Motherboard BIOS incompatibility w/chip -- help!

tbessie · Post by **tbessie** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 10:34 am

So I ordered an ASUS P5E-VM HMDI motherboard from Newegg the other day, and bought an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 at a local store. I just checked the ASUS website, and see that the E8400 isn't supported until a BIOS update released in January...

This is my first time building a computer, so I'm a little worried that the board will arrive with an older BIOS, and I'll have a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma. I suppose I can put the computer together, go to a local computer store and "borrow" an older processor from them in order to update the BIOS, but it would be much nicer if the BIOS update weren't absolutely required for it to work with the new processor... i.e. would work well enough for me to have time to update it.

Anybody know what typically happens in these situations? Are the E8xx chips so different from previous chips that the motherboard just won't work without the BIOS update?

- Tim

thegrommit · Post by **thegrommit** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 10:43 am

Although the E8400 is not officially supported until the 0405 BIOS, the board will boot with it in the 0301 BIOS. Put the 0405 BIOS on a FAT32 formatted flash drive and you can flash it using the built-in utility. This process is described in the user manual.

Also bear in mind that the 0405 BIOS will hang at "checking NVRAM" when onboard sound is disabled and a PCI sound card is plugged in.

tbessie · Post by **tbessie** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 12:56 am

thegrommit wrote:Although the E8400 is not officially supported until the 0405 BIOS, the board will boot with it in the 0301 BIOS. Put the 0405 BIOS on a FAT32 formatted flash drive and you can flash it using the built-in utility. This process is described in the user manual.

Also bear in mind that the 0405 BIOS will hang at "checking NVRAM" when onboard sound is disabled and a PCI sound card is plugged in.

Thanks! I called up Asus and verified about upgrading as you mentioned - thanks again!

- Tim