In this episode,
we're going to demonstrate UEFI BIOS configuration.
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Hello, ladies and gentlemen,
thank you for tuning into more of the Hands-On PC Build.
This is an exciting episode that we have for you today.
And that's because, well, we've powered on our system
and we are going to get in
and we're going to get to configure our UEFI BIOS.
Now you might see that we've got a couple of things on our workbench
that haven't been on there in the past episodes.
One, I have my MacBook on the desk right now, too,
because we have to visit a vendor's website
and we can't do that from this machine yet.
And the other thing that you might notice
is that we've got a wired keyboard and mouse.
In our peripheral episode, one of the things
that we showed you is connecting a wireless keyboard
and a wireless mouse to the USB ports on the back of the computer.
Well, that's great,
but we don't have an operating system installed.
So, in order to work with our computer in its UEFI BIOS configuration,
we actually have to have a wired keyboard.
So temporarily, we're going to use the wired keyboard
just for those purposes so that we can get
the initial configurations done.
And then later on, we're going to show you
how to get those Logitech drivers installed in your operating system
so that you can, well, you can get rid of some of the rat's nest
on the back of your computer.
So let's go ahead and take a look.
We've powered on our system
and we're actually in the BIOS interface.
Very exciting.
I love the modern UEFI BIOS.
Now what you're seeing here is that BIOS interface,
and since we don't have an operating system installed,
the first time you power on your computer,
it's going to show you this interface.
However, remember that every vendor is slightly different,
and one of the things that you might run into
is you have a keyboard shortcut that you have to press
to get into the BIOS.
Now, with us, all we had to do is power
on our computer and we see this interface.
And we've got some really good information here
and we can see that our entire system is functional
and operating the way it should be.
So as it stands right now, we've got a very successful build here.
You can see that we have some motherboard information,
we've got a BIOS revision as well as the CPU
and the amount of RAM that's installed.
This interface is what's known as easy mode.
There's also an advanced mode
that we'll talk about coming up in a second.
We're going to come back to the information
that we see right here and talk a little bit more about it,
because that's going to be the part that's really
the configuration in this episode.
But you're going to notice
that we have our CPU operating frequency
as well as our memory frequencies and what it's operating at,
as well as the CPU temperature of the system temp.
And then you can see the voltages for the CPU
and you can see the voltages for the memory
and likewise our platform controller hub
what the operational temperature is right now.
And notice these MOS, these are metal oxide semiconductors here.
This is the voltage regulator modules,
and they're in the operational ranges that they should be.
You can see your voltage regulator modules
could go anywhere from 80 to 100 degrees Celsius.
If you have high performance computing machine,
you could see it go up to 120 degrees Celsius.
You want to definitely pay attention to these voltages
and consult the vendor documentation
because in higher performance machines,
if these voltages go like, for instance,
if your PCH, Platform Controller Hub, goes above 70,
you might get some performance degradation.
You might also see the same thing
if your VRM temperatures go higher than they should.
You might have to upgrade to a liquid cooling system,
or maybe even just upgrade your cooling system in general.
Keep in mind that we kind of already did that with this machine.
We didn't go to a liquid cooling system,
but we put an extra system fan in.
So we're getting good operational temperatures here,
and we can also see the output of the fans.
We can see the CPU fans and its current RPMs,
as well as the system fans that we have.
We didn't populate all four system fan headers on the motherboard,
so that's why this one is running or not running
and says not applicable.
So that's what we expect to see.
We can also see that we have our solid-state drive right here
and that it's being recognized in the appropriate sizes.
We don't have anything populated in the PCIE slots.
We didn't put an external graphics card in there.
I shouldn't say external graphics card.
We're using the integrated graphics that's built
into the motherboard functionality and the CPU there.
And we're not using the M.2 drives.
So we don't have either of the M.2 drives
that are populated right now.
So where the BIOS is recognizing our solid-state drive.
Down here in the lower left-hand corner of the screen,
you can see that we have our boot sequence.
The only storage device, storage mechanism
that we have in this computer is that solid-state drive
that we've talked about.
So it definitely makes sense that it's for one,
the very first thing in the boot sequence, and two,
the only thing that's being seen here.
You can also see the memory status too.
If you remember back to installing our system memory,
we talked about this is a dual-channel memory architecture
and we had Channel 1 and Channel 2 and those were Slots A and B.
We had Channel 2 here, A2 and B2.
So again, Channels 1 and Channels 2, and we populated Channel 2.
That being the A2 position and the B2 position,
and those were two eight gig sticks at 2666
when it comes to the megahertz and you could see
that they are being read properly.
So we are up and running,
and this system is running very well right now.
Now, I do want to kind of come back to this information
that we're talking about right here.
Notice that it's telling me what the BIOS version is.
This is important information, but in this easy mode interface,
it's not giving us enough information.
And what I want to do is switch over to the advanced mode
and talk a little bit more about some of the information
that I also want to kind of glean out of the UEFI BIOS interface here.
And we can do that a couple of different ways.
This has got a nice point and click menu.
