Question Is this Gigabyte B360 HD3P rev. 1.0 motherboard legit?

[timeToSleepNow]

Hi! I just got today my allegedly brand new 1 piece Gigabyte B360 HD3P rev. 1.0 motherboard, sold as bulk. Upon closer inspection I noticed it was missing the second BIOS chip, as the motherboard was supposed to have a Dual Bios feature.

Mobo's page:
https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/B360-HD3P-rev-10

Here's my mobo:

A close up of the missing BIOS chip:

This is how it shows on the Gigabyte site:

A close up:

I got back in touch with the shop and they told me they bought a batch of 20 of these motherboards, and all of them were missing the BIOS chip. Prior to getting the motherboard, they updated the BIOS to version F16, as I requested it since I got an i5 9400F, which requires at least version F11. I guess the motherboard works if they are to tell the truth about updating the BIOS.

The shop also sells second hand parts, so I was not sure if they were telling the truth. Few minutes ago I sent an inquire to Gigabyte as well about the legitimacy of this motherboard and I'm awaiting an answer.

I still want to hear your opinion on it. So what do you think?

I didn't install the mobo into my PC.

Thanks!

Edit 1:

When I looked up the motherboard on:

Identify your product - GIGABYTE Service

services.gigabyte.com

I got this:

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, one thing I can tell you for sure is that platform is five years old and given it's age it's incredibly unlikely that Gigabyte would ever honor the warranty even if you bought it new two days ago. Based on what you posted I'd say somebody used these boards before and registered them otherwise the start date wouldn't have been in 2021 since they were manufactured in 2018-19. Personally, if you expected this to be a "new" product for such an old platform, I'd say you're in for hurt feelings. You could return it and show them your information, maybe get something else, but given the age of your processor it is not only unlikely, but nearly impossible (Aside from a handful of NOS - New old stock) that you are going to find any "new" motherboards for your CPU. 99% of what you find for that platform is going to be either reconditioned, imperfect (As yours, missing one BIOS chip) or used.

So basically, if you're very unhappy about the missing chip, return it. Else, try it and see if it works. Or take it back to them and tell them you want one that is complete.

Either way, if this was supposed to be "brand new" you can be pretty sure that it is not.

 

[timeToSleepNow]

It was also actually hard for me to believe as well this was new, and as matter of fact I made sure to ask them about it when I bought it if it was indeed new. They assured me it was new. But it was weird because I found a second one only for 10 dollars cheaper. I went for this one still, because they offered 2 years warranty, and in my country they have to respect it by the law.

I will return it, as I have 14 days offered by the law in which I can return a product without having to give them any reason, as I bought it online.

What I'm gonna do next is go for a new CPU and motherboard of newer generation.

Thank you for the help!

 

[Darkbreeze]

It can't be new if Gigabyte's own warranty service checker says it was registered originally years ago. You got shafted.

And, I'm sorry. What country? Only reason I ask is because we try to help buyers from "other" regions, to not get ripped off, but it's hard since many have to buy from "local" shops.

 

[Amdlova]

Inspect the bolts... if some one used it on a case will be some mark on it.
if have some kind of dust on it it's another hit.

If don't have any bent pin on cpu keep it. build your machine e save the money for the graphics card.

all kind of eletronic devices have some "we reserve the right to make changes without prior notice."
They can remove the Bios chip from the motherboard without tell the consumer. IF don't have the eletronic device they can remove or make another board revision. My motherboard from gigabyte has 1.1 1.2 1.3 and 1.4 revision.
and a new model with v2.

 

[timeToSleepNow]

@Darkbreeze

I'm from Romania.

Their shop is a legit registered business, as I checked that before even buying the mobo, so they will definitely have to abide the law regardless if the manufacturer warranty has expired. I know that for sure.


@Amdlova

I'm not going to keep it even if it were to not have any aesthetic problems, as there might be issues that can't be spotted, and those issues might corrupt data that I'm not really looking forward to lose.
Hmm, if they do such changes, aren't they supposed to release a new revision for it and publish it, because otherwise it's an outright scam? On my mobo it's stated revision 1.0, same it is on Gigabyte's site.

