How to update a Z370 board to support i9 without having an older chip?

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Jan 31, 2002
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I just ordered a 9900K but thinking of using a Z370 board instead of a Z390. I'm looking at an MSI board which just put a new BIOS for download on their site to support the i9 chip. Will I be able to update the BIOS with the i9 installed?
 
I had this problem putting a 7600k into a Z170 chipset board. There are two options I found:

1.) Buy a flashed BIOS chip online that supports your desired processor. This of course relies on your board having a removable BIOS chip to begin with. If you have a friend with the same model of board, and it has a dual BIOS, they may be able to help you out with this.

2.) "Acquire" a processor to use temporarily so you can update the board. I bought a cheap 7th-gen Pentium on Amazon, used it for the five minutes needed, and returned it. Feels a little greasy doing that, but I know the person who actually bought it after me won't see any undesirable effects from my usage.
 
Some of the higher end boards can flash a BIOS without a cpu.

A Skylake Celeron is literally like $30, so if you're going the route of buying a BIOS chip ($15), you might as well buy the Skylake Celeron and resell it on eBay. Maybe you'll lose like $5-10 net.
 
If you purchase from a helper box store like Frys or Microcenter they'll sometimes help you update the Bios (though they're more willing when you buy both the chip and board there)
 
I think I'm going to have to go with a Z390 board. I live in the Caribbean so with freight, duties etc it's not really feasible to get a temporary chip. Thanks for the tips though!
 
Some of the higher end boards can flash a BIOS without a cpu.

A Skylake Celeron is literally like $30, so if you're going the route of buying a BIOS chip ($15), you might as well buy the Skylake Celeron and resell it on eBay. Maybe you'll lose like $5-10 net.

Pretty crazy but true!
 
got a chiller ordered? ;) that's gonna be a bitch to cool in Barbados. ive worked on systems in Jamaica, the Caribbean is not nice to PCs. anyways, find a board with cpu-less bios flashing like the evga or asus top end boards.
 
got a chiller ordered? ;) that's gonna be a bitch to cool in Barbados. ive worked on systems in Jamaica, the Caribbean is not nice to PCs. anyways, find a board with cpu-less bios flashing like the evga or asus top end boards.

Chiller and a deep cool basement! Hehe
 
got a chiller ordered? ;) that's gonna be a bitch to cool in Barbados. ive worked on systems in Jamaica, the Caribbean is not nice to PCs. anyways, find a board with cpu-less bios flashing like the evga or asus top end boards.


got a chiller ordered? ;) that's gonna be a bitch to cool in Barbados. ive worked on systems in Jamaica, the Caribbean is not nice to PCs. anyways, find a board with cpu-less bios flashing like the evga or asus top end boards.

Surprisingly, I've nver had any real problems with cooling, and I've been doing this since my Pentium 120 days! I do have it in an room with ac and I keep the windows closed to avoid corrosion - I've seen some real disasters here with other systems.
 
I had this problem putting a 7600k into a Z170 chipset board. There are two options I found:

1.) Buy a flashed BIOS chip online that supports your desired processor. This of course relies on your board having a removable BIOS chip to begin with. If you have a friend with the same model of board, and it has a dual BIOS, they may be able to help you out with this.

2.) "Acquire" a processor to use temporarily so you can update the board. I bought a cheap 7th-gen Pentium on Amazon, used it for the five minutes needed, and returned it. Feels a little greasy doing that, but I know the person who actually bought it after me won't see any undesirable effects from my usage.

Did you attempt to boot with the 7600k and the old bios and it wouldn't boot or did you do these extra steps out of an abundance of caution?
 
Did you attempt to boot with the 7600k and the old bios and it wouldn't boot or did you do these extra steps out of an abundance of caution?
Definitely the first one. There was a chance that the mobo I bought shipped with the latest BIOS revision; luck just wasn't on my side in that regard. It wouldn't even post.
 
Definitely the first one. There was a chance that the mobo I bought shipped with the latest BIOS revision; luck just wasn't on my side in that regard. It wouldn't even post.

Thanks for the report. I'll admit I'm a little disappointed to hear that, as I'm in a similar situation with a z370 board that shipped a few weeks after a bios update for gen9 and no way to tell what the bios is at.
 
Thanks for the report. I'll admit I'm a little disappointed to hear that, as I'm in a similar situation with a z370 board that shipped a few weeks after a bios update for gen9 and no way to tell what the bios is at.
Some manufacturers stamp or sticker the shipped BIOS version on the chip, if you haven't looked there yet.
 
You can always bring the motherboard to a retailer and ask them to flash the BIOS for you, some do it for a small fee and some do it for free. It's the best way, and it's not worth buying a cheap CPU just to flash it yourself, waste of money.
 
You can always bring the motherboard to a retailer and ask them to flash the BIOS for you, some do it for a small fee and some do it for free. It's the best way, and it's not worth buying a cheap CPU just to flash it yourself, waste of money.
That's assuming you have a retailer handy who can do that for you.
 
There's a $25 300 series Celeron at Fry's if your MB supports that already. There's a link in the deals section.
 
That's assuming you have a retailer handy who can do that for you.

I should clarify. I was lucky enough to win the z370 board from EVGA a month ago and my personal measure of when it's time to upgrade cpus has been reached (a $200ish CPU has about 2x the benchmark performance of my current CPU). There are retailers around but I may wait this out to see what others find. I'd like to use this motherboard but I'm not under any deadline to be building this in October. I'd just like to use an 9600k vs an 8600k, at my price point.

I've not found any indication of EVGA putting any BIOS marks on their boards, unlike some other boards I've bought in the past.

There's a $25 300 series Celeron at Fry's if your MB supports that already. There's a link in the deals section.

Found the G4920 alert, but there's also a caution from another member about EVGA's z370 boards and this Celeron. EVGA's horrible CPU support list (attached pic - nothing below an i3 8100, no 8086k, and a generic label of "Coffee Lake-S") isn't exactly helping with this planning exercise. It's also entirely possible this motherboard has the latest bios.

I read a report of a person with a z370 classified k with a March/pre-coffeelake-s bios who had no issues adding the 8086k cpu, even though that wasn't in the support list.

evgaz370cpu.PNG
 
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