PowerSpec BIOS Updates

Beario

Hello,
I have a Powerspec PC that I have upgraded but I was wondering how to go about updating the BIOS.  The computer has a B360M Pro-VH system board from MSI, but seems to have a custom BIOS not from MSI.  Just wondering how to keep the board current with an updated BIOS. 

PowerSpec_MichaelB

Beario said:

Hello,
I have a Powerspec PC that I have upgraded but I was wondering how to go about updating the BIOS.  The computer has a B360M Pro-VH system board from MSI, but seems to have a custom BIOS not from MSI.  Just wondering how to keep the board current with an updated BIOS. 

Welcome to the forum @Beario, this is a great question. Typically speaking, we do not provide BIOS updates for our systems unless a specific need for an update arises. An example of this would be security vulnerabilities (Spectre, Meltdown, etc) and critical bug fixes. We generally do not recommend performing a BIOS update unless you have an important reason to do so, as the process itself can be pretty risky depending on your board and whether it has crashless features/backup BIOS EEPROM's, you experience any power failures during the process, or unintended bugs that may arise in new BIOS updates (memory training issues, fan speed bugs, voltage/current issues, etc).

The BIOS we include has been thoroughly tested to ensure all of the advertised features of the board works, all of the ports are properly mapped (if you do any VM work, you'll really enjoy that), and we make sure no potentially harmful options are enabled by default. That last one may sound obvious, but some recent motherboards ship with unlimited current values by default, which can be pretty harmful if you are overclocking and don't pay attention.

Now with all of that in mind, you can absolutely perform a BIOS update using a BIOS from the board manufacturer, but there are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Our BIOS default values will be overwritten. This means systems that ship with a RAID/Optane configuration will likely default to AHCI and could result in a boot error if you do not manually change this setting back. It also means any fan speed adjustments we've made, or any secure boot/TPM settings we've enabled or disabled will be reset.
2. Performing the update will be at your own risk. As mentioned previously, some things can happen during a BIOS flash, and potentially brick the motherboard. While modern board features such as dual BIOS can help minimize the risk, there is always a chance something can happen that would render the board unusable. A bricked board is not something we would be able to service under warranty, so exercise caution during the flashing process. I always advise performing the flash from within the BIOS to avoid any potential Windows-induced crashing, and if you have a battery backup/UPS to plug into, it wouldn't hurt to add more failsafes.
3. Once flashed, the BIOS will no longer have our splash screen. This last one might not sound important, but you may lose some street cred if that sick PowerSpec logo isn't displayed and a friend happens to show up at your house. 

If you have any questions Beario, please let me know. I'm happy to answer anything that I can.

Beario

Hello Michael,
Thank you so much for the response!  If you do download the BIOS update from MSI, the file itself is not recognized even after being extracted.  That leads me to believe Powerspec has a different extension that it uses.  By the way, these computers are in a computer lab.  I decided to try Powerspec instead of using Lenovo like my school traditionally goes with so I support my own machines.  I've had to upgrade the power supplies to fully modular (from MicroCenter) because we needed to upgrade the video cards to Radeons.  If you are saying I am not missing anything by updating the BIOS from April 2018, then I will certainly skip this as an option, however, at some point in the future I suspect an upgrade will become necessary especially if we upgrade the processors to i9.  Please let me know your suggestions.
Best Regards

PowerSpec_MichaelB

You're very welcome! As for why the board isn't recognizing the BIOS from MSI, we do not use any special file types that would prevent it from flashing. Which version were you attempting to flash to? I can grab a B360M Pro-VH and test it myself to see if we can reproduce the error.

Also one thing to note, if you do intend to upgrade to the i9's in the future, be mindful of this boards VRM. It's not really designed for overclocking or high power consumption processors in mind, so at most I'd recommend a Core i9 9900 or Core i9 9900T. Those would use 65W or 35W respectively.

As for whether I think you'll be fine with the current BIOS, I do believe you'll be fine. The only real reason I would see upgrading the BIOS would be for the added CPU microcodes of the newer 9th generation processors. 

