Thursday, December 10th 2020
Ryzen 5000 Series Processor Support Comes to ASRock X370 Motherboards in Leaked BIOS Update
When AMD announced its 5000 series Ryzen processors, the company has noted that the new CPUs will be able to operate only on the 500 and 400 series chipsets, with a simple BIOS update. That means that millions of motherboards can install the latest CPUs with no problems. Today, we get to see something that is not a usual thing. ASRock has prepared a BIOS for its X370 Taichi motherboard, and it has been leaked at jzelectronic.de. The newly leaked BIOS is said to bring support for AMD's Ryzen 5000 series of processors codenamed Vermeer. Yes, you are reading that right. ASRock has found a way to bring Vermeer to the unsupported X370 platform.
Although impressive, you must note that the BIOS is in the alpha stage of development, which means that it is enriched with possible bugs and glitches, so it is not recommended for use for now. AMD is against this, and said for Tom's Hardware that "AMD has no plans to enable or support AMD Ryzen 5000 series on AMD 300 series chipsets." That means that ASRock has produced one-off software and it is still a question will the company further develop this new "P6.61" BIOS. You can download it at the jzelectronic.de website but proceed with caution.
Sources:
Tom's Hardware, Fritzchens Fritz (Image)
Although impressive, you must note that the BIOS is in the alpha stage of development, which means that it is enriched with possible bugs and glitches, so it is not recommended for use for now. AMD is against this, and said for Tom's Hardware that "AMD has no plans to enable or support AMD Ryzen 5000 series on AMD 300 series chipsets." That means that ASRock has produced one-off software and it is still a question will the company further develop this new "P6.61" BIOS. You can download it at the jzelectronic.de website but proceed with caution.
25 Comments on Ryzen 5000 Series Processor Support Comes to ASRock X370 Motherboards in Leaked BIOS Update
Aren't 300 and 400 series chips basically the same?
So they did not "find a way" but were just brave enough to port support against AMDs wishes...!?
Asrock do have a known history making things that are not official supported. Anyone remember asrock "Sky OC" feature? A feature would let you overclock lock intel cpus. Though it was promptly pulled down due to pressure from intel. I wonder if this would the same for Amd 300 series.
At least you got a serious upgrade path now from AM4 in general, ryzen 1x00 series all the way up to 5x00 series.
The time people spend writting comment wondering how this sorcery is achieved, they would be able to pull information how all 300, 400 and B550 chipsets are made by the same vendor using the same pinout. They would also find that the socket pinout is unchanged and that the general I/O of Ryzen MCU is the same as it was 3 or 4 years ago. Maybe then they would realize there is no physical limitation to achieve this even on A320 boards, other that uefi size limitation.
Like for example 945 series with core2 duo support www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/ConRoe1333-DVIH/index.asp#BIOS
Or 1156 with P67 (normally a 1155 chipset) www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/P67%20Transformer/index.asp
Or 775 with Core2 Duo, AGP and DDR1 support www.asrock.com/mb/via/775dual-vsta/
Or AMD 939 board with optional AM2 support www.asrock.com/mb/ULI/939Dual-SATA2/
AsRock deserves credit here for supporting years old boards with a BIOS update without official help from AMD. That is not the simplest undertaking ever. If you already have the board, and are interested in a better 6 core, then there would be no issue. Zen 3 pulls less power then zen 2, and just becausea motherboard uses the B350 chipset doesnt mean its VRMs cant handle zen 3 anymore then having X570 as a chipset means the VRMs can handle a OCed 5950x properly.
All I know is I'm glad we all made enough of a ruckus so my Ryzen 2500U laptop finally got its 3rd driver about 8 months in (fixing a couple of app compatibility and perf issues). AMD made the chips, and marketed them as AMD Ryzen and AMD Radeon Vega, it's AMD's responsibility for drivers. Even Intel stopped being so immature years ago, and that's a company that ditches sockets every 2 generations, even when there is 0% reason to or no HW incompatibility.
Also, I'm just waiting for support across the BAR.