This board bricked itself... can I fix it? 

Given Jay's luck so far, my bets are on the cricket.

Hey Jay! I've also had a mobo completely fall over with a BIOS Flashback, considering it's supposed to be the saving grace, it's far from perfect. You can still save this board by manually programming the SPI Flash ROM (the BIOS chip), but it will need a programmer and appropriate SPI cables. I'd do it for you for free, but I'm in the UK. Still, standing offer, just in case that's no big deal for you. There's doubtless a lot of people in the US repair community who can do it as well. Stay cool!

Back in ancient times I had a decent little cheap board that I bricked when the firmware update went bad. My buddy had another one just like it so we swapped the bios chip into my dead board and it booted so I updated the firmware and it went fine. I then left it in ready to update mode, pulled the updated chip, put my bricked one in very carefully, and told it to update again. The old chip took the update and the board booted fine and ran great for a long time. Desperate times call for desperate measures, especially if you already have a identical board to swap with and want to take a chance. It saved me from having to swap all my installed gear onto the new board and he got to keep the donor board for something else.

All of October you should try to bring things back to life that you’ve killed throughout the year

Jay please make sure the USB drives are compatible with the board. My experience with older boards and flashback was that I needed a USB2 drive formatted as FAT32. Otherwise it would flash but not complete the flashback process. Not sure if this has changed with newer motherboards, but I wouldn't be surprised by the FAT32 formatting requirement.

For my first PC build, I purchased an ASUS ROG Strix B550-A Gaming motherboard and installed a Ryzen 5 5600x CPU. I watched a ton of tutorials, then formatted an old 8GB flash drive to FAT32 and downloaded the latest ASUS BIOS for that board from the ASUS website. Updating through the BIOS flashback option, I held my breath through the whole process. It worked!

Word is Jay's still looking for the cricket both at the shop, his house and in his dreams.

This is the reason why dual bios needs to be a thing for all motherboards not just the high end ones. Bricked BIOS no worries swap over to the secondary bios and salvage the borked one

I'm sure it's a hell of a lot of work but I'm loving my daily dose of Jay. You keep doing you man love the vids.

🤣 "SON OF A *BISCUIT!*" I love how Phil censors.

The motherboard be like: how many times do I need to teach you this lesson, old man?

I love these "can I fix it" videos because I learn a lot about how stuff works and what to do if it doesn't work for some reason! Plus, the sleuthing and d*cking around trying to find out what happened is always fun to watch!

It always amazes me how people can have such wildly different experiences with hardware. I've used ASUS's BIOS Flashback feature to fix what I thought was a bricked Z87 board, and updated the BIOS on a Z97 and 2 different Z490 boards with no issues what-so-ever. Having said that, I've never attempted it with only the 24-pin connected and no CPU/RAM. Never been brave enough to, and likely never will. Especially after seeing this.

Ive once read a rant from an ASUS employee about BIOS Flashback, the times he had to tell people to watch out if its a USB 3 capable port and to use FAT32, single partition, standard formating (Not quick), non-security lock and/or state LED USB stick made him want to strangle certain users and RU-vidrs. Your name was among the list XD

Interesting. I bought a Gigabyte B550i motherboard that required a bios update prior to installing a Ryzen 5600X. It's bios flashback feature worked poorly and bricked the board. I returned it and got the ASUS B550i motherboard, and its feature worked great the first time. I thought it was a Gigabyte issue, but I guess these bios flashback features are unreliable with ASUS also.

It’s pretty irritating that ASUS touts this feature on their motherboard line while they’re probably very aware how buggy it is because they know how many boards get RMA’d because of it . They’re just banking on the fact that it gets used very rarely so most people will buy the mobo because it has all these features but few of them will try to use that particular button. Don’t get me wrong, I love ASUS’ stuff, but all of these pc manufacturers do some dirty ass shit.

By this day, updating BIOS is the most intimidating thing for me to do (close second to watercooling, but I'm new at it). First there was MSI's "LiveUpdate", which had a GREAT idea of updating the bios right from the OS (killed my z97 mobo the instant I decided to give that thing a try... took me few weeks to recover). Then there was Gigabyte's "dual bios" with a main corrupted bios - dies in the middle of the reflash, recovers, then starts to behave crazy (my pc turned on itself somewhere near 4 am while I was sleeping. Then turned off. At that point I thought I was dreaming. NOPE. Turned on again in a few minutes...).

Good technique before BIOS Flashbacking is to clear the CMOS by removing the battery and hold the BIOS clear or short the BIOS CLR pads on the motherboard for 30 seconds. THEN, apply the BIOS Flashback. Avoids the halfway flash.

usually it flashes rapidly when it flashes the bios on asus board JayzTwoCents, heck i am pretty sure the bios never flashes and your board just has a 1 out of 100th chance to boot.

