Question Never updated BIOS

[Drip Major]

Hi! Bought myself a (at the time) hefty little motherboard. B450m DS3H. Got it and was set on doing everything right. So I built the PC and before even downloading Chrome, installed a new BIOS update. The update did not match my CPU in some weird way and fried the mother out of my board. Luckily the store understood it and swapped it for me. Never touched BIOS after that. That is a little story of why, so I don't get questions as to how low my IQ must have been never to update BIOS haha.

I think it's time to update my BIOS and I am in need of advice. My motherboard (b450m DS3H) is running on the update F41 with a stamped date of 22/07/2019. The newest update I can find is F64 (June, 2023). I heard a long time ago that if you have to jump over updates on BIOS it's a must to download and run each update from the earliest to the newest. That will be a living hell for me...

I am running this board with a Ryzen 5 3600x and an RTX 3060 ti. mushed with 16 giggies of RAM. I believe I am probably missing out on some performance in BIOS as I haven't even checked to see if BIOS is set up correctly to the clock of my RAM.

Any tips will do, other than "buy a new board". Unfortunately don't have the wallet for that

 

[boju]

First rule is, unless you're having compatibility issues that you know a bios update would fix according to fix notes or wanting to upgrade to an unsupported cpu then it is not necessary.

The other rule is never update bios from Windows. If you need to update bios then you would do it via usb stick from inside the bios, that way the bios update utility will validate the bios rom before updating.

Forcibly updating bios incorrectly will brick a motherboard not fry.

If you have a valid reason for updating bios, follow instructions from Gigabyte bios page if incremental updates is required or not. Description notes will explain what's required.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

First rule is, unless you're having compatibility issues that you know a bios update would fix according to fix notes or wanting to upgrade to an unsupported cpu then it is not necessary.

The other rule is never update bios from Windows. If you need to update bios then you would do it via usb stick from inside the bios, that way the bios update utility will validate the bios rom before updating.

Forcibly updating bios incorrectly will brick a motherboard not fry.

If you have a valid reason for updating bios, follow instructions from Gigabyte bios page if incremental updates is required or not. Description notes will explain what's required.

That holds true usually.

There are instances where there are security vulnerabilities that are addressed. If your a hobbiest or mess around with untested software those bios updates should be worth considering.

That said, MB bios flashing despite being easier/safer than ever still scares the crap out of me. I had one board brick itself for no apparent reason and couldn't even recover with flashback and another black screened on me for 30 minutes before coming back to life out of nowhere.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
I am running this board with a Ryzen 5 3600x and an RTX 3060 ti. mushed with 16 giggies of RAM. I believe I am probably missing out on some performance in BIOS as I haven't even checked to see if BIOS is set up correctly to the clock of my RAM.
...

While you probably are missing out on some performance, especially with memory and GPU performance, it's probably not that much unless you use PBO, like to overclock memory and play modern PC games. Compatibility with Windows11 as well as new memory and other hardware is better with the newer BIOS'. But then, your system's working now so that may not matter much unless you want to upgrade memory or, in particular, your CPU.

One significant thing is your current BIOS probably doesn't allow enabling of the Resizeable Bar (or Above 4G decoding as it might be called) so that your 3060 can work with (what AMD calls) Smart Access Memory. That was only recently added with BIOS updates on most B450 boards. So your GPU's performance is definitely hindered in certain gaming scenarios.

Something you're also missing out on are security fixes for some of the exploits most modern processors seem to be susceptible to. It may not be a big issue for you, but then it may become one. The thing is, you won't know it is until something, or someone, takes advantage of it.

While the old rule of "don't update unless fixing a known problem" is a good one it's pretty hard to say it applies here, and especially so with AM4 boards. That's for a three main reasons: first is that the AM4 platform (and B450 in particular) has seen a LOT of different CPU and APU's released for it since it's first release: your 3rd gen CPU isn't even the latest it could work with. 2nd is AMD apparently rushes the core BIOS code (called AGESA) for each release making updating pretty important to fix BIOS errors the early releases ship with and which you may not even know need fixing until it is. 3rd is the problem with the way modern CPU's work (both AMD and Intel's) that leaves them vulnerable to certain types of security exploits.