I'm helping a friend build his PC and it does not work, PC boots but no monitor output. I had the same problem with my PC and i suspect the MoBo needs a BIOS flash. Plus the MoBo (A520 Elite) is not supposed to support the CPU (AMD 5600X) without an updated BIOS.

We have a flashdrive, formated to FAT32, file's named GIGABYTE.bin, we plugged it into the PC while turned off. We boot the PC and holds the Q-Flash+ button in the top right of the MoBo. But the light does not start no matter how we hold it for. We have everything bolted on (CPU, RAM, GPU, SSD) but according to my research that should be fine.

Specs: MoBo: Gigabyte Aorus A520 Elite CPU: AMD 5600X GPU: ASUS 1660 Ti

I have the newest bios on a 16gb flash drive formatted to Fat32, and I changed the file name to GIGABYTE.bin. The gpu and ram are not installed in the system, and the motherboard and cpu power cables are connected. I plug the usb drive into the “bios” labeled usb and I pressed Q-Flash Plus with the motherboard in standby mode and nothing happens. Also, the gigabyte b850m gaming x wifi6e Rev 1.0 does not have an LED indicator near the Q-flash button so I am not sure what to look for. Any help is appreciated.

Q flash works for a moment then just stops blinking. Whenever I turn pc back on it then just doesn't boot into anything. Is my motherboard fried or can I fix it myself?

I have an Aorus B550 Elite AX v2 rev 1.3 if that helps

Update: it will power up, and do the same thing now. Manual won't explain detailed enough. I am currently thinking of sending it to any pc repair shops I can get help from because windows update screwed me over. I appreciate any advice given to me as I currently cry over potential loss of 3k pc.

UPDATE: ITS WORKING AGAIN FOLKS! Turns out it just didn't like the file and I had to get a specific correct version. BUT THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR THE HELP! YOU ALL ARE SO DAMN SMART AND HELPFUL!

I tried all the required steps carefully but there is no response from the board. I bought the board for the new 5000 series CPU so I didn't have any way to check if the motherboard is working. When I turn on the power the light on the IO heat sink blinks once.

Hello! I bought a b650 Aorus Elite AX V2 motherboard and a Ryzen 7 9700X. The CPU is not supported so I had to use Q Flash Plus to make it work.

I assembled the whole PC already, plugged the stick in the BIOS usb port behind, pressed the button and the upgrade started (that’s when also my PC turned on and I have pressed only the bios flash button)

After like 5-10 mins the LED turned off completely (so it didn’t stay on as the tutorial said) and the PC remained turned on. I shut it down and now I turned on the PC for the first time, black screen, nothing happens and the RED Ram LED is turned on.

The RGB is turned off on everything instead of the Ram sticks.

What should I do? The stick is 8GB, formatted FAT32 with the F31b BIOS update on it named as “GIGABYTE.bin”

I have to mention that all parts of the PC are new and it’s the first time booting up.

PS: The mobo is rev 1.0

EDIT: ISSUE SOLVED: FOR EVERYONE IN THE SAME SITUATION, I HAD TO REMOVE THE CPU AND THE RAM FROM THE MOTHERBOARD AND THEN THE BIOS UPDATE WORKED COMPLETELY FINE AND THE PC TURNED OFF BY ITSELF.

BOOTED AFTER 2 MINS AND I WENT INTO BIOS WITH NO PROBLEMS WITH 9700X

THANK U FOR THE HELP

My mobo is Z790M AORUS ELITE AX ICE

Trying to update to the latest BIOS F3F with 0x129 patch

Q Flash from the bios menu reads the bios file in the usb drive just fine. It says it will shutdown and resume update process after restart.

The pc shuts down and.... nothing. It doesn't automatically restart (I thought it would)

I waited 10 minutes but no activity. I manually restarted by pressing power button and during post it says bios update was unsuccessful and proceeds to load windows.

Was I supposed to wait longer? Shouldn't it restart it automatically and resume update process without me having to manually restart it?

Hello all,

I am trying to update the BIOS on my Z790 Aorus Pro X to the latest F6e BIOS version. I have followed the instructions in the included PDF in the zip folder and the process completes successfully within the EFI shell environment.

However, my system doesn't reboot, it just shuts down. When i manually restart my system attempts to flash the BIOS as usual but every time I just see this screen and I have to hard reboot my system.

Does anyone have any idea where I'm going wrong? I've tried 2 separate USB sticks, both reformatted and confirmed to be FAT32, and plugged in to the q-flash port on my motherboard.

