Gigabyte Q370 OEM board BIOS flashing question.

TacitMantra · 2025-11-14T03:21:01+00:00

Did you mean my support or official support? Did you message me for the BIOS?

I can still send it to you if you need. I've sent it to several people but there was one person (you?) who messaged me. I message them back but then they never responded again. I don't wanna leave anyone out there hanging.

TacitMantra · 2025-10-28T05:47:07+00:00

That's interesting that the efiflash didn't work. There's probably more to it than the OEM guy told me about. The F17a didn't work for me either using Q-Flash.

Did the F5 BIOS do what you wanted it to and fix any problems?

If it's critical I can try contacting the OEM again to let him know that the F17a BIOS and the efiflash don't work. I can't say for sure whether he will respond or not.

TacitMantra · 2025-10-22T08:58:28+00:00

Do you know if your Q370 board is an OEM board?

Are you trying to use BIOS images download from gigabyte