Very very interesting Jay. I've got 2 Asus MBs, both E-gaming both brands, team blue and red, and I've never had issues with their bios flashback feature. This is really unfortunate for you though so I feel the pain especially since it was for your daughter's PC build. Good luck going forward with it and thanks again for a great video. 👍🍻

The streak of videos in one week is absolutely staggering. Let’s appreciate the effort that goes into these videos.

the cricket smirking at Jay... watching at his failed attempts in fixing the board... at the end it lets out an evil laugh as it heads out into the wilderness...fully satisfied.

I'll be completely honest here. I never had issues with ASUS motherboards but my money is on the cricket.

For those that have almost the same problem as Jay: 1. Make sure the bios flashback button isn't being pressed by the I/O shield (technically only for the ones that have the removable I/O shield) that's what happened to my Asus ROG B550-i, the I/O shield cutout for the bios flashback button was not aligned properly, maybe off by the hundredths of a millimeter. (I wasn't the only one with this problem, it caused the bios flashback to be blinking indefinitely and system wouldn't never boot up). I grabbed a screwdriver and just make the hole a tiny bit bigger. 2. USB 2.0 drive works best for flashing, I had a 3.0 drive that wouldn't be used by the flashback, so I got a 2.0 drive and it worked like a charm, and don't forget to use flashback, you need the CPU at least in the motherboard (don't remember if you also need the ram).

Bathesda making PC parts now? "features" that make things completely unusable is their specialty

3:47 that bg sound gave me a heart attack and making me think, that's a sound coming from my MOBA.

Hey Jay, I own this motherboard and you have to have that jumper on one of the CPU power options for the board to work, so you probably were not clearing the CMOS there. I've always had ASUS boards and have always used the EZ Flash instead of the button on the back. A trend I've noticed is that ASUS boards really don't like when something goes wrong in UEFI/boot. I've had OC's go bad and then not be able to boot at UEFI defaults, and found best practice is to clear CMOS every time you have a UEFI/boot issue. Also, as others mentioned I would double check that your USB drive is FAT32 formatted.

In the good ol' days, the jumper to reset the BIOS was always located right next to the battery.

Jay, your videos are consistently informative and entertaining. Keep it up, man. One of the few remaining pc-tech channels I still watch.

Asus in its instructions, recommend to update the ME engine before updating the bios via bios flashback

I've had the opposite. Had 2 boards brick using the standard method of updating the BIOS as the boards didn't have BIOS Flashback. Never had a problem with boards that do have BIOS Flashback.

Jay: "Thats technically all you need. Wheres my power plug, I NEED a power plug"

Updating bios is the scariest thing in a PC build. I got anxious each time I update the bios it's Life and Death matter since I don't have UPS. 🥶

I had a very similar issue with a ROG Maximus Hero X. I tried everything I could, for hours. What finally got it to boot? I reseated everything then removed the CMOS battery... and it booted. IT MAKES NO SENSE, but it is what it is

Why not find the BIOS chip, pull it off, replace it with one that has a working one already flashed on it? Could make for a good video!

For me, doing the USB prep from Windows, to get after that into the BIOS and do the update is the safest way. Also, adding backup power is a must, especially in my country where blackouts are not always obvious to happen.

Have you tried changing the flashdrive? have you checked the file system type of the flashdrive as well? Just trying to help

With the 24 pin plugged in, short the green to a ground on the 24 pin to force the motherboard to power on state.

I've had the opposite experience with bios flashback. It's actually saved me a couple times. I updated a bios that actually caused a bunch of problems on a b550 board and I couldn't downgrade any other way. So I put my usb in with the right cap file and hit the button and waited. It took a really really long time both times I did it, but it did in fact work.

I flashed an asus bios with flashback earlier this year and it would only work with an older usb 2.0 flash drive. With a newer one the flashes were different and it did not actually flash. You can also get a clamp that clamps on top of the bios chip and flash a valid bios on from another PC via USB. I did that to a Dell server earlier this year and it did actually need to be powered on before it would let me flash. This ran the risk of sending too much current to the bios chip; though it did work.

Now I have that Evanescence song "Bring Me To Life" stuck in my head.

Happened thursday with my MSI x570 Tomahawk. I was a just a tad anoyed, hope relematiosn takes it back.

I had to do this with my Asus B550 board, as it shipped with a bios that wouldn't post with my 5800x and it worked fine. Had me freaking out at the time but it did the job.

Had that happen to me with a new build, b550 master and 5600x, took me a few days of flashing/renaming changing sticks, and un/mounting the CPU and cooler... Finally went and found a USB1 stick and put the bios on that and it worked.