I could do the mouse click if I wanted to, advance mode,
or I could just push F2 on my keyboard, which I did.
It's one of the reasons again,
remember that we have the wired keyboard here,
so the USB interfaces are typically turned on
and recognized by your firmware platform
without an operating system being installed.
Now you'll notice, let's go ahead.
Let me go ahead and get back into advanced mode just by pressing F2.
And we'll see right here that in the upper left-hand corner,
we get a little bit more information than just the BIOS version of F9.
Notice that it tells us what the date is that this revision
or version of the BIOS was released and we could see 10/15/2019,
as well as the identifier to that BIOS as well.
Now that's important information
because one of the first things you have to do
when you are going to start up your computer
is you have to make sure that your firmware is up to date.
A lot of times they patch a little system flaws or bugs in the code.
Sometimes it gives it expanded functionality.
Sometimes it'll be a security patch
for some kind of security vulnerability.
So we need to take that information.
And what we need to do
is we need to hop on over a browse on over to Gigabyte,
in this case, that's the vendor, the vendor's website.
And we need to compare that against the information
that they have for this motherboard and determine
do we have the most current version of the firmware?
So if we hop on over to my Mac OS over here,
I've actually got gigabytes website pulled up already
and we've got the version of the motherboard and it's ready to go.
And what we need to do is we need to get into, and again,
every interface could be a little bit different,
but you could see support, you could see drivers,
you could see downloads.
I've definitely seen different versions of that.
But what we're looking for is support right here.
And when we click support, you're going to notice
that it tells us that we've got a bunch of downloads
and we got some drivers for the operating system.
That's great, but we don't have an operating system installed,
so we're really just looking at stuff for the hardware at this point.
Now we will have to download these
when we get our operating system installed,
and we're going to do that in another episode.
So what I'm looking for is somewhere in this category
or in these different categories,
we should see that we have a BIOS section.
And I can see down here second up
from the bottom that we have a BIOS(+7).
That lets me know that it's probably seven entries in here
and we can click on that, expand that out.
And what I want to do is I want to compare that information
with what we've seen earlier
when we were looking at the BIOS interface.
Notice that F9, that version is here,
and I want you to also notice that the date
is the same thing that we've seen in the BIOS interface.
That lets me know what version I have.
But if we scroll just above that,
you're going to see that there is another version,
and it was actually released right in the middle of December 2019.
So what we need to do is we need to download that revision,
that version of the BIOS interface.
And I keep saying revision, version again,
different vendors might use different terms, but it's the version of BIOS.
And this is the more current version that we need.
And you can also see some of the things I was telling you
that it allows you to do it.
It enhances the RAID ACI compatibility,
fixes some of the behavior for your Vcore
and your CPU power behavior.
And so they talk about some of the workarounds
to improve the stability for the DDR4 2666.
And again, that's on some specific memory chip suppliers
are crucial memory that we installed.
You've seen in the BIOS interface that its frequencies
were recognized and its voltages were in the tolerated ranges.
So that doesn't apply specifically to this memory,
but a lot of those other functionality fixes do.
So, let's go ahead.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to download this
and you'll see that it's a little zipped file here
down in the lower portion of my screen.
And we're going to go ahead, and what we're going to do
is I've got a USB thumb drive installed on my Mac
and we're going to format that USB thumb drive
and we're going to bring that zipped file.
We're going to unzip it and bring that over to the thumb drive,
and then we're going to plug that into our PC,
and we're going to update or flash the BIOS.
So let's go ahead and do that.
I'm going to go ahead
and I'm just going to close out of my web browser.
We're good with that.
And you'll notice that I've got this USB thumb drive
plugged in and it says "data file.”
And I need to format this
and I need to format this in a file system that this computer,
this PC is going to recognize.
And typically, you're going to want to do this in FAT32.
So I'm going to launch up the disk utility here.
Let me show you.
That's the disk utility.
I'm going to go ahead and launch that up.
If you're in Windows, this would be Disk Management.
If you're doing this from a Windows machine,
you probably be doing this with something like Disk Management.
And you'll notice that my Data File USB drive right is right here.
And it looks like, well, I'm not exactly sure.
Let's see what is the file system that it says on this?
Okay, well.
Oh, there it is.
It's FAT32.
I'm going to go ahead and format it anyways
just to make sure that we have a nice, clean USB drive
to bring over these firmware files.
Now you'll notice that I'm going to go ahead
and make sure leave the MS DOS FAT, that's FAT32.
And I'm going to call this firmware just for my own purposes there.
It doesn't really matter.
The names kind of arbitrary here, and I'm going to choose a race.
We'll see it unmount it, format the drive,
and then you'll notice that it remains the drive
and we should be ready to go.
So that has this format of the USB drive is done.
So the next thing I'm going to do is
I'm going to open my finder on my Mac
and we're going to search for that download.
Here is the BIOS download right here.
And notice we have the mb_bios and it tells me
what the version of the motherboard is here.
I'm just going to double-click that.
What it's going to do is it's going to
unarchive it or unzip it, if you will.
