Q-Flash for Gigabyte B450 I AORUS PRO WIFI

Motivation

OK, this is a little off topic, but might help someone else at some point so I just post this hardware issue related post.

I recently purchased parts for a new mini-ITX PC system (yeah!). More specifically, I purchased these main components:

• Gigabyte B450 I AORUS PRO WIFI (rev 1.0)
• AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
• Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT
• … other stuff

Now, to be able to get it to run successfully, I knew that I’d have to flash/update the BIOS prior to installing the 3rd Gen Ryzen processor. For this, I obtained a ‘CPU bootkit’ (see here) directly from AMD with which I was able to start the PC and enter the BIOS to perform the update, however, …

NOTE 1: really nice from AMD: just write them, make it clear that you need an ‘old’ CPU for flashing the BIOS and they’ll send you one (of course: you have to send it back once your’re done)

NOTE 2: Be aware that not every mainboard supports the new Ryzens from the start and that a firmware update might be required!

Problem description

After downloading the (what I thought..) correct BIOS version, every time I entered the BIOS and tried to flash the BIOS (pressing F8 to access the Q-Flash utility) I got the ‘BIOS ID check error’.. that sucked, as you can imagine. Even after trying several different BIOS versions in addition to a collection of different USB devices (which is suggested in some online forums), I couldn’t get the new BIOS version to install (original was F30, my target version was F40 to enable the 3rd Gen Ryzen).

Solution

It. Was. So. Simple.

I used the BIOS updates from this page, although I should have used the ones from here. See the difference? I didn’t either,.. at first. Turns out there are two very similar mobo (nice slang for ‘motherboard’) models:

• B450 I AORUS PRO WIFI (rev 1.0)
• B450 AORUS PRO WIFI (rev 1.0)

Of course, I have the first one since I built a mini-ITX system, however, when looking for the BIOS updates I neglected the ‘I’ completely, leading to the failed attempts of updating the BIOS.

After downloading the updates for the correct mobo, simple as that, it all worked like a charm…

Summary

Well, really only one thing to say:

** Check, in absolute detail, your mainboard model and make sure to download the appropriate update files! **

That’s it, clean and simple. Apparently, other people on the world wide web were able to resolve their problems exactly the same way…

Until then, farewell!