BIOS Flashback on NZXT N7 B550 not working

[bakateo]

I'm building a PC for my brother and realized that his Mobo needed an BIOS Update. 

He is using a ryzen 5600x btw. so I can't boot it into the BIOS and need to use the Flashback function.

 

The problem is, the Mobo isn't responding to any attempt to update it.

I downloaded the BIOS file from the nzxt website and followed the instructions step by step, but it still won't work. The flashback button should start blinking after holding it for 3 secs, but it doesn't. 

 

Thinking about sending it back, but I thought I should at least try my luck and ask here.

 

Does anyone have an idea or maybe solution in mind? 

[Hinjima]

25 minutes ago, bakateo said:

I'm building a PC for my brother and realized that his Mobo needed an BIOS Update. 

He is using a ryzen 5600x btw. so I can't boot it into the BIOS and need to use the Flashback function.

 

The problem is, the Mobo isn't responding to any attempt to update it.

I downloaded the BIOS file from the nzxt website and followed the instructions step by step, but it still won't work. The flashback button should start blinking after holding it for 3 secs, but it doesn't. 

 

Thinking about sending it back, but I thought I should at least try my luck and ask here.

 

Does anyone have an idea or maybe solution in mind? 

is the PSU on?

[bakateo]

On 3/4/2023 at 6:48 PM, Hinjima said:

is the PSU on?

Yes, it's on

[papajo]

17 minutes ago, bakateo said:

Yes, it's on

you said you followed the instructions but just to be sure is the USB with the bios in this slot? 




Also did you decompress the rar/zip file and have the uncompressed bios file on the root directory of your USB? (so not inside a folder etc) ?

 

[bakateo]

38 minutes ago, papajo said:

you said you followed the instructions but just to be sure is the USB with the bios in this slot? 




Also did you decompress the rar/zip file and have the uncompressed bios file on the root directory of your USB? (so not inside a folder etc) ?

 

I reformated the stick into a fat32 stick and then did it as you mentioned. Unziped the rar/zip and only transfered the BIOS file that came out of it onto the stick. Used the slot you marked and pushed the bios flashback button.

I tried that procedure with two different sticks.

 

[papajo]

2 minutes ago, bakateo said:

I reformated the stick into a fat32 stick and then did it as you mentioned. Unziped the rar/zip and only transfered the BIOS file that came out of it onto the stick. Used the slot you marked and pushed the bios flashback button.

I tried that procedure with two different sticks.

 

take the battery out (I know it has a button for that but if you would like to hear me out then do what I kindly request) take the PSU out of the mains outlet and push the boot button of the case (or short the boot pins on the mobo if its not on a case) for a few seconds to deplete any remaining current in caps and what not wait for 10 minutes put the batter back in connect the psu to the mains boot the PC just to hear the fans or what not and then before its posts or whatever hold the power button continuously until it manually shuts down. 

Now do the same as you just said (puting the stick on the right port) and then hold the BIOS FLASHBACK button for a while if nothing happens try to just click it. 

[bakateo]

10 minutes ago, papajo said:

take the battery out (I know it has a button for that but if you would like to hear me out then do what I kindly request) take the PSU out of the mains outlet and push the boot button of the case (or short the boot pins on the mobo if its not on a case) for a few seconds to deplete any remaining current in caps and what not wait for 10 minutes put the batter back in connect the psu to the mains boot the PC just to hear the fans or what not and then before its posts or whatever hold the power button continuously until it manually shuts down. 

Now do the same as you just said (puting the stick on the right port) and then hold the BIOS FLASHBACK button for a while if nothing happens try to just click it. 

Thank you! I'll do that

[papajo]

2 minutes ago, bakateo said:

Thank you! I'll do that

Also make sure a) you renamed the file to creative.rom

b) nothing is plugged on the motherboard (CPU RAM ETC) 

[-rascal-]

1 hour ago, bakateo said:

I reformated the stick into a fat32 stick and then did it as you mentioned. Unziped the rar/zip and only transfered the BIOS file that came out of it onto the stick. Used the slot you marked and pushed the bios flashback button.

I tried that procedure with two different sticks.

 

 

Did you rename the BIOS file too?

If you are updating the BIOS through the UEFI BIOS menu, do you don't need to rename it.

However, if you ARE using the BIOS Flashback button, you need to rename it to creative.rom

 

 

[Godlygamer23]

1 hour ago, papajo said:

b) nothing is plugged on the motherboard (CPU RAM ETC) 

You can have the CPU and RAM installed into the motherboard and use BIOS Flashback. It just isn't a requirement.

