Motherboards should work independtntly of a CPU in it or not. Otherwise, like these people and many others, you're stuck.

Brit90 - Motherboards should work independently of a CPU in it? What does that mean? This is not new to the PC world. Intel-based motherboards have sometimes needed a BIOS update for newly released CPUs to work in them. I have never seen Intel offer a "boot kit" to fix the problem like AMD is doing.

Far too many consumers are not knowledgeable enough to understand the potential incompatibility out of the box (from out of date UEFI). Even fewer have spare CPUs available to facilitate emergency UEFI updates in cases like this. A really good solution to this could be a jumper on the motherboard that boots the board into UEFI update mode where a valid UEFI on a flash drive plugged into a specific port is all that is required to update. No CPU, no RAM, no anything other than the correct UEFI and the power connected correctly. Its kind of sad that there was no foresight to enable some kind 'fail into setup' mode for situations like this. If a UEFI update can fix this I find it hard to believe there was no way to future proof incompatibility into a safe state.

nosirrahx:

A really good solution to this could be a jumper on the motherboard that boots the board into UEFI update mode where a valid UEFI on a flash drive plugged into a specific port is all that is required to update. No CPU, no RAM, no anything other than the correct UEFI and the power connected correctly.

This.

nosirrahx:

Far too many consumers are not knowledgeable enough to understand the potential incompatibility out of the box (from out of date UEFI). Even fewer have spare CPUs available to facilitate emergency UEFI updates in cases like this. A really good solution to this could be a jumper on the motherboard that boots the board into UEFI update mode where a valid UEFI on a flash drive plugged into a specific port is all that is required to update. No CPU, no RAM, no anything other than the correct UEFI and the power connected correctly. Its kind of sad that there was no foresight to enable some kind 'fail into setup' mode for situations like this. If a UEFI update can fix this I find it hard to believe there was no way to future proof incompatibility into a safe state.

You expect a user, that is stuck with this problem and uses AMD hotline, to understand that procedure? Your faith in average user is astonishing 🙂 edit: actually, best solution for this problem is not to buy AMD board since even when it works, some games just cause a BSOD after some time. What AMD should honestly say is: don't buy our motherboards, buy ASUS xyz because there is no problem with it even if their BIOS not supported by us. you can find Jayz2cents video on this issue (on YT) PS. I really do like your proposition thou. It would be useful to advanced users.

Considering there is hardly any difference on the CPU side, I'm a bit surprised people are getting unbootable systems. Maybe their systems are booting, but without graphics support? If they were depending on the IGP, I can see why they might think their system isn't working. Regardless, this does seem to be a pretty annoying situation. Haha maybe what AMD (or really, motherboard manufacturers since this is partially their fault) could do is just ship customers an A6-9500E, just to get their system running and up-to-date. It's not like they're ever going to sell those at this rate.

gx-x:

You expect a user, that is stuck with this problem and uses AMD hotline, to understand that procedure? Your faith in average user is astonishing 🙂

If they know how to build a PC, I don't think that 1 extra step is too unrealistic, if it were given to the user as a separate package.

I was actually wondering about this very thing - how older (non-flashed) AM4 boards would handle Raven Ridge? I was contemplating using a 2400G on an extra B350 board that I have as a light gaming PC, but was wondering how I would go about flashing it without a workable CPU. Of course in my case I could just use my 1800X to get things up and running, although I'd need to take apart my current primary gaming rig to do it.

schmidtbag:

Haha maybe what AMD (or really, motherboard manufacturers since this is partially their fault) could do is just ship customers an A6-9500E, just to get their system running and up-to-date. It's not like they're ever going to sell those at this rate.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/264097-amd-shipping-free-processors-customers-address-apu-firmware-update-issue It seems that that's indeed what AMD is doing here. The boot kit that they're offering is a A6-9500.

D3M1G0D:

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/264097-amd-shipping-free-processors-customers-address-apu-firmware-update-issue It seems that that's indeed what AMD is doing here. The boot kit that they're offering is a A6-9500.

That is just slightly funny.

D3M1G0D:

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/264097-amd-shipping-free-processors-customers-address-apu-firmware-update-issue It seems that that's indeed what AMD is doing here. The boot kit that they're offering is a A6-9500.

lol wow... I actually wasn't really serious, but that's pretty cool that people are getting a free CPU. Not sure what they're going to do with it after the patch though... maybe buy another motherboard to build for a basic smart TV? It ought to be good enough for that.

schmidtbag:

lol wow... I actually wasn't really serious, but that's pretty cool that people are getting a free CPU.

You, sir have a unique ability of seeing into the future!...:D