Want to buy a i5 4690K but no z97 mobo seems to support it without BIOS updates

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ImmoralGod

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Jan 14, 2011
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So I have decided to buy a new computer. I was planning to use the i5 4690K CPU with an Asus Z97 A motherboard, but upon checking the CPU compatibility of this motherboard I was surprised to notice it won't support it until I perform a BIOS update - something I obviously can't do without a CPU that it supports with the original BIOS.

More surprising still, upon checking all the other manufacturers it seems all z97 mobos need to be flashed before supporting the Devil Canyon CPUs.

I am completely astonished by this situation. I mean the z97 boards were released to support overclocking at the same time the Haswell Refresh came out, and the only Haswell Refresh that support overclocking besides the crappy Pentium are these Devil Canyon CPUs. How come they didn't come prepared to handle them? Why else would anyone buy a z97 motherboard?

Does anyone have any suggestion about what I may do to solve this situation?

Edit: I forgot to thank everyone for the help!
 
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itsVance
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jkhoward

jkhoward

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Nov 24, 2011
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You should wait a few weeks until the motherboard manufacturers start shipping the motherboards with the latest BIOS installed. You will start seeing little advertisements on Newegg and Amazon saying "Supports new Devil's Canyon CPU" or something along those lines. If you are impatient you can always buy a low end processor, flash the BIOS and call it a day. Some motherboards have BIOS chips that you can pull out and put a new one in there. ASUS support has sent these to individuals in the past.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Go ahead and buy the ASUS Z97 A.
If it is fresh stock, it will come with the most recent bios.

Even if it does not have the latest bios, it should still run the i5-4690K sufficiently well to update the bios.
Better yet, the ASUS has EZflash2 which allows you to update the bios without a cpu.
You download the bios to a usb drive and put in a specific usb port.
A bios utility will do the updating. Unless I am mistaken, you do not need to have a working cpu to do this.
 
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itsVance

itsVance

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Jun 17, 2014
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You can buy one pre-made with a motherboard that supports devil's canyon & upgrade later.

According to this:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/71265-intel-core-i5-4690k-devils-canyon-22nm-haswell/?page=2

You might not notice much difference from whats out today
 
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Solution
geofelt

geofelt

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I tried to find specific documentation for YOUR motherboard.
I could not find what I was looking for there.
But, I found this description for the older asus p9x79 motherboard that states that you can enter the bios without a cpu:
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P9X79/
I would certainly hope that new motherboards would carry that capability forward.

You might enter your question on the asus support forum for a more authoritative answer.
 
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