Either way, I'll try to help determine why the board isn't recognizing the BIOS.

Beario

Hello Michael,
If it is important there is a version number on the BIOS.  It says V1.M1.  I have downloaded the BIOS from MSI on various USB keys and formatted with Fat32 but the file is never recognized.  I may have more time since there is speculation that all of our labs will be closed during the semester.  Once again thank you for your assistance!
Best Regards

PowerSpec_MichaelB

Version 1.M1 would have shipped with our PowerSpec G154's, I don't recall any weird flashing procedures, but just in case, let's try to utilize the full M-Flash utility. Enter your BIOS, press CTRL + ALT + T. This should open the M-Flash utility. Let me know if the BIOS is recognized from the standalone utility, rather than just the BIOS itself. In the meantime, I'll do some further investigations on my end.

Beario

Hello Michael,
Yes that is the correct model but there are upgrades to 32 gigs of ram, solid state hard drives, 700 watt power supplies, and 8 gig radeon video card.  I did give your suggestion a try but I get the same result.  In the bios it says the version is E7B53IZ1.1M1 Looking forward to any news from your end thanks again!
Best Regards

PowerSpec_MichaelB

Beario said:

Hello Michael,
Yes that is the correct model but there are upgrades to 32 gigs of ram, solid state hard drives, 700 watt power supplies, and 8 gig radeon video card.  I did give your suggestion a try but I get the same result.  In the bios it says the version is E7B53IZ1.1M1 Looking forward to any news from your end thanks again!
Best Regards

Thank you for your patience. I ran into the exact same issue when attempting to flash with the latest BIOS as well. I managed to find a workaround, but it's quite dangerous and I strongly advise against it unless you absolutely understand the risk, and assume all responsibility for the potential bricking of your motherboard. 

The solution that worked for me can be found here: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=343010.msg1989630#msg1989630. 

NOTE: Once again, this is not recommended by MSI or Micro Center. While the tool itself was developed by an administrator on the MSI forum, his disclaimer states that the tool in question is not endorsed by MSI. Flashing utilities such as these are extremely powerful and disregard all safety checks put in-place by the BIOS flashing utility. Use of these tools are at your own risk, and should only be performed if absolutely necessary. 

With your experience in your computer lab, I am confident you understand the dangers of this procedure. Should you choose to go this route, I wish you the best of luck. I wish I had a better solution for you, but for now, this was all I could find that circumvented whatever was blocking the BIOS update. If you have any additional questions in the meantime, please do not hesitate to ask.

PowerSpec_MikeW

Just wanted to add to this  after taking a look at the tool. It's an AMI flasher. Double check you have the correct BIOS file on there. It'll work, but it's going to do exactly what you tell it to. Looks like AFUEFI. It's going to find that file and execute whatever syntax is in that EFI file, no safety net.

PowerSpec_MichaelB

TSMikeW said:

Just wanted to add to this  after taking a look at the tool. It's an AMI flasher. Double check you have the correct BIOS file on there. It'll work, but it's going to do exactly what you tell it to. Looks like AFUEFI. It's going to find that file and execute whatever syntax is in that EFI file, no safety net.

Exactly. It takes whatever BIOS file is stored in the same root directory of the drive and flashes without question. Extremely potent to get the job done if any in-place security features are blocking updates, but extremely dangerous as a result. I dislike using these methods to flash a BIOS just due to how easy it is to brick a motherboard by mistake.

PowerSpec_MikeW

Yes, I've been looking a little further into it. It'll check the platform and bail out if it's on the wrong platform. If it's good, it'll execute svet.efi. I'll take that a look at that file tonight and we'll see what it's doing exactly.