Many times on an Asus motherboard after updating bios i have had to clear rtc ram by shorting the 2 pins next to the case pins for 5-10 seconds after turning off the power supply. Then everything works again. That's been with using the ezflash utility though, not the flashback feature.

in general i would recomend just avoiding the flash back on any board plus that way a g6900 got some use before being left in its box

Last board I had brick I ended up having to order another eeprom with the default bios on it, prying out the corrupted one, and dropping in the new one (it was a 20-pin chip irrc and had a socket). $30 chip is cheaper than a $230 mobo if all it needs is a new bios to unbrick it. I guess these days there's 2 eeproms/built-in backup as standard.

that flashback saved me when i got my 5600x and b550f-gaming wifi at 5k series ryzen launch

Next episode is going to a homage to Breaking Bad's Fly episode; Jay, Nick, and Phil tearing the place apart looking for the cricket

The next video should totally be a Breaking Bad Fly type of thing with Jay vs Cricket

Glad to see the daily content! Love the troubleshooting stuff!

I often find when motherboards turn stubborn and refuse to acknowledge your existence it is usually static (if nothing looks toasted). Jay seems to handle the board pretty freely, can't tell if he is wearing a tether. Maybe there is something in the bios flash chips / connectors / related componentry that is susceptible and that is why it is a common problem with their boards. Appreciate boards are a lot, lot harder to upset these days but when static does strike it can be an absolute pain. Might also be why flashing it over and over brings it back. Switching the power supply on and off can help ground out the static, so it might just be a random coincidence that it seems to help. Just an idea. I'm sure Jay knows this, but as it is less common these days maybe he didn't consider it.

“Huh, I wonder what this header does…” RTFM JAY!!

it'd be pretty cool if you could do a water cooling loop with AN lines that you'd use for cars

I like how Jay plugs power in and then just handles the mother board as if it's made out rubber .

Remove BIOS chip(s) from board, flash with a Raspberry Pi using appropriate hardware/software, then return chip(s) to board.

In my best sportscaster voice: I've gotta go with the cricket here. Back to you, Phil!

Have you tried a different usb thumb drive? Sometimes there are partitions with utilities installed on them. That's probably not it but who knows.

I'm genuinely amazed it didn't kick on when you smacked the table, that would've been the best fix ever.

I bricked my z370 maximus x hero board once through no fault of my own, it just happened during one of the microcode updates. I was able to get BIOS flashback to work but it's VERY finnicky with how long you hold the button and what the blinking lights need to be doing you should look into it deeper. Having said that, when I got my crosshair 8 impact and 5800x, I tried flashback to get the 5000 series compatible bios on there and it didn't work, luckily had a 2600 lying around so I just used that, but it can be hit or miss.

Love this troubleshooting content, Jay! Just some thoughts on this: USB drive formatted as FAT32 and not NTFS? You may also need to have CPU EPS 12V 4-pin plugged in on that ASUS BIOS - I believe some are set to fail POST if no EPS detected. Thanks for all you do!

Have you tried flashing the older bios back to it instead of the newer? I've had that work once of twice. Out of like 50. So not great results but maybe.

Finally a comp I might actually have a chance in... Being Australian most of the big tech channels don't include our big sunburnt -desert- country. I'm under no illusions that I'll win but at least having a chance I very much appreciate. Having recently lost my gaming PC I managed to cobble together and old FX 4100 with a r7 250 oc and it's.... Slow, to say the least.

This is why I have an old BIOS on my Maximus XI and none of my red usb ports work better than 2.0, if at all. I miss their older stuff. P5Q-PRO Turbo and q9550 DDR2 times!

" " "The only shot you miss is the one you take... and didn't.. 100% do." - Wayne Gretzky." - JayzTwoCents." - Michael Scott.

I had an Asus Crosshair motherboard with a gen 1 Ryzen that wouldn’t boot and had to use the BIOS flashback feature. It worked fine and afterwards I had a working pc. So it does work some of the time for some of us.

There is a thing that would help a ton in these situations and Asus is yet to discover it, it is called dual bios. :D As much as I like Asus boards (my last three motherboards were high-end Asus boards), this is a feature that I really miss.

Generally, my rule for BIOs updates is unless your Jay, or Gamers Nexus, or Hardware Unboxed, or any other tech enthusiusts that work with bleeding edge technology, there is normally not a reason to update your BIOs once you get your computer running! I've updated mine a few times cause it has trouble running my Memory above 3000MHz when its suppose to be 3200MHz and it never really helped with that issue (I think it something to do with the fact its a 1st Gen Ryzen motherboard)

This makes me feel like I chose a massive gamble with what I did with my PC. I had an 5900x and a b550 board from asus. I used the bios flashback to upgrade and it worked. I guess when you don't know innocuous actions you take have more weight than you realize

From the experience of people I know, Asus tends to brick way too often when flashing bioses. I think the BIOS should come on a standardized *socketed* (EP)ROM. So we can take it out and replace it.

