BIOS Flash Failed, Now Motherboard is Dead...

jamesd1981

Active Member
There is a big difference between sata 2 and sata 3, i recently changed almost identical ssd, ocz vertex, sold my sata 2 and bought the same drive only sata 3.

The windows index went from 6.9 to 7.9 which is the limit could be higher, all other benchmarks including 3d mark, novabench and benchtown, the scores shot up.

Are your hard drives all sata 2 ?
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
At the moment I get 7.4 on my Windows 7 WEI with the M4 SSD even when it's on SATA II and AHCI is not enabled. But it takes about an age to boot. A hard drive is faster. It's very embarrassing. Once you're in Windows though, it's very fast, it's just the boot-up that takes 3 days, or about 40-50 seconds in my case. Seq. Read speeds are about 230 mb/s and sequential write speeds are about 175 mb/s.

Both of my drives, the SSD and the Caviar Green are SATA III. Would it be possible to buy a SATA II motherboard and then buy a PCIe x1 SATA III card? Would that do the job, or not?
 
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jamesd1981

Active Member
You could do that, but i suppose it all depends when you intend to upgrade your socket, if it is not in the near future, i would go for a proper sata 3 and maybe usb 3.0 board.

Although a lot of users would consider the 1156 socket out of date, it`s not really that old, it`s only your serious user like those on here that really want the newest gear, your average user and potential buyers don`t really care about socket, they only care about, the power, the hard drive size, and features like usb 3.0 etc.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Yeah the ASRock has USB 3.0, but only SATA II, but the ASUS has USB 3.0 and SATA III, it's just really expensive though. Yeah I know 1156 is not that old, only 2 years or so. Anybody else know of an 1156 board which has SATA III on it that I can still buy today? I'm not too fussed about USB 3.0, not got any USB 3.0 devices anyway.

Edit: Found the MSI P55A-GD5 - looks good
 
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jamesd1981

Active Member
http://www.cclonline.com/product/27...therboards/Asus-P7P55D-E-Motherboard/MBD1067/

http://www.ebuyer.com/290237-ex-dis...io-atx-motherboard-includes-ebr1-ga-p55a-ud3-

These two both have sata 3 and usb 3.0 the two standards seem to go together.

They are about the same price, but for about an extra £30 i think they would be worth the extra money to unlock the speed of your sata 3 drives, and those up to date features will make it much more attractive and valuable when you do come to sell it.
 

jamesd1981

Active Member
It`s really down to your budget, you could sell your quad core 1156 no problems and put that towards a new base.

The only thing i would hesitate is with the sandybridge 1155 socket, get a motherboard is good, but the new ivy bridge range is due out shortly which i think is to run on the same socket, so don`t know if i would go for a sandybridge i5 or buy a cheap sandybridge cpu to get up and running, then get a decent ivy bridge on it`s release.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
How much do you reckon an i5 760 would fetch? I'd just buy the 2500 and a good Z68 motherboard, I'm not too fussed about Ivy-Bridge unless it's going to blow everything else out of the water. Still only young, I don't have loads of money to throw around.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Mine won't come boxed though. I bought my CPU, motherboard and my RAM as a bundle from Novatech. I doubt I can get it replaced under warranty can I? If I got £150 for the CPU I could easily buy a board for that, I can get a Z68 board for like £85, then that would leave me £75 for the CPU, but I'd still have to save another £100 or so to get the 2500. I don't know what I should do, should I just get any old 1156 board and keep with the 760 and then call it a day?
 

jamesd1981

Active Member
No they won`t replace it under warranty, due to the fact there was no actual fault in the hardware, it was a bios flash gone wrong which they wont cover.

At the price your cpu is selling for, compared with how cheap the 1155 range is, i would go for the upgrade then it`s done, your hardware will be bang up to date and it shouldn`t cost you much out your own pocket.

I can recommend this motherboard, as i recently bought to build my sons new sandybridge, it is attractive to look at, lots of features, really easy overclocking, and the bios flash is a breeze.

Check out my review.

http://www.ebuyer.com/281367-asus-p...raphics-output-8-channel-audio-atx-p8z68-v-lx
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
I'll speak to Dad and see what he says. At the moment I don't have any money so it would mean selling something if I upgraded, probably the CPU and I doubt my CPU will fetch £150 because let's face it, the 760 is old now and you wouldn't even consider using one for a new build, and my CPU is not boxed and has no warranty as I purchased it as part of a bundle. The board looks good but I don't know if I'm going to upgrade to 1155 or not. I am tempted to for the reason you said - my hardware would be much more up-to-date. I have used Sandy-Bridge before but only on machines which I do not own, would there be a difference between an i5 760 and an i5 2400 or 2500?
 

jamesd1981

Active Member
http://www.ebuyer.com/229999-intel-...-l3-cache-retail-boxed-processor-bx80605i5760

Your cpu is £155 new, so you would certainly get £100 to £125 for it, boxed shouldn`t matter as long as you have it stored in an anti-static bag.

You should see a noticeable difference between 1156 and 1155 perfromance, and intel just released a new driver for sandybridge built in hd graphics, took my sons graphics score from 4.8 up to 5.2 which is about the same as a mid range graphics card.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Reckon if I start it at £100 on eBay I'll get some interest? Or should I start low and then hope people see it and then bid like crazy? Just been onto Novatech and seen you can pick up an i5 2500 OEM CPU (so no box etc etc) for just £135, that's about £30-40 saving by just not buying it with a box and CPU cooler. I wouldn't need the 2500K as I am not an overclocker, 3.3GHz is high enough for me! I can get a Z68 board for about £85 or a P67 board for even cheaper (both will have SATA III and USB 3.0), so the upgrade is very tempting.

Before I buy or even think about buying replacement parts though, I want to be sure that the BIOS is completely gone and unrecoverable, - is there any chance or way of getting my back-upped BIOS back and working?
 
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jamesd1981

Active Member
Before you list on ebay, try, gumtee and adtrader, they are both free to list and no fees to pay when it sells, i only use ebay as a last resort, gumtree is pretty good and a lot of people use it.

As far as your bios goes, if it is down the bios flash going wrong, you wont get any display even to get into the bios to restore or reflash it.

You have tried resetting with bios jumper and tried different memory setups is that right ?

The power supply is pretty new isn`t it ?

That only really leaves the graphics card are you sure it is ok ?
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Tried moving MDG jumpers, tried reseating the RAM and the graphics card, the PSU is less than a week old and it's a good quality brand-name one (see my signature), so yeah, pretty sure it's the motherboard.
 

jamesd1981

Active Member
Have you tried removing the ram and just trying one stick at a time, worth a shot.

As you say you want to be sure the bios is totally gone, if the bios does turn out to be gone as stated earlier in the thread, you could get a replacement bios chip that way you could sell the board as well, or even sell the board and cpu as bundle.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Not tried each stick at a time but I recently tested the sticks with Memtest they all passed except one stick which I have now replaced. I can't hold of Foxconn at the moment, their website is down, and I can't buy replacement chips on eBay.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Already linked to them in this thread, I'm not sure how reliable or trustworthy they are. Do you think I'd see a difference in performance by just upgrading the motherboard and sticking to the i5 760? I don't think the H55M-S is a terribly great performing board is it?
 
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