Hosed my mobo during BIOS update

[dustyjamessutton]

I just hosed my motherboard during a BIOS update. It was an ASUS M4A78T-E. I will be ordering a new motherboard tonight, and just wondering if Gigabyte is a good brand? I love ASUS, but sometimes I need a little variety. I also will be ordering the AMD Phenom 2 X4 965 Black Edition processor. I already have everything else, and everything else works just fine. I have 4 gigs of OCZ Platinum DDR3 memory, an OCZ 700W power supply, a Radeon HD 4770 vga card, and an ASUS Xonar Essence ST sound card, along with 2 sata hard drives, and a case to put everything in. Anyway, just need to know if Gigabyte is good, or should I stick to ASUS? And if anyone recommends a good MOBO. I would like to stick around 250 to 300 bucks on the mobo and cpu.

[Skrying]

http://techreport.com/motherboard+chipset/

[JustAnEngineer]

$100+7½ GA-880GMA-UD2H
$105+8 GA-870A-UD3
$110+8 GA-880GA-UD3H
$135+0 GA-890GPA-UD3H
All of those have the SB850 southbridge, 6 GB/s SATA and USB3.

Have you considered the Phenom II X6 1055T? You can get it with a couple of similar motherboards tonight. MSI 870A-G54 or MSI 890GXM-G65

[dustyjamessutton]

Awesome. I ordered the Gigabtye 880GA-UD3H mobo as well as an AMD Phenom 2 X4 965 Black Edition processor. The mobo advertises compatibility with 125W CPU's, and the processor I ordered is a 140W CPU. However, after reviewing the list of compatible processors on Gigabyte's website, this mobo will support my 140W cpu just fine. Looking forward to a faster processor, as my old cpu was only an 810 processor, and this one is the 965. Now I just need to save up for some SATA3 hard drives to take advantage of 6Gbps transfer rates.

[just brew it!]

Are you absolutely certain the mobo is truly dead? Have you tried resetting the CMOS? Have you tried any recovery procedures described in the manual and/or on Asus' web site?

[Raskaran]

During normal BIOS update recovery bootblock part of it is not flashed, even if you can't see anything or the mobo does not beep you propably can still reflash it properly. Worser if you used BIOS from other model.

[potatochobit]

if you just messed up the bios u can probably fix that with a thumb drive

but if you mean hosed as in it caught fire and melted, maybe not.

gigabyte is great. asus is generally good too.

[dustyjamessutton]

I tried removing the battery and clearing the cmos and that didn't work. It won't even post, and it just keeps rebooting itself before anything ever appears on the screen. I may have downloaded the wrong BIOS image. That is about the only explanation I can think of. But it was time for a new mobo anyway, as SATA2 is now obsolete, and it encouraged me to upgrade my processor as well. Well, they call it ASUS EZ Flash, and it was easy, but the end results weren't what I expected. I won't be flashing the BIOS on my new motherboard unless I have a good reason, i.e. processor upgrade, but the Phenom 2 X4 BE 965 will work with the stock bios image on my new mobo.

[JustAnEngineer]

I had a bad BIOS flash with one of my ASUS motherboards (M3A78-EM), and I was able to re-flash back to the old version to fix it.

[anotherengineer]

My buddy also had a bad flash on an AM2+ asus mobo. I have had good luck with gigabyte mobo's, although I do find they seem to overvolt everything slightly.

You can undervolt your 965 quite a bit to save power and reduce heat, my 955 runs stable at stock speeds with 1.200V no problem.

Good Luck

[grantmeaname]

That really seems like it would be possible to repair. Moreover, SATA2 is nowhere near obsolete. The fastest SSDs in the world hit about 340Mbps, just a tiny bit over the limit of SATA2. Hard drives may never saturate it.

[just brew it!]

Are you getting a message about a bad BIOS checksum?

That motherboard supposedly has a BIOS recovery utility built-in. See page 3-6 of the manual (section on ASUS CrashFree BIOS 2).

SATA2 is nowhere near being obsolete. Unless you're using high-end SSDs, SATA2 isn't a bottleneck.

[dustyjamessutton]

Well, I got my new mobo and processor and installed them. I'm a little confused about the RAID on this motherboard though. The mobo is a Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H Rev 2.0 and I didn't need to load any drivers for the RAID when installing Windows 7. Somewhere in the BIOS it mentioned something about OnBoard SATA3 Raid controller, which I enabled. Wondering if this mobo has true hardware raid, and not FakeRaid. Also, the Phenom 2 X4 965 BE is amazing, but dang it keeps the CPU fan howling loudly whenever I play a game. I guess with a 140W Thermal Envelope, I should expect quite a bit of heat.

[Flying Fox]

Somewhere in the BIOS it mentioned something about OnBoard SATA3 Raid controller, which I enabled. Wondering if this mobo has true hardware raid, and not FakeRaid.

Vendors would call it "hardware assisted RAID", which is essentially FakeRaid. You get what you pay for. If you want true hardware RAID, pay for a discrete controller (not the cheap ones either).

[JustAnEngineer]

If you want true hardware RAID, pay for a discrete controller (not the cheap ones either).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816103098
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/C ... /SAS-5805/
This doesn't even support 6 GB/s SATA3 yet.

[just brew it!]

Wondering if this mobo has true hardware raid, and not FakeRaid.

Not a chance. A decent RAID card costs more than most desktop motherboards!

[Flying Fox]

If you want true hardware RAID, pay for a discrete controller (not the cheap ones either).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816103098
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/C ... /SAS-5805/
This doesn't even support 6 GB/s SATA3 yet.

Won't be a problem until >300MB/s SSDs are more common?