access to his Steam library, and because you, sir, deserve a Tom's Hardware trophy! Many thanks!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Right on man. That is just the first step, obviously, but it's what I normally suggest right off the bat and then we can go from there if the problem does not resolve itself.

 

[scadh]

Regrettably, I did not meet with success. I pulled the CMOS battery and held the power switch down, per instruction. No change after re-inserting the battery. Since I added several other new components as well, including a new M2 drive, another RAM stick and a new PSU, I removed those as well (well, not the power supply). Tried again and still no video out from any of 4 different outputs -- GPU HDMI, GPU DVI, motherboard HDMI, motherboard DVI. I put the old CPU back in and it booted straight away. I went into BIOS to ensure it reported the new version (it did, v6.60) and again reset to defaults, just to be sure. I restarted to make sure all was still good after reverting to defaults, and it was. Finally, I again swapped the new CPU into the socket and powered up -- no video.

Super aggravating. I wouldn't call myself an 'expert' per se, but I've built every computer anyone in my family has used for the past 15 years, and never encountered an issue I wasn't able to solve. However, I do typically buy new CPUs and motherboards in tandem and re-install the OS from scratch, neither of which I did this time.

I'm not quite ready to give up (mostly because I don't want to admit defeat), but I can get a newer model motherboard starting at $60. It's not worth many more hours of my time to save $60.

 

[Darkbreeze]

If the old CPU works fine, and everything else works fine with the old CPU, then it HAS to either be something done wrong in the BIOS version or the CPU is bad. Where did you buy the CPU from?

If you bought it from one of the box stores then it's HIGHLY likely or at least highly POSSIBLE, that it had been previously purchased, and then returned. That could result in a few different things.

One, somebody who didn't know what they were doing fried it, and returned it, and it was then resold to you.

Or somebody bought it, swapped the heat spreader that has the model etc. on it for a different one that was already dead.

Or it was just dead to start with. It happens. Rarely, but even rare things are still sometimes seen to happen.

Sometimes the answer is so far out there that you'd never even THINK about something like that. Like this (Unfortunately, at least one image that sort of "told the story" has been lost thanks to tinypic shutting down it's free image hosting service, but the gist of the story remains nonetheless):

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/cpu-won’t-fit-in-motherboard.3411892/#21632440

 

[scadh]

I bought the CPU from Newegg. It did not appear to have been used. The packaging was sealed and tight. The thermal paste on the cpu fan was clean and the CPU showed no evidence of having had thermal paste applied and cleaned.

I have had a few DOA components over the years, but never a CPU. It seems a slim chance that it was defective out of the box. Newegg will take it back no questions asked, but it would REALLY suck to wait several more days for new one to arrive only to find the issue unchanged.

This page on the ASRock website indicates the AB350M Pro4 board supports the 3400G APU: https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/AB350M Pro4/index.asp#CPU

However, looking more closely at the BIOS versions page here: https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/AB350M Pro4/index.asp#BIOS , I see a potential issue. I updated to the latest version, v.6.60. It does not reference the need for the All In One driver that other versions do, but it does say "read the description for the previous BIOS version". So does the previous version. If you follow that chain far enough back, you eventually get to v5.90, which indicates the need to install the All In One Driver. And to do to it BEFORE updating BIOS. It includes instructions for how to roll back, if necessary. I think I'll try that, then re-up to v6.60 and see what happens.

Thanks again for all your help!

[ EDIT ] - Reverting to an older BIOS and installing the All In One driver, then re-flashing to the v6.60 BIOS did not solve the problem, either. Doesn't even look to be thinking about posting. No peripherals like keyboard and mouse are getting any power. Live-plugging into the onboard HDMI doesn't even make the screen flicker. The case LED's light up and all the fans spin, but otherwise there's no indication that it's anything other than a brick. Either the CPU is bad, ASRock's website is inaccurate or something I can't explain has gone wrong.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yeah, it's definitely not "common", but, it happens, so I thought I'd mention it just in case because it's not something most people would even know happens, at all.

Now that you've done the AIO driver and reflashed the BIOS, try doing the hard reset again, with the newer CPU installed.