To update our motherboard BIOS we first need to
know what motherboard we have and what BIOS revision we're currently running.
If you don't already know this information a quick and easy way to find it is to press
the Windows key on your keyboard and then type in System. This should bring up the
System Information app here. Press enter and you'll see this window displaying all
the information about our system including our motherboard model and BIOS revision. I have an
Asus ROG Strix X470-F Gaming motherboard and my current BIOS revision is 5406. With this
information in hand we now need to go to our web browser and search for our motherboard.
In my case I'm going to search for Asus Strix X470-F Gaming, you'll obviously want to search
for your motherboard make and model and I want to click on this link here for Asus' product page.
Now we want to go to the support page for our motherboard which on Asus' website is
this link right here. Now we're going to click on Driver and Tools, then on
BIOS and Firmware and right here is the most recent version of the BIOS for my motherboard.
You should be aware that depending on how old your current BIOS is you may have to update to
an older BIOS version first before you can update to the most recent one. If that is the case it
should be noted in the description here below the BIOS revision number so you'll just want
to check through all the revisions between your current one and the newest one before proceeding.
It appears I'm good to go so I'll download the most recent version here, now we need
to navigate to our download folder, right click on this zipped folder and extract our new BIOS
file. Next we need to copy our new BIOS file to a USB flash drive. I recommend plugging your flash
drive into one of the USB ports on the back of your PC since they're connected directly
to your motherboard. I do not recommend using the front panel ports when updating your BIOS.
No.
To keep things as simple as possible I like to copy the BIOS file into my flash drives
root directory so that when I go to update it's right there ready for me to choose it.
With our new BIOS version in hand we want to restart our computer and enter our BIOS.
To enter the BIOS on my motherboard I'm going to press the delete key on my keyboard when my
motherboard splash screen pops up. Just FYI your motherboard may require you to press
F2 or even some other key so just watch out for that prompt as your computer boots up.
If you have any overclock applied to your CPU, a custom fan curve or any other custom
settings enabled in your BIOS it's at this point you're going to want to make note
of your settings because our BIOS update is going to revert all of these back to default.
Ok, now we need to go to our motherboards BIOS Flash Utility. On my motherboard that
can be found in the Tool tab here and it's this first item on the list, Asus EZ Flash Utility,
we'll select that and it gives us the option to update via a storage device or via the
internet. I don't know that all motherboards give an internet option like this which is why
I downloaded it and copied it to a flash drive because I know for a fact that all
motherboards support this method so I'm going to select via Storage Device and then hit next.
On the left here it's showing all the storage drives connected to my computer. We want to
select the drive with our BIOS file on it which in my case is this 16GB flash drive
here and on the right we can see our new BIOS file, ROG-Strix-X470-F-Gaming-Asus-6042.cap
we'll select that file and now we're going to be asked if we want to read this file ?
Before we click 'Yes' here I should let you know when updating your BIOS there is a risk
of bricking your motherboard. If the power goes out while updating or if you feel like
it's taking too long and you restart your computer there is a VERY high chance your
motherboard will be rendered inoperable and you'll have no choice but to buy a new one.
If you have access to a UPS like mine here which stands for Uninterruptible
Power Supply I recommend plugging your PC into it so in the unlikely event the
power does go out your PC will be able to finish the update without a problem.
Now that we fully understand the risk involved we can select 'Yes' and to make sure we're
actually serious about updating it will ask us if we really want to do this? We really do
so we'll hit 'Yes' again and that will begin the update process. This usually takes a few
minutes so be patient and once it's done I need to click OK here and now our PC will
reboot and prompt us to enter setup one more time which will take us back into our BIOS.
Now we can re-enable our CPU overclock if we had one, enable our RAM's XMP and any other
custom options we may have previously had enabled. We can then go to Exit,
hit Save Changes and Reset and now our computer should boot back up into Windows just like normal.