And all we're going to do is turn around
and drag that over to this USB device
and drop it right into the USB device.
Now, once that's done, I'm going to double-check
by clicking on the USB device just to make sure
that those files are there, and we're kind of just opening them up.
And yes, I can see a BAT file there, an exe,
so it looks like those files are copied over.
Now at this point, what I'm going to do is
I'm going to eject the USB drive from my Mac.
So I'm just going to right-click on it and choose Eject.
In this case, the name of it, firmware,
you're going to see that it disappears.
Now, at this point, I'm pretty much done with my Mac,
so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go ahead
and try to remove this from the little adapter I have,
and I'm just going to shut my Mac down here.
We can get that out of the way because we don't need this.
Now, the next thing that we're going to do is
we're just going to go ahead and we're going to plug this
into the USB ports that are on the front of the PC.
These are where the front panel connectors that connect
to the motherboard, that's what they're operating through right here.
Now, if we go back into our BIOS interface,
there's a couple of different places that I want you to pay attention.
Notice if I choose F8, there's this Q-Flash
and this is from the advanced view.
If you happen to be in the easy mode
and I'm just going to hit F2 to get back into easy mode,
it's also on the same…
it's on easy mode, too, and you'll notice Q-Flash,
it's a utility that allows us to update or flash the BIOS,
basically updating the firmware platform.
So I'm going to go ahead and just hit F8.
And there's a couple of options that we have here.
Notice there's update the BIOS, but there's also save BIOS.
I want you to be aware that you should…
if they offer you the ability to back up your old BIOS configuration,
do that because if anything goes wrong with the BIOS update,
you can always revert it to the older BIOS in its original state
and then figure out what went wrong.
If it happens to be a USB thumb drive that's maybe not doing too well,
you can restore it to the earlier version,
then redownload it and try the process again.
So I'm going to go ahead and choose SAVE BIOS,
and it's asking me to name this.
I'm just going to name it F9 because I'm very creative like that.
Now, we're going to name it the revision of the BIOS.
We'll call it BIOS, and then I'm just going to type in Backup.
And again, names here basically are arbitrary,
but this is just going to let me know that, hey,
that's what this is, that's what's on this USB thumb drive.
Hit enter and you're going to notice
that it's just going to go through the process
of taking the code that's in the ROM chip
and backing it up to this USB thumb drive
that we have plugged into the machine.
Now this could take a little bit of time.
It might not take that much time at all.
But it does look like we are done
and now it's time to go ahead and update our BIOS.
So I'm going to hit enter
and that's going to bring us into this screen here.
And then we're just going to select the update BIOS here.
And when we select that it should find a directory
and we can see on the left-hand side there is a directory,
and if I click that, it's going to expand that directory out
and the actual file that we want is this one right here
and we're going to select that.
Notice that it highlights it in yellow here
and we're going to choose the right arrow.
And it's asking me to confirm, do you really want to do this?
Remember that if you have lightning storms going on,
you don't want this process to be interrupted.
So if you happen to maybe be on a backup battery supply,
maybe a UPS or something, you want to ensure
that you're not going to get any kind of electrical interruption
while you do this process and don't interrupt it.
So I'm going to go ahead and say yes,
and you're going to see it's verifying the file.
And what it does is it goes ahead
and it checks the integrity of it and says,
“Yes, this file is valid and all we have to do
is go ahead and hit enter.”
And you can see that this process could take a little while.
One of the things to keep in mind is that
when you're reading from a ROM chip
that typically happens a little bit faster sometimes
than actually writing to the ROM chip.
Notice that when we were backing up that file,
it really didn't take too long.
But now that we are actually installing
or updating flashing the BIOS,
those instructions are actually being written to the ROM chip.
So this can take just a little bit to get done.
Be patient with it.
Let it take its time.
We're going to use the magic of TV
and when we come back, our BIOS should be updated.
And through the magic of TV,
it probably didn't take too long for you,
it was a few minutes for us on the other end.
But one of the things you're going to notice
is that the USB drive is actually taking out.
Once your firmware gets updated,
it's going to reboot your machine and for us,
it happened automatically.
And what you don't want to happen
is leave the USB drive in the USB port as it reboots,
because then it's going to try to load an operating system
from there and you might get an invalid boot disk type error.
It's fine.
It'll say press any key to continue.
Just pull out the USB device,
press a key on your keyboard
and it's going to reboot the system for you.
And ours has done that so we can see if we look in our BIOS here.
Notice that the information that we have up here at the top,
notice the revision of the BIOS, the version of the BIOS,
notice that it now says F10c.
However, I still want to get into the advanced mode
by pressing F2 and make sure that we go over
to our system information here.
And notice in our system information under the model name,
yes, we see the F10c and we also see that date
that we expected to see that was also
what we've seen on the vendor website.
So this essentially is how you can confirm
that all of your hardware is recognized
and operational in your computer post PC build
and also how you configure your BIOS, more importantly,
making sure that the firmware is updated in your system
and you're ready to go when you decide
to install your operating system.
Thank you for watching ITProTV.