I recently had a client with a gaming computer that wanted several hardware items upgraded including RAM, Video Card, Hard Disk and CPU. The custom made pc was running on a Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4 mother board. The RAM, Video and Drive upgrades where fairly straight forward however the CPU was much more of a challenge.
The ASRock – Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4 bios version to start out with was version 2.10 as seen in the screen shot below.
Per the instructions on the ASRock webpage the process was supposed to be simple. It wasn’t. As there was no direct path to upgrade version 2.2 to 5.5 I had to upgrade in a series of steps. I had to upgrade from 2.2 to 3.0 then to 3.5 then to 5.1 then finally to 5.5 each with a reboot between steps. Below I will list the steps I used to get the BIOS updated to the latest version successfully in case anyone else runs into the same problem.
Format a USB key with FAT32
Steps to update the Bios
1. Find a USB key thumb drive and format it with FAT32 (not a quick format)
2. Determine your current bios version
3. Go to this page and look at the available BIOS versions
4. Carefully read the table (starting from the bottom) and work your way up. You will likely have to download several zip files the first time you try this process.
5. Unzip each zip file and store the contents on the USB drive from the first step (All of the bios files can be stored on the drive at the same time)
6. Boot the system into the SETUP/BIOS settings (for this machine using F2 key)
7. Insert the USB key then Navigate to the TOOL menu and down to the Instant Flash option
8. If the file is not found or you get “no image file detected ” try a different USB port. (On this machine only the USB ports on the Front of the pc found the files)
9. The Instant Flash will read the USB drive to find available files.
10. Select the next highest bios version file and let it go through the process of upgrading. Do Not Power Off the pc during the upgrade.
11. Reboot the machine and go the upgrade steps again until you reach your desired BIOS version
Updated bios on Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4
If all went well with the above steps you will end up with the latest bios. (At the time of this writing version 5.5 is the latest).
As the early bios versions did not support the AMD Ryzen 5 3600x 6-Core Processor but the new 5.5 version does, the new CPU can now be installed. You can see from the screen shot below the pc is now running the latest Bios version with the new AMD Ryzen 5 3600x 6-Core Processor
There may be other ways to fix this issue but “IT Fixed it for me”. Please post any comments below.
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