 

[Amdlova]

Every company has that "we reserve the right to make changes without prior notice." It's not scam. If don't have the eletronic component they can change of prior warning.

But it's not the end of world. Have some scandals on the past. They send the product to review and after that they change everything making the product way worse!

 

[timeToSleepNow]

Ohh, damn, that's unfortunate. Thank you!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Inspect the bolts... if some one used it on a case will be some mark on it.
if have some kind of dust on it it's another hit.

If don't have any bent pin on cpu keep it. build your machine e save the money for the graphics card.

all kind of eletronic devices have some "we reserve the right to make changes without prior notice."
They can remove the Bios chip from the motherboard without tell the consumer. IF don't have the eletronic device they can remove or make another board revision. My motherboard from gigabyte has 1.1 1.2 1.3 and 1.4 revision.
and a new model with v2.

Intel's pins aren't on the CPU. They are on the motherboard.

 

[timeToSleepNow]

Is it possible that a single BIOS chip act like a dual BIOS? I recall the guy from the shop telling me that the mobo doesn't need two BIOS chips because that single chip has also a backup on it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

No. It is not possible. Dual BIOS means exactly that. There are two BIOS chips with the same information on them. If one of them triggers a potential "problem" it is SUPPOSED to switch to the secondary chip for the purpose of

the system running correctly even if temporarily, and

identifying the fact that there is a problem with the primary BIOS chip.

Whether reflash fixes it or not, will depend on if the problem is a bad BIOS image or a problem with the chip itself, but either way, none of this can happen if there is only one BIOS chip. Your board does not look like it was removed, so it was probably what we call "seconds", meaning, didn't pass some tests so it was sold in bulk to a seller that is USUALLY a third world country, because board works fine but without some primary features. That is my best guess.

 

[timeToSleepNow]

I was asking this because someone on a different forum brought up this possibility, where two BIOSes can be store on a single BIOS chip; a main and a backup BIOS. When he told me about this, I recalled that the guy at the shop told me that it's not necessary for 2 BIOS chips to be present on the mobo because that single BIOS chip has also a main and a backup BIOS.

According to what they said, that would make both of them wrong, right?

This is the BIOS chip I have on my mobo:

As text here:

MXIC MX
25L12873F
M2I-10G
5E197200
L194059

I think this is the datasheet of the chip:

https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data Sheets/Macronix/MX25L12873F.pdf

I have even further closely inspected the mobo and it doesn't have any signs to having been previously used. As you assumed, the mobo was purchased in bulk by the shop and also the title of the product upon selling was also marked as a product coming from bulk. My country is known for getting second grade electronic products, even as new.

In the meantime I got the answer from Gigabyte:

Dear sir, Unfortunately we cannot be of assistance, because the official support for that particular line of products has already ended. Best regards, GIGABYTE team

 

[Darkbreeze]

I mean, I suppose it's possible to have two copies of the BIOS on one chip, but honestly it makes very little sense to me. The whole point of a dual BIOS is to ensure the board is always able to initialize hardware with a good copy of the BIOS even if something happens to the primary chip or the BIOS image itself. If both copies are on the same chip then that's not going to happen if, for example, the chip itself is faulty or failing, or if the image gets corrupted for whatever reason it's probably likely that both copies would be affected if they are both on the same chip. That would be my thought, although as I said, I imagine it's technically possible.

Another aspect is that often a single copy of the BIOS image is all there is ROOM for on the chip. In fact, on some generations of board, specifically some AMD Ryzen based chipsets, some features had to be left off or support for some CPU models had to be removed once you updated past a certain BIOS revision, because the added information exceeded the available storage on the BIOS ROM. So this aspect makes it further unlikely that manufacturers would put two full copies of the BIOS on one chip. If there's barely room for one copy on there, seems unlikely there could be two.

 

[timeToSleepNow]

That makes a lot of sense. Now I see why it's really unlikely for them to store two BIOSes on the same chip.

Thank you a lot! You were really helpful!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Anytime sleepy.