Beario

Hello Michael and Mike,
The BIOS upgrade that I have is from MSI, this page specifically https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B360M-PRO-VH
I would say it is directly applicable to the board that I have.  I understand the warnings and thank you so much for investigating this issue.  Out of curiosity is there some reason why Powerspec made it so difficult to upgrade this particular BIOS?  
Best Regards

PowerSpec_MichaelB

Beario said:

Hello Michael and Mike,
The BIOS upgrade that I have is from MSI, this page specifically https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B360M-PRO-VH
I would say it is directly applicable to the board that I have.  I understand the warnings and thank you so much for investigating this issue.  Out of curiosity is there some reason why Powerspec made it so difficult to upgrade this particular BIOS?  
Best Regards

Well, I don't want to point fingers, but we didn't do anything on our end that would prevent you from updating the BIOS. In fact, we go out of our way to avoid any proprietary aspects in our system. Our philosophy is that we can't (and shouldn't) control what others want to do with their systems, it's why we don't void warranties when systems are upgraded and even offer free installation on components purchased alongside the system at the time of purchase.

Looking around on various online communities, it would seem others have a similar issue with off the shelf boards that were never used in a system integration environment:

https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=292160.0
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/6z4swy/msi_bios_file_not_showing_up_in_mflash/
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/mflash-not-recognizing-usb-drive.424182/
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/781558-msi-m-flash-not-seeing-bios-update-file/

This is odd though, as I've owned MSI boards in the past and had no issues whatsoever getting M-Flash to recognize the BIOS files. The majority of the boards with this issue appear to be Intel platforms, so I am wondering if the Intel Management Engine is playing a role here, as typically your ME is updated at the same time as the BIOS, and it may have strict protections in-place. This is just me thinking out loud though, I have no real idea one way or the other. Either way, I'll keep an eye on this topic going forward, as I am quite curious to see if others experience a similar issue flashing these boards.

Beario

Hello Michael,
I'm more inclined to believe most people have not tried flashing the BIOS.  I'm happy to let you know though that everything worked wonderfully updating the BIOS on the test computer.  I did have to make a few changes in the BIOS with the boot drive but afterwards all is working well.  I believe this is the only time I will have to use that BIOS flasher because I can now see the BIOS update files from the BIOS whereas I could not see them before.  Once again many thanks for your assistance I truly appreciate it.  By the way, the only reason I thought Powerspec may have done this is because every single machine in the lab has this issue so it is not confined to just one computer.  I will go through all of them following this procedure and check again to see if any can see the BIOS update file.
Best Regards

tomek

Beario said:

Hello Michael,
I'm more inclined to believe most people have not tried flashing the BIOS.  I'm happy to let you know though that everything worked wonderfully updating the BIOS on the test computer.  I did have to make a few changes in the BIOS with the boot drive but afterwards all is working well.  I believe this is the only time I will have to use that BIOS flasher because I can now see the BIOS update files from the BIOS whereas I could not see them before.  Once again many thanks for your assistance I truly appreciate it.  By the way, the only reason I thought Powerspec may have done this is because every single machine in the lab has this issue so it is not confined to just one computer.  I will go through all of them following this procedure and check again to see if any can see the BIOS update file.
Best Regards

Please help me do what you did. I have the exact same problem and it's ruining my life right now 

JS_MC

@tomek What part of this solution are you struggling with? How can we help?

Jarods_350z

Ok wow I have the same. Issue I have a older powerspec pc and cant upgrade the bios. I called microcenter and the stated not in the same words sorry about your luck we will not help you, however We will sell you another pc to fix your  issue. They even had it for almost 4 weeks to tell me this. My company buys so much there and that was the answer. I even gave them this link to help. My motherboard is this MSI Z97 GAMING 5 Motherboard. All I want to do is add a bootable  m.2 drive. Windows sees the drive but the bios doesnt. Apparently they fixed that in the upgraded bios. I cant use msi bios because it cant see it. Just like previously stated. Any help would be great
 Thanks in advance.
Here is the motherboard web page 
 https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/support/Z97-GAMING-5

shawnco67

Hello. I had the same issue and this alternate BIOS update method worked perfectly however that link above is broken. I searched and was able to find this link https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?threads/forum-uefi-shell-flash-tool-v1-15-for-msi-boards.343010/

Download the tool and follow the instructions (which are excellent) step by step. 

I had upgraded my son's PowerSpec to a 9th gen I9 and it was *almost* working. Now with the latest BIOS from the MSI website, it is running perfectly.

Shawn