Question Help with updating BIOS on Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 rev. 1 ?

[Korgster]

Hello all,

Brand new to the forum and looking for some help. I hope I can be as coherent as possible since a lot of this seems to be a bit over my head. I know how to build and look at specs and figure out what goes with what, but when it comes to BIOS and tweaking anything in there I get very lost.

I will provide a bit of back story to help everyone understand what I have been doing and experiencing in the past two'ish months.

I purchased a new kit of RAM to get me up to 32GBs in my rig. I figured out there is an XMP option to enable to boost the RAM, so I enabled it. Everything was running fine.

Around this time I decided to update my BIOS to get it a bit more up to par. Everything went well, BIOS installed nothing wrong. I got my BIOS to F52i.

At the end of January my system started to blue screen very heavily over and over again. My friend and I were trying to figure it out, we were googling the errors. Some came back as missing files or corrupted files and some others were pointing to RAM. Long story short I decided to reinstall Windows (probably for the better its been several years since I have did a clean install).

Reinstalled Windows and started to get blue screens yet again. At this point my friend and I are at a loss. I decided to shut down and reset all of my RAM sticks. Power back on, blue screens disappeared. The RAM sticks must not have been seated properly when I installed them. Ok, so huge problem fixed, everything has been working since, no issues at all. I enabled XMP again, XMP is working just fine, no issues.

I decided to upgrade my current CPU (2700x) to a 5800x3D. In my mind I am good to go, BIOS is updated, my system is stable everything is running smoothly.

A few days ago I decided to update my BIOS to the latest before installing the 5800x3D just so it is 100% up to date and F52i apparently had a CPU vulnerability, so perfect time to get the update installed.

I go back into my BIOS ready to install the latest version of BIOS and I see that my BIOS had reverted to F31. This confuses me because I had updated successfully to F52i within the past two'ish months, why did my BIOS revert back?

I go back to the motherboard site and double check what I need to do in order to get BIOS updated correctly. There is a EC FW Update Tool B19.0606.1 or later version I need to install, so I install it on the fresh Windows install. I go back into BIOS after I install this EC FW Update Tool B19.0606.1 and notice that my BIOS is now back to F52i. Now I am very confused.

I go ahead and install the newest BIOS, F52. Everything works, I double check BIOS, its reading the F52, enable XMP again. Double check everything in Windows, its reading the XMP, system is running smoothly, no issues.

I installed the 5800x3D today, everything went well, no issues. System is running, Windows recognizes the CPU and XMP profile, games running smooth, web pages, apps. No issues.

It seems that the EC FW Update Tool B19.0606.1 needs to be installed before moving to a newer BIOS version in order for the motherboard to have a 5800x3D installed. Ok, no issues there I can do that; however, if I happen (hopefully I do not have any issues again where I need to reinstall Windows, but stuff happens) to reinstall Windows again the EC FW Update Tool B19.0606.1 would be wiped from the drive since it seems to be a software based tool and I feel that BIOS will revert, yet again, back to F31 making my 5800x3D not functional until I install the EC FW Update Tool B19.0606.1 within Windows. I would imagine my system wouldn't even boot or load into Windows for me to install the EC FW Update Tool.

So here is my concern/question, how do I fix this issue so if I reinstall Windows I will not have to install the EC FW Update Tool again and BIOS just stays at the current version so I can run my 5800x3D from a fresh Windows install?

Here is a list of my hardware to help.

• Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 (rev. 1.x)
• Ryzen 5800x3D
• 32GB Corsair Vengeance RAM (4 sticks)
• MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Gaming X Slim
• Samsung EVO 870 SSD's (256gb & 1TB)

If you made it this far I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read through my confusing story. I will check this thread often for any suggestions, inputs or questions some of you may have for me. To me this doesn't seem like an easy fix, but for others I'm sure you'll be shaking your head knowing I missed something easy HAHAHA.


Thanks again everyone!

 

[35below0]

And Gigabyte has lost me as a customer. Horrible customer service.

They told me that the back up BIOS can only be flashed by the manufacturer. So I replied that I bought this mobo in 2018 yet the back up BIOS has a 2019 BIOS on it so the backup had to be flashed somehow and there must be a way to do this without it being sent to them.

Their reply was

“Dear customer

You are free to keep replying back, but the answer will always be the same. It is not possible.

Regards

Gigabyte tech support team”

Shitty support imo.

Wow. That is an answer i would like to give customers if i worked in customer service. That and telling them to ride a tricycle made of ****
As far as crappy customer service goes, that is actually impressive!

You could, very politely ask for an explanation on how the backup BIOS got flashed in the first place. And can they explain the F31 version?

Also add that in your case, the backup BIOS would lose it's function if it failed to support the installed CPU. Unless you can somehow rstore BIOS, then flash it to a newer version blind.

 

[Korgster]

Wow. That is an answer i would like to give customers if i worked in customer service. That and telling them to ride a tricycle made of ****
As far as crappy customer service goes, that is actually impressive!

