Ryzen 5000 Series Processor Support Comes to ASRock X370 Motherboards in Leaked BIOS Update

[AleksandarK]

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.


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[ebivan]

Wow, "they found a way"...?
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...!?

 

[ratirt]

Wow, "they found a way"...?
Aren'd 300 and 400 series Chips basically the same?
So they did not find a way but were just brave enough to port suppport against AMDs wishes...!?

No really. AMD has never said that the 300 series boards can't work with the new processor but are not being supported. It has been proven some time ago that the 300 series can work and identify the new 5000 series CPUs correctly. If you decide to use the 300 series board with the new CPUs from AMD and if something happens or the CPU will be damaged or whatever reason will there be when it stops working, you can't put blame on AMD since you have done this knowing the risk. It's like OC. If you OC with exceedingly high voltage and you burn the god damn CPU that's on you. Just an example.

 

[Haile Selassie]

Wow, "they found a way"...?
Aren'd 300 and 400 series Chips basically the same?
So they did not find a way but were just brave enough to port suppport against AMDs wishes...!?

One should always assume tech media can either not resist clickbaitery or are downright uneducated in the subject.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

That is impressive makes me wonder if there would be b350 support too.

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.

 

[Jism]

That is impressive makes

No it's not. There's not much difference in between the 4x0 series and 3x0 series. The chipset is housed inside the CPU and no longer the board. There could be some signalling issues perhaps when going to PCI-E 4.0 but thats about it. AMD has stated that it does'nt offer support for older series as the 3x0 but vendors are "free" of choice to still do it if they desire.

At least you got a serious upgrade path now from AM4 in general, ryzen 1x00 series all the way up to 5x00 series.

 

[Haile Selassie]

It's the year 2020. Information can be pulled in a second.
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.

 

[Tom Yum]

Yeah boy, was hoping Asrock did this (they were one of the earliest to bring Matisse support to X370 which allowed me to run 3900X on my X370 Taichi, has been absolutely rock solid). I'm on the fence about whether I'll upgrade to 5900X, but nice to know that I can without a motherboard purchase. When was the last time you could run 4 generations of Intel processor on the same mobo?

 

[R0H1T]

No it's not. There's not much difference in between the 4x0 series and 3x0 series. The chipset is housed inside the CPU and no longer the board. There could be some signalling issues perhaps when going to PCI-E 4.0 but thats about it. AMD has stated that it does'nt offer support for older series as the 3x0 but vendors are "free" of choice to still do it if they desire.

At least you got a serious upgrade path now from AM4 in general, ryzen 1x00 series all the way up to 5x00 series.

Um what, what do you mean by that

 

[ebivan]

He means that Ryzen CPUs are SoCs, which can function without the 300, 400 or 500 Series "Chip(set)" entirely. And he is right.

 

[Haile Selassie]

He means that Ryzen CPUs are SoCs, which can function without the 300, 400 or 500 Series "Chip(set)" entirely. And he is right.

QFT

 

[ShurikN]

That is impressive makes me wonder if there would be b350 support too.

Probably, but B350 boards are mediocre at best, I personally wouldn't put any Zen3 cpu in one of those.

 

[R0H1T]

He means that Ryzen CPUs are SoCs, which can function without the 300, 400 or 500 Series "Chip(set)" entirely. And he is right.

Yes that bit I already know, except the part about chipset which sounded confusing. It really doesn't have anything to do with the SoC part.

 

[hojnikb]

That is impressive makes me wonder if there would be b350 support too.

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.

Yeah, asrock had plenty of quirky boards in their past.
Like for example 945 series with core2 duo support https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/ConRoe1333-DVIH/index.asp#BIOS
Or 1156 with P67 (normally a 1155 chipset) https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/P67 Transformer/index.asp
Or 775 with Core2 Duo, AGP and DDR1 support https://www.asrock.com/mb/via/775dual-vsta/
Or AMD 939 board with optional AM2 support https://www.asrock.com/mb/ULI/939Dual-SATA2/

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

No it's not. There's not much difference in between the 4x0 series and 3x0 series. The chipset is housed inside the CPU and no longer the board. There could be some signalling issues perhaps when going to PCI-E 4.0 but thats about it. AMD has stated that it does'nt offer support for older series as the 3x0 but vendors are "free" of choice to still do it if they desire.

At least you got a serious upgrade path now from AM4 in general, ryzen 1x00 series all the way up to 5x00 series.

People here, in all their fedora tipping "whel ACHTUALLLY" euphoria, seem to forget that AMD never made AGESA code for the 300 series, and putting that code on a 300 series motherboard without AMD's help is not as simple as clicking and dragging.

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.

Probably, but B350 boards are mediocre at best, I personally wouldn't put any Zen3 cpu in one of those.

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.

 

[Kohl Baas]

AFAIK, the blame is not on AMD on this. They support what they have to. Anything else fall upon the motherboard vendors because it's their choice to make. Why? Because it's their sellings that can be hurt by it.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

AFAIK, the blame is not on AMD on this. They support what they have to. Anything else fall upon the motherboard vendors because it's their choice to make. Why? Because it's their sellings that can be hurt by it.

AMD supplies the microcode to make the updates possible, if they choose to not supply code for the 300 series officially then the blame is on them. Board makers are no more responsible for makign these code updates thmselves then they are writing their own GPU drivers for AMD graphic cards. This was discussed at length earlier this year, AMD sold AM4 as having "4 years of support" and cant seem to support that for either consumers OR their board partners.

 

[jeremyshaw]

AMD supplies the microcode to make the updates possible, if they choose to not supply code for the 300 series officially then the blame is on them. Board makers are no more responsible for makign these code updates thmselves then they are writing their own GPU drivers for AMD graphic cards. This was discussed at length earlier this year, AMD sold AM4 as having "4 years of support" and cant seem to support that for either consumers OR their board partners.

Yeah, expecting vendors to write drivers is scummy. Which is why AMD did exactly that with their laptop Ryzen chips until FEB2019. This was contrary to their previous stance of providing native driver support for laptops GPUs (before Ryzen launched, that is). AMD even went as far as publicly shifting blame onto OEMs for not making drivers quickly enough.

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.

 

[_JP_]

Today, we get to see something that is not a usual thing.

This is usual once its ASRock that we are talking about.
Also, I'm just waiting for support across the BAR.

 

[TechLurker]

I'm not surprised given that the X370 Taichi was reviewed as "overengineered", serving as AsRock's flagship for the new Ryzens at the time. It makes sense that it could likely support Zen 3 all the way up and down the stack; only lacking PCIe 4.0 capability. It'd be great if AsRock can get this to work; I have two of them that could use this for a final upgrade. Add in ReBAR support and it should be just peachy for a future GPU upgrade as-needed.

 

[Final_Fighter]

b350 can support ryzen 5000 series. Also asrock has bioses on the website that can be cross flashed from some of the b450 boards to there b350/x370/a320 boards and work normally. ive done it but sense i get so much flack for this sort of thing i just dont bother posting it.

 

[Jeager]

Im a bit sceptical, even if it works frequency or bios option will be limited right ?

 

[hv43082]

Yes! Please let this bios make it to full release. Keep my 3 yo X370 Taichi alive longer. Now only if I can find the 5900X anywhere.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

About time the OG Ryzen X370 chipset gets some attention. Nice, ASRock!

 

[hojnikb]

Im a bit sceptical, even if it works frequency or bios option will be limited right ?

Why would it be? B450 is literaly B350 with different firmware. It's the same silicon. So if a board design just swapped chipsets and didn't do anything else, you could theoretically easily crossflash without issue.