Good morning,

a new F28a bios has just been released for the Aorus Z690 Pro motherboard.

I have no idea what he brings.

Can be a support of the Intel 14xxx CPUs?

For posterity (and future readers/debuggers):

I bought a DDR5 bundle on Newegg with:

• Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Ultra - Newegg Link

• G.SKILL Trident Z5 DDR5 RAM - Newegg Link

I assembled my build today (12900k, but not really relevant here). This did not POST: no display at all either through the Intel integrated graphics or my Nvidia card.

The mobo LED error code that I kept seeing was Error Code 54, which indicates a memory initialization error. I obviously thought that I could've gotten DOA memory, but I looked around online to see if others had this problem. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of "Ultra" boards in the wild. However, I did see other Aorus owners mention that they needed to update their BIOS.

For those not in the know, thankfully Gigabyte has a feature on some of their boards called "Q-Flash Plus" that allows you to flash the BIOS without being able to get into the BIOS. This is what I had to do: use Q-Flash Plus to update to version F5a.

Just to be clear, these are the steps that I took (I'm going to be painfully detailed to help future readers):

On a different computer:

1. Formatted my USB Drive to FAT32

2. Downloaded the F5a driver

3. Extracted the zip

4. Transferred only the BIOS update file (named "Z690AORUSULTRA.F5a" in this version of the BIOS) to the root of the USB Drive

5. Renamed the file on the USB Drive to "gigabyte.bin"

6. Ejected drive

On Aorus Ultra computer:

1. Plugged in the USB Drive to the port labeled "BIOS USB 3.2" on the back connectors (NOTE: the manual calls it "USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A Port (Q-Flash Plus Port)"

2. Turned on power to PSU connected to the Aorus Ultra

3. Pressed the "Q-Flash Plus Button" on the motherboard (located at the bottom around the middle horizontally)

4. You'll see a light flashing next to the button if it successfully started, and if you have an LED on the USB Drive it should start flashing

5. Waited ~5-10 minutes until flashing stops (the computer will automatically reboot)

After the new BIOS was installed, my computer POSTed fine.

Hope this helps someone else!

I noticed that my board now has F23a BIOS available.... what does the 'a' stand for, alpha? Has anyone upgraded to this? If so, are there any issues? TIA

Finally, after almost 8 months of waiting, Gigabyte has released the first BIOS of this year for Z690 boards.

Description F29d

Jul 17, 2024

1. Checksum : 95F7

2. Introduce the "Intel Default Settings" and enabled as default, user needs to disable it first to use GIGABYTE PerfDrive profiles.

3. Update microcode 0x125 to ensure eTVB operation normally.

* Update: New Bios with microcode 0x129 for Z690 boards.

Description F29e

Aug 07, 2024

1. Checksum : 31A0

2. Update microcode 0x129 to address sporadic Vcore elevation behavior announced by Intel

3. Introduce the "Intel Default Settings" and enabled as default, user needs to disable it first to use GIGABYTE PerfDrive profiles

4. Update microcode 0x125 to ensure eTVB operation normally

* Update: New Bios with microcode 0x12B for Z690 boards.

Description F29 (final version)

Sep 27, 2024

1. Checksum : B098

2. Introduce the "Intel Default Settings" and enabled as default

3. Introduce microcode 0x12B as the final mitigation of 13/14th Gen desktop processor Vmin Shift Instability issue according to Intel official i. 0x12B encompasses 0x125 and 0x129 microcode updates, and addresses elevated voltage requests by the processor during idle and/or light activity periods. ii. microcode 0x129 (August 2024) addresses high voltages requested by the processor. iii. microcode 0x125 (June 2024) addresses eTVB algorithm issue.

my current version is F6 and I wanted to update it to F29 but it gives me this error, any idea how I can update it correctly?

Update:

They published the update, so you should see a download for the patched BIOS on nearly all Gigabyte Z690 Boards.

Original post:

Gigabyte is currently doing the rollout of the Intel Microcode patch for Z690 boards, which reduces CPU degradation by limiting the high voltage spikes. The update is already listed for some Z690 motherboards, but not for all! Although not listed officially, you could still already download the update for your motherboard.

Just go to the support site of your Gigabyte motherboard. I have the Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Ultra. Go to Downloads > BIOS and there you will see F28 as the latest BIOS version. Right click on the download button and then copy the link address.

My clipboard content is now looking like this:

https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/BIOS/mb_bios_z690-aorus-ultra_8aadl004_f28.zip?v=ba7a2b720db2edda685687cb0dff3383

Now remove everything after the ? to clean the URL:

https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/BIOS/mb_bios_z690-aorus-ultra_8aadl004_f28.zip

And now replace f28.zip with f29e.zip. On some motherboards, you need to replace f29 with f30e, because they have a different versioning number:

https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/BIOS/mb_bios_z690-aorus-ultra_8aadl004_f29e.zip

Paste the link you created into the address bar of your webbrowser and press enter. Finally, the download starts! The bios file was created at 07.08.2024, so it's pretty new and includes the 0x129 microcode.