You could, very politely ask for an explanation on how the backup BIOS got flashed in the first place. And can they explain the F31 version?

Also add that in your case, the backup BIOS would lose it's function if it failed to support the installed CPU. Unless you can somehow rstore BIOS, then flash it to a newer version blind.

I informed them that I installed the 5800x3D and if something were to happen to the main BIOS I would lose functionality since the back up BIOS would revert back to a BIOS version that wouldn’t support that CPU.

They’re previous answers have basically been the same “you cannot flash the back up BIOS”

When I asked how the back up BIOS got flashed to a 2019 version when I purchased this board in 2018, their reply was, “this had to have been done at the manufacturer” which makes zero sense because this board was installed in my PC in 2018 and has never been out of the case so how would a 2019 BIOS version be on the backup BIOS, then the answer I showed you was their response.

 

[35below0]

I informed them that I installed the 5800x3D and if something were to happen to the main BIOS I would lose functionality since the back up BIOS would revert back to a BIOS version that wouldn’t support that CPU.

They’re previous answers have basically been the same “you cannot flash the back up BIOS”

When I asked how the back up BIOS got flashed to a 2019 version when I purchased this board in 2018, their reply was, “this had to have been done at the manufacturer” which makes zero sense because this board was installed in my PC in 2018 and has never been out of the case so how would a 2019 BIOS version be on the backup BIOS, then the answer I showed you was their response.

The person replied to you is not paid to give more of a rat's ass. Question asked, answered, done, next please...

 

[Korgster]

The person replied to you is not paid to give more of a rat's ass. Question asked, answered, done, next please...

Yup, seems exactly like it. I guess I really don’t have another course of action besides maybe contacting the BBB to at least provide them with my complaint.

 

[Aeacus]

Well I contacted Gigabyte and they said there’s no way to flash the backup BIOS,

I thought it to be the case, since there is no clear way to switch between the BIOSes.

And Gigabyte has lost me as a customer. Horrible customer service.

Gigabyte has done other shenanigans in the past, so, i'm not suggesting their products to anyone. And i've been Gigabyte customer in the past as well. Luckily for me, it was a PC case that looked fancy on the outside but had poor design and lack of features in the inside.

 

[Korgster]

I thought it to be the case, since there is no clear way to switch between the BIOSes.


Gigabyte has done other shenanigans in the past, so, i'm not suggesting their products to anyone. And i've been Gigabyte customer in the past as well. Luckily for me, it was a PC case that looked fancy on the outside but had poor design and lack of features in the inside.

Yeah, I won’t be purchasing their products anymore. Still stonewalling me the whole time.

No empathy, no alternative solutions, no possible exceptions of offering to have me send the board in so they can look at it, just “nope nothing can be done”

Piss poor service.

 

[Laz1973]

Hi just had a nightmare with bios update to upgrade my son's CPU. Did you update the chip set? Did you update the EC fw ?

 

[Laz1973]

So my issue was getting a non responsive EC fw update it wouldn't start so it would only boot up using 2 sticks of ram instead of 4. I eventually had to treat the pc as a new one with a new SSD(unplugged all other ssds) install windows and the EC fw update worked first time. Had to update the chip set too before certain bios updates as well. Now after 3 days of trying everything the internet said to try (failed) but my new pc set up idea worked for me and his pc is now running new CPU and his 4 sticks of ram after replacing the temp SSD with his old ones nothing was lost.

 

[Korgster]

Hi just had a nightmare with bios update to upgrade my son's CPU. Did you update the chip set? Did you update the EC fw ?

I did update the chipset and EC FW Toolset.

There’s a certain BIOS version you can update to before having to do some specific steps. Once those are met you can continue your BIOS upgrade path.

 

[Korgster]

So my issue was getting a non responsive EC fw update it wouldn't start so it would only boot up using 2 sticks of ram instead of 4. I eventually had to treat the pc as a new one with a new SSD(unplugged all other ssds) install windows and the EC fw update worked first time. Had to update the chip set too before certain bios updates as well. Now after 3 days of trying everything the internet said to try (failed) but my new pc set up idea worked for me and his pc is now running new CPU and his 4 sticks of ram after replacing the temp SSD with his old ones nothing was lost.

I’m glad you got it working because Gigabyte themselves would have been zero help. Worse customer service I’ve experienced.

 

[rons105]

• Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 (rev. 1.x)

I have one of these, but with the original Ryzen 1700 on it. Now 8 years old.

I went to update the BIOS on that board early on, but due to the limited storage space in the BIOS chip, the updates to the latest version needed to be done in steps.
Each update would enable features for later generation Ryzens but drop support for earlier ones.

I left it as it was from the factory.

I wouldn't put a 5800x3D on it, but update the motherboard to a B450 or B550.

My latest build is a 6500G on a Gigabyte B650M-K