See screenshot for details, and thanks in advance

Public Service Announcement (PSA): Posting this in the hopes it helps others. I spent over two hours trying to get Q-Flash Plus (QFP) to work; failed! You are welcome to still try to get QFP to work, but I would suggest not spending more than 30min on it. If it doesn't work with a couple of USB 2.0 drives, keep reading for the other option. It worked for me, and maybe it'll work for you. I think QFP is a finicky, dubious feature that is hit-or-miss. It seems to work if you have the right type of ancient USB 2.0 flash drive. A few people posted links in the below references (bottom of my post) about a specific brand/model that worked for them, but I didn't want to order & wait for yet another thing in the mail.

BTW, if you'd like to try QFP this is a great reference. This is well explained and it seems simple, which made it all the more frustrating that this didn't work for me. I have experience building PCs, so to follow a simple process and NOT have it work, is very, very annoying. But the video is well done and easy to understand:

https://glennsqlperformance.com/2020/12/22/how-to-flash-a-gigabyte-motherboard-with-q-flash-plus/

I can't take credit for the workaround, as I learned it from another Reddit post. Here's the trick: Just configure the motherboard (build the PC) and try to boot it. Add your CPU, RAM, video card, etc. then connect your power supply to the motherboard. Then hook up the video card to a monitor, power the PC on and hopefully it will at least post (power-on self test) and let you boot into BIOS (just press DELETE key repeatedly when powering up the PC and odds are good you'll get into the BIOS). If so, congrats! You can now use the regular Q-Flash (within the Gigabyte BIOS) to upgrade the BIOS to a more recent version. You can even use the same USB stick you prepared to use for Q-Flash Plus.. Magically the USB drive is readable now, even though it didn't work when you tried to use it with Q-Flash Plus.

The above trick worked for me. I recently got a Gigabyte motherboard (B550 Aorus Elite v1.0; who names these things...) as part of a new computer build for an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X CPU. I picked this board specifically for its Q-Flash Plus feature, which is advertised as allowing you to flash (upgrade) the BIOS without needing to have CPU/etc installed. I thought this would be great, since I don't have a Gen-3 CPU on hand (and I thought this was all the board is compatible with out of the box, until you flash it to a higher version of BIOS that supports Ryzen 5000 series CPUs). The sticker on the motherboard box proclaims "3rd Gen Ryzen Desktop Ready" but nothing about Ryzen 5000, so I thought I had to QFP to get this to work. Fortunately, when I followed the trick above, I was able to get into the BIOS and saw it had BIOS firmware version F11 installed. I used Q-Flash within the BIOS to browse to the USB I had plugged in (ironically, to the same dumb "BIOS" USB port, which failed to do anything when I tried to QFP) to upgrade to the latest firmware available for the motherboard I bought (F14c, released 09/06/21, 6 days ago). Rebooted and the PC still boots OK, so looks like the BIOS was successfully updated (confirmed in BIOS it recognizes the CPU, memory, etc & the BIOS version is F14c). Yay.

The strange thing about the F11 BIOS, is that you cannot download this version for this motherboard from Gigabyte's website. Here is the link; if you go there, you'll see F11 version isn't available for download: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B550-AORUS-ELITE-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios. Looks like Gigabyte did an internal release of this BIOS to boards, to give them Ryzen 5000 capability (to allow them to boot up, at least). Version F10 is when Ryzen 5000 support was added for this motherboard, so I thought that was an interesting discovery.

If that didn't work, I would have probably had to get a Gen-3 CPU somewhere, as I really didn't want to send back the motherboard and get another one which may or may not allow me to flash it without CPU/etc. attached. So if QFP doesn't work for you, hopefully you'll be able to boot the PC like I did & update the BIOS via the regular Q-Flash method within the BIOS.

For reference, here are some other posts of folks having issues. I probably spent almost an hour of time reading every single post, hoping to learn the secret trick to getting this damn QFP to work. One recurrent theme I saw in the posts was that folks opened support tickets with Gigabyte and got crappy replies; basically just telling folks to "follow the directions" or suggesting that they RMA the board and get another one. Ugh! Hopefully nothing ever goes wrong with this motherboard, because it sounds like customer support is horrendous. Good luck everyone!

https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/comments/nz31jv/b550_aorus_elite_ax_v2_cant_flash_bios/

https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/comments/kazqli/yet_again_someone_else_who_cant_flash_their_bios/

https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/comments/k4nnoh/q_flash_plus_not_working_on_three_gigabyte_b550i/

https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/comments/k6694v/possible_qflash_plus_fix_b550_aorus_elite5600x/

A couple weeks ago I picked up a Gigabyte B550i ITX motherboard and a Ryzen 5600X from Micro Center. I went home to use Q Flash Plus to upgrade the BIOS to support the 5600X, but after about about half a day of messing around with four different flash drives, reading every set of instructions I could find, watching all the relevant YouTube videos, and following up on every Reddit tip I could find, I could never once get the Q Flash Plus light to turn on for a single blink. I don't have an older AMD processor to use for the upgrade, so I needed Q Flash to work.