[papajo]

10 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

It just isn't a requirement.

It is not a requirement but since there is an issue with it working it is better to try it this way because a component other than the mobo might be malfunctioning or even shorting something so in that way we know that it will be on the mobo (or psu) and not on other components.  

[Godlygamer23]

1 minute ago, papajo said:

It is not a requirement but since there is an issue with it working it is better to try it this way because a component other than the mobo might be malfunctioning or even shorting something so in that way we know that it will be on the mobo (or psu) and not on other components.  

Even with those components present, they don't get any power. The motherboard strictly relies on 5VSB from the power supply during this process, so even if other components were malfunctioning, it wouldn't change anything because they're not being used. I also personally doubt those components are shorting anything, or there's a short somewhere that would be caused(or completed?) by those components. 

[papajo]

2 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Even with those components present, they don't get any power. The motherboard strictly relies on 5VSB from the power supply during this process, so even if other components were malfunctioning, it wouldn't change anything because they're not being used. I also personally doubt those components are shorting anything, or there's a short somewhere that would be caused(or completed?) by those components. 

The CPU can short the entire mobo even if its fine just because its over pressed cause of the cooler being screwed tighter anyway I consider this to be the best practice you are welcome not to follow it. 

[Godlygamer23]

28 minutes ago, papajo said:

The CPU can short the entire mobo even if its fine just because its over pressed cause of the cooler being screwed tighter anyway I consider this to be the best practice you are welcome not to follow it. 

That's fine, but you shouldn't just do a bunch of things at once because you won't know the root cause because too many variables were changed at once.

[papajo]

3 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

That's fine, but you shouldn't just do a bunch of things at once because you won't know the root cause because too many variables were changed at once.

What I proposed is elimination of potential error vectors not adding vectors (what you mean by adding a bunch of things at once) so yea it will do this exact thing make sure that I get faster to the root of the problem. 

[Godlygamer23]

1 minute ago, papajo said:

What I proposed is elimination of potential error vectors not adding vectors (what you mean by adding a bunch of things at once) so yea it will do this exact thing make sure that I get faster to the root of the problem. 

So, if you remove the CPU, RAM, and graphics card at once, and the fault goes away...which one was causing the fault? Especially if it's not repeatable after reinstalling individual parts, which absolutely does happen. That's the major flaw in your proposal in my opinion. Now of course, you have to balance it if there's a good chance a part could be destroyed in the troubleshooting process.

[papajo]

29 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

So, if you remove the CPU, RAM, and graphics card at once, and the fault goes away...which one was causing the fault? Especially if it's not repeatable after reinstalling individual parts, which absolutely does happen. That's the major flaw in your proposal in my opinion. Now of course, you have to balance it if there's a good chance a part could be destroyed in the troubleshooting process.

The goal is to update the bios.
The problem is that flashback doesnt seem to work. 
this automagically puts the fault (if we ignore user error ) about 50% to the PSU 40% Mobo and 10% anything else. 

By removing anything else I now have to worry about the PSU and the mobo whcih are easy to troubleshoot (either they work at this stage aka at flashing the bios) or they dont. (that's attempt no1) 

So I will find out simply by testing an other PSU if bios flash fails (that's attempt no2) 

so in two steps I know what's wrong. 

If it happens to work then the issue is "anything else" so I go by checking one by one which component (or connection to the component e.g pins messed up in pcie slot or broken sata slot etc) is at fault by testing it out it would be most likely the RAM then the GPU then the CPU then the sata drive in that order. 


But it is highly unlikely (if the issue was that 10% aka anything else) for the PC to work properly because "anything else" can not just  short the mobo just to the point where it cant make flashbacks if it was the reason (it being cpu ram or GPU or SSD) then it surely wouldnt work properly in general.  or at all


In other words I focus on what has 90% chance to be the failure and then if needed I test the 10% chance. 

Worse case scenario (when the problem is on that 10% chance issue so anything but the mobo and PSU) I will lose 2 steps but in most of the time (90%) I will save not checking out all the other steps needed for that 10% which are more than 2 steps quite a lot more. 


Ok you may now say hey how do you know that the percentages are 50% PSU 40% mobo and 10% anything else? 

