Hi All.
I have decided I would like to flash my Z68 mainboards BIOS. Now I know people always say never flash unless you really, really have to. The main reasons I want to flash are that whilst my PC has no fatal problems there are a few smaller issues I have never been able to figure out which I thought could be related to the bios. The other main reason is that my mainboard is running a very, very old BIOS version and as I would also like to update to windows 10 soon I thought a more up to date BIOS could not do any harm and could maybe facilitate performance advantages.
My mainboard is the Z86X-UD4-B3 and it is currently running BIOS version F5!! So far as I am aware this is the oldest BIOS which even exists for this mainboard, it is no longer even listed on Gigabytes site and doesn't even support the oldest versions of Touch Bios.
I have looked at these tutorials and it seems pretty straight forward to do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ_hWeg_wF0
http://www.macbreaker.com/2012/01/how-to-update-your-bios-on-gigabyte.html
However as I want to be 100% sure I make no mistakes I have a couple of questions:
If I format my USB stick to FAT32 and put the BIOS file onto it, do I also need to change the boot order?
So far as I can tell from the tutorials if I use the Q-Flash system (which seems the best way to do things) then there is no need to change the boot order and the USB stick with the will get picked up automatically and my hard drives ignored. Is that correct?
Which BIOS version should I upgrade to? F10 or U1E?
On my mainboards downloads page (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3849#bios) the most recent version is U1E but that seems a little more complicated to upgrade to, and I was wondering if upgrading from such an old BIOS version may mean greater risk. On Gigabytes page it says the following, " When updating from legacy to UEFI, use only the utility attached to your BIOS file"... what exactly do they mean by that? Are they talking about if you are trying to flash from Windows? Or are there other steps involved in the Q-Flash?
It also says I need to remove Smart6, Dynamic Energy Saver, Smart TPM, and Touch BIOS. I know I don't have touch BIOS and so far as I can tell I don't think I have any of the other things either. I assume that if I look carefully through my current BIOS settings and don't see any of these it should be okay, and if I do find one then I just need to make sure it is disabled?
Can anyone tell me what the practical difference is between F10 and UEFI BIOS?
Is there an advantage/disadvantage to having one version over another? If it makes any difference the rest of my system is: Intel i7 2600K, GTX 580 and 16Gb RAM, SSDs for OS and HDDs for files.
Finally is there any other advice, tips or things I should watch out for not covered in the above linked tutorials?
I have made sure I have written down all my current BIOS settings (well taken pics) so I can set-up the new BIOS correctly should all my settings get wiped out. I will make sure I save/backup my current BIOS onto my USB stick using Q-Flash before I try flashing... although at this moment I am not completely sure if something did go wrong how I use that bkup file.
As I said, any suggestions or advice would be great!
Thanks All!
I have decided I would like to flash my Z68 mainboards BIOS. Now I know people always say never flash unless you really, really have to. The main reasons I want to flash are that whilst my PC has no fatal problems there are a few smaller issues I have never been able to figure out which I thought could be related to the bios. The other main reason is that my mainboard is running a very, very old BIOS version and as I would also like to update to windows 10 soon I thought a more up to date BIOS could not do any harm and could maybe facilitate performance advantages.
My mainboard is the Z86X-UD4-B3 and it is currently running BIOS version F5!! So far as I am aware this is the oldest BIOS which even exists for this mainboard, it is no longer even listed on Gigabytes site and doesn't even support the oldest versions of Touch Bios.
I have looked at these tutorials and it seems pretty straight forward to do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ_hWeg_wF0
http://www.macbreaker.com/2012/01/how-to-update-your-bios-on-gigabyte.html
However as I want to be 100% sure I make no mistakes I have a couple of questions:
If I format my USB stick to FAT32 and put the BIOS file onto it, do I also need to change the boot order?
So far as I can tell from the tutorials if I use the Q-Flash system (which seems the best way to do things) then there is no need to change the boot order and the USB stick with the will get picked up automatically and my hard drives ignored. Is that correct?
Which BIOS version should I upgrade to? F10 or U1E?
On my mainboards downloads page (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3849#bios) the most recent version is U1E but that seems a little more complicated to upgrade to, and I was wondering if upgrading from such an old BIOS version may mean greater risk. On Gigabytes page it says the following, " When updating from legacy to UEFI, use only the utility attached to your BIOS file"... what exactly do they mean by that? Are they talking about if you are trying to flash from Windows? Or are there other steps involved in the Q-Flash?
It also says I need to remove Smart6, Dynamic Energy Saver, Smart TPM, and Touch BIOS. I know I don't have touch BIOS and so far as I can tell I don't think I have any of the other things either. I assume that if I look carefully through my current BIOS settings and don't see any of these it should be okay, and if I do find one then I just need to make sure it is disabled?
Can anyone tell me what the practical difference is between F10 and UEFI BIOS?
Is there an advantage/disadvantage to having one version over another? If it makes any difference the rest of my system is: Intel i7 2600K, GTX 580 and 16Gb RAM, SSDs for OS and HDDs for files.
Finally is there any other advice, tips or things I should watch out for not covered in the above linked tutorials?
I have made sure I have written down all my current BIOS settings (well taken pics) so I can set-up the new BIOS correctly should all my settings get wiped out. I will make sure I save/backup my current BIOS onto my USB stick using Q-Flash before I try flashing... although at this moment I am not completely sure if something did go wrong how I use that bkup file.
As I said, any suggestions or advice would be great!
Thanks All!
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