I then ordered the same motherboard from Amazon, figuring maybe I had a defective unit. I ran into the exact same problem. Amazon then sent me a replacement, and still nothing from the Q Flash light. All three of the Gigabyte motherboards have serial numbers starting with SN2037.

Based on posts from other users reporting a similar issue with various Gigabyte B550 or X570 motherboards, it's hard to say if all of us are using USB flash drives or PSUs the motherboard doesn't like, if there was a bad batch of motherboards, or maybe there was a certain BIOS version where Q Flash was broken. Or maybe it's something else.

Because I had a new processor and deconstructed machine that I wanted to get back up an running, and I didn't want to wait around for what could be a lengthy Gigabyte RMA process, I decided to try a different B550 motherboard. I went back to Micro Center to return my original B550i and bought an Asus B550-i instead. As I was checking out, the cashier and I were discussing how Micro Center support potentially do the BIOS upgrade, but at that point the return had already happened, and due to Covid-19 and not having a scheduled appointment, it wasn't clear the upgrade could happen while I was already at the store.

I have since successfully flashed an Asus B550-i and an MSI B550M using all of the same hardware that I tried with the Gigabyte boards, and essentially using the same instructions (put a BIOS file named XXXX.XXX on a flash drive, plug in the motherboard and CPU power cables, etc.).

As my original motherboard choice was this Gigabyte model (I liked that it doesn't have any cooling fans on the motherboard, has a built in IO plate, and a few other features), I figured I would submit a ticket to Gigabyte just to see if there could be a quick resolution. I submitted a support ticket eight days ago and just heard back today. Gigabyte's response began with "Are you using Qflash-plus ? If not, please refer these clips for details on how to use the Q-flash Plus B550 platform MB for example." My WHOLE support ticket was about how I am trying to use Q Flash Plus and it was NOT working! I clicked the "Ask More Question" button to reply to Gigabyte to express my disappointment with its response.

Anyway, I am posting this as a follow up to make two points:

1. I think there are more people out there like me who have Gigabyte motherboards that have a broken, or WAY too finnicky Q Flash process, and they are either returning their motherboards, buying an older generation AMD processor to do a regular BIOS upgrade, then returning the processor, or are taking their motherboard to a computer shop to have the motherboard BIOS upgraded. I've also seen a few other scenarios mentioned on Reddit.

2. Gigabyte support seems mediocre at best, terrible at worst. The Gigabyte support portal is unintuitive, and the response I received was terrible. I will forgive the eight day waiting period due to Covid-19 and the holidays.

Given this issue doesn't seem to be widespread, I wouldn't be surprised if a cause is never identified, and that those of us affected are finding some kind of resolution other than getting Q Flash working. It would be nice though to eventually find out there was some bug, or that Gigabyte fixed something. It would offer closure for those of us who wasted time and wanted to pull our hair out trying to get our new motherboards working.

Edit: Gigabyte replied to me today with the following:

"How could it be not working, as you can see people posted instruction video clips in youtube.com. Please double check and refer to it. If you really not able to make it works, do try boot with a lower 3rd Gen processor, update bios with Q-flash utility in bios settings.

Note : there are two utilities to update bios. Q-flash and Q-flash plus, please do not confuse yourself. If you don't have option to boot with lower Gen Ryzen 3000 series processor you will need to use Q-flash plus method to update bios without processor install."

So because we can see YouTube videos of people using Q Flash Plus successfully, then all of us with this issue must be doing something wrong... It's definitely not a problem with Gigabyte's products.

I won't be buying Gigabyte products again.

I have recently upgraded my PC and have been unable to boot. The DRAM light is red and everything in the PC is operational but I cannot get display. I have tried to flash my bios as I got the new 9900x and I knew that I needed to update my bios but Q-flash doesn't seem to be working. I after a few seconds after pressing the button everything just turns off again. If anyone has any help that would be greatly appreciated. I have an x670 gaming x ax v2 (brand new)

EDIT: fixed by formatting the USB with Rufus, non-bootable, GPT partition type.

Need help! I was able to flash my B760 to the f11c beta bios and using the exact same USB I tried to flash the newer f11d bios but q-flash says can't read file.

I formatted the USB to FAT a couple of times and re-downloaded all 3 ver of the B760 Gaming X AX DDR4 f11d bios, put all 3 bin files into the USB, but double clicking all 3 files no matter which, q-flash says can't read file?!

I tried to get the file from my C drive Windows download folder too and even there qflash says can't read file.

I also cannot disable secure boot (option is greyed out?) so I can't boot from UEFI to try to boot from USB to flash from EFIFLASH.

This is so weird I was able to flash f11c using the exact same steps.

Any ideas how I can fix this?

Does "Q-Flash" work while all of the components are installed?