I dont really but I have like 20+ years of experience with fixing hardware so I more or less know what is more likely to be at fault  maybe in actuality (like in all systems I had to fix that had a similar problem) the distribution of fault wasnt exactly 50%PSU 40% mobo 10%anything else but it sure is more or less on that e.g 40% PSU 40% mobo 20% anything else or whatever. **


**EDIT obviously the above "ballparking" of the failure culprits refer to this or similar problems, obviously this can change depending on the nature of the issue e.g if the was to be "the PC boots but monitor turns black after posting" the distribution would drastically change. 

[bakateo]

So, I disassembled the pc as @papajo suggested it. 
As I was removing the cpu cooler, I realized the cpu wasn't on the socket. It was stuck to the cooler...
It came off, as if it wasn't secured properly. The cpu looks fine though, no pins ripped off or bent.
Is it normal for that to be happening?
The socket is not broken, it still holds cpus in place.

@Godlygamer23 I'll test all the other components on my private pc where I've everything setup correctly. 

 

EDIT: I probably used too much thermalpaste, that's why the cpu was glued to the cooler. It was a mess cleaning it up.

Edited March 8, 2023 by bakateo

[bakateo]

On 3/7/2023 at 1:46 AM, -rascal- said:

 

Did you rename the BIOS file too?

If you are updating the BIOS through the UEFI BIOS menu, do you don't need to rename it.

However, if you ARE using the BIOS Flashback button, you need to rename it to creative.rom

 

 

Yes, I renamed it to "creative.rom".

[bakateo]

Great news, the BIOS finished updating! Finally!

I had everything plugged out except for the power connector for the mainboard.
No component installed and a refreshed cmos bat. Worked instantly. 
Thank you all for your advice and feedback!

 

I Installed everything back into the case and ready to boot. Will test it in a bit and update you. 

 

[papajo]

33 minutes ago, bakateo said:

Great news, the BIOS finished updating! Finally!

I had everything plugged out except for the power connector for the mainboard.
No component installed and a refreshed cmos bat. Worked instantly. 
Thank you all for your advice and feedback!

 

I Installed everything back into the case and ready to boot. Will test it in a bit and update you. 

 

@Godlygamer23

[bakateo]

BIOS! 

Installed everything correctly, enabled xmp mode and selected the drive with windows on it as boot device. Everything works perfectly!

The temps on the cpu are a little higher than I wished for, but I used less thermalpaste this time around. Shouldn't be a problem though. 

Build successfully finished! 

Now it only needs to be delivered back to my brother. 

 

Y'all are awesome! Thank you very much, to everyone who used their time to help me out. 

 

With that being said, problem solved and thread closed! 

[Godlygamer23]

5 hours ago, papajo said:

@Godlygamer23

I didn't say not to do any of that. 

I said to not do it all at once. The problem here is that you no longer know the root cause. The problem was fixed, but it is not known what caused the fault in the first place. 

[Godlygamer23]

9 hours ago, bakateo said:

So, I disassembled the pc as @papajo suggested it. 
As I was removing the cpu cooler, I realized the cpu wasn't on the socket. It was stuck to the cooler...
It came off, as if it wasn't secured properly. The cpu looks fine though, no pins ripped off or bent.
Is it normal for that to be happening?
The socket is not broken, it still holds cpus in place.

@Godlygamer23 I'll test all the other components on my private pc where I've everything setup correctly. 

 

EDIT: I probably used too much thermalpaste, that's why the cpu was glued to the cooler. It was a mess cleaning it up.

When the cooler sits on the CPU for a while, the thermal paste does act like a glue, and when you're pulling it apart, you can create a vacuum in between, causing the air to push the CPU up into the cooler cold plate, causing the CPU to be pulled out of the socket. It's pretty normal, and it's something I've contended with. 

[papajo]

5 hours ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I didn't say not to do any of that. 

I said to not do it all at once. The problem here is that you no longer know the root cause. The problem was fixed, but it is not known what caused the fault in the first place. 

Suppose the problem was somewhere else and this wouldnt work.. so where is the problem?  (1)   
We don't know yet.... still could be the mobo but it could be anything else... 

Now after installing all the other parts the pc works (because the problem was on the mobos bios and as I said in this situation by far the 2 most probable reasons are the psu and the mobo -if again we ignore user errror- )  

But in this scenario (1) its something else so he puts it all together and now the pc doesnt work again 

but now we know that it couldnt be the bios because it a) worked fine while before with everything on it didnt use to work  b) it has the ltest bios update. c) also it probably is not the PSU either although it still is a suspect but now at least we know that it is doing something. (2)


(2) is a lot more info and eliminates time and steps compared to (1) where we still wouldnt know and could be anything and we still are in the dark.