Fry's selling a combo that doesn't work

[bythebay]

Fry's is selling a combo (http://www.frys-electronics-ads.com/ads/2009/05/01/42263/AMD-Phenom-II-X4-805-Processor-Gigabyte-MA74GM-S2-Motherboard) that doesn't work out of the box. It is an AMD Phenom II X4 805 with a Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2. Apparently the motherboard doesn't work with the socket AM3 processor until the BIOS is flashed. But it won't boot with the processor in. Thus, a combo that does not work. I spent many hours, and three trips to Fry's, on this. I'm going to return everything tomorrow and just order from NewEgg.

 

[megamanx00]

:lol: :lol:

That's pretty funny. Pretty messed up for whoever buys that but funny none the less. Anyway if it was me I would buy the cheapest AM2 CPU that would work on that board and then flash the BIOS. That MA74GM-S2 sure wouldn't be my board of choice though, but that's just me. Go to the egg and get yourself an ASRock board with the SB710 and an Athlon X3 720.

 

[jitpublisher]

It requires BIOS version F3. Frys may have stubbed their toe on this one for sure.
Probably trying to unload a bunch of boards they have had around for too long...that do not have the latest BIOS revision.
However, it is a pretty common problem that a lot of AMD buyers have found out the hard way since the new Phenoms have came out. Just because the CPU will plug into the socket on your board, and *should* work we have discovered is not always the case.
I feel for your pain, and I know how frustrating it can be. It took me also 2 trips to Frys to get a board with the correct bios revision for a PII920, as the combo deal they sold me did not work either! Don't remember exactly what board it was, but it was a Crossfire compatable Gigabyte board. I had to switch to another board, the MA78GM S2 board to get my processor to work. It is an inexpensive board like the one you are fooling around with, but it works great and overclocks suprisingly well, and it came with the lastest bios version.

 

[bilbat]

This is not a particularly uncommon situation, and is certainly not limited to Fry's. My DS5 came from NewEgg, along with an E0 Q9550 that its bios would not support. As more processors (and steppings) are released with micro-code revisions that require BIOS alterations, it is inevitable that MOBOs will remain 'in the channel', with BIOS unable to run the currently released CPUs. I stick to Intel CPUs, and keep a cheap Celeron in the box, just for the purpose of flashing upgrades without risk.

Sometimes, flashing with an unsupported chip will work - sometimes not; if you can't find someone on line who has done the exact same flash (same MOBO rev, same BIOS rev, same CPU & stepping) you are contemplating, you run the risk of 'bricking' the board, and requiring an RMA. (Which, by the way, is no big deal unless you're in an all-fired hurry - but every single RMA - and industry surces claim that more than 80% of RMAs are for no other reason than the user's ignorance - cost every one of us money. The manufacturer and the distributor both have to raise their prices to cover these costs...)

I love GB MOBOs - they're solid, offer excellent feature sets, and the UltraDurable business (though their temperature and impedance improvement claims are pure-d ditzy) results in a board you can put an HSF on without the ominous feeling that you are a half ounce of pressure away from a fatal 'crack'. If I had one concern about them, (besides the fact that they appear to run their web server off an old Apple IIe with 16K of RAM - slower than molasses) it would be that I think they're (quite similar to the car manufacturers) continuously coming out with a million models addressing every market niche they can identify. This both makes adequate support problematic, and means that the sales volume for any given model is insufficient to 'clear the channel' rapidly enough to prevent the 'unsupported chip' phenomenon from striking more and more users.