How do I Get a Ryzen 5000 Supported Board Without an Older CPU?

daviden · November 8, 2020

I'm planning on getting the Ryzen 7 5800X (when it is in stock), and I understand that basically no motherboard exists right now that natively supports it or the other 5000 series chips. I know that you have to get either a B550 or X570 chipset and update the bios. The problem is that I don't have any old AMD CPUs to throw in to do the update. I've heard that there are boards that support updates without a CPU installed, but I'm not familiar with how to locate those.

This is a board that I saw was recommended:

https://www.newegg.com/msi-mag-b550-tomahawk/p/N82E16813144326?&quicklink=true

What is the best course of action to get the 5800X working in this? Otherwise is there a better course of action?

Lurick · November 8, 2020

It's got a BIOS Flashback button the back so you just download the latest BIOS from MSI and put it on a USB drive (following instructions for formatting the drive correctly of course) and then connect up power, plug in the USB drive, and turn on the board and hit the Flashback button and it will update the BIOS without a CPU or memory even needing to be installed.

daviden · November 8, 2020

Just now, Lurick said:

It's got a BIOS Flashback button the back so you just download the latest BIOS from MSI and put it on a USB drive (following instructions for formatting the drive correctly of course) and then connect up power, plug in the USB drive, and turn on the board and hit the Flashback button and it will update the BIOS without a CPU or memory even needing to be installed.

Excellent, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks!

Lurick · November 8, 2020

Just now, daviden said:

Excellent, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks!

Yah, it's not on every board but that one has it. If you look at this picture you'll see the bottom left most USB is circled with a bolder outline, that's where your USB with the new BIOS plugs into before you hit the button.

Spoiler

daviden · November 8, 2020

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

Yah, it's not on every board but that one has it. If you look at this picture you'll see the bottom left most USB is circled with a bolder outline, that's where your USB with the new BIOS plugs into before you hit the button.

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