I have never even had flashback work on an Asus board, in my experience the light blinks for 30 seconds and stops or never stops blinking. Both occurrences did not update the bios, bricked the system, and I had to take the battery out to restore it to factory. It's a total sham, only way to update the bios is with EZ flash or Q flash from within bios with CPU and RAM installed

Here's another video where Jay fails to fix something again. I can't even remember a time when Jay successfully fixed something anymore. Although, in his defense, Asus has been pretty trash lately with their motherboards.

Many usb sticks not recognized probably in many new boards when use flash back at least at Asus boards, so you can try many different usbs in another similar Asus board to be sure if work 100% with normal bios flash or flash back , when find one try it on this bricked board with older version of bios ( older version of bios with update ME) .

Intel: "Look at how easy it is to build an Intel System! Even a 6 year old can do it with mismatched parts!" Narrator: "It wasn't easy."

It's funny, I have an Asus Crosshair VI Hero, and especially in the early days of Ryzen you had a lot of bios updating to do. On several occasion the classic update method via bios would cause severe problems, so I had to use the bios flashback quite a bit. Luckily it never caused any problems for me.

You could always desolder the bios flash chip, extract the actual ROM you need from the bios provided by Asus, flash it using a programmer, and resolder the flash to the board. Or failing that, get an identical board, pull it's bios flash, clone it to the bricked flash and reinstall them into their respective boards.

Motherboards should have a socketed BIOS EEPROM like the good old days

heyy, at least you're rich and have tons of motherboards

If I had a different computer to test it on, I would, but I have to ask. Are the blacks really crushed in this video or is something funky with my puter?

Thanks Jay. I watched this video almost a year ago, now I'm using it.

Are you trying to jump to the most current bios or the one that shipped with it? Might of tried to jump ahead too many bios revisions and it didn't like that. Just my thought.

If you want Jay I have the tools to reprogram the bios chips directly. Unfortunately I live up by the Canadian border so that makes it difficult unless you want to ship it to and back. I would even be willing to verify that it works with just a low end processor installed with the barest minimum memory. Let me know if this would work for you.

I bet the cricket finds a mate and leaves before Jay finds it

Remember when the bios chip was socketed? It's a shame they don't bring that back.

CPU_OPT is a second cpu fan header, i use it for my other fan but i heard it's also designed to be used with pumps

I love your videos! I have learned so much from you! Thank you! But i also get so good laughs that I need. So love you have your daughter working on computers! Great quality time and education.

Little Enous Burdett : Gimmee faaav huuundrid oun da Crickit.....

Jay vs Cricket... With his luck on that motherboard... Jay wins over the cricket...

Not sure if you tried a different flash drive and re-downloaded the bios. That way you've eliminated all the other factors.

I thought you had to have the 8 pin cpu plugged in also

Four bricked boards? That cricket stands no chance...

I have used Asus bios flashback on multiple boards and board types (intel and AMD) and never had issues with it.

Try to flash a with another USB Stick, I had an MSI motherboard that did this from the m-flash function, then I changed the key and everything worked

I've had bios flashback screw me over on a MSI B450 Mortar Max and a Gigabyte Aorus Elite x570... so it's not just Asus. However, I was able to salvage the X570 elite and the B450 Mortar Max using the clear cmos jumper and then flashing with EZ flash inside the motherboard but the Mortar Max gave up the ghost a few boots later. Fortunately, both instances occured during Amazon's return period so I was able to get replacements fairly quickly.

It is believed he's still there trying to find that cricket to this day. Poor Jay.

Jayz, the cricket wants to help you get the motherboard working again! Give it a chance! Also, it's sponsored by World of Warships!

I just encountered the same issue with ROG STRIX B660-G motherboard !!

Geez Jay you didn't screw the Kids computer up? You're going to have a real mean teen there.

I just read that you might need to use an older usb 2.0 flash to get it to accept the bios. I'm new to all this but I would give it a shot if it was my mb. You have me worried, I just got mine in yesterday, asus b550f with a ryzen 5 5600x :)

Just had my MSI MOBO brick itself while I was trying to flash a new BIOS to fix some Ryzen/X570 USB 2.0 incompatibility issues, so this was interesting to have show up in my recommended again. I would have used M-Flash from within the BIOS, but the damn thing wouldn't recognize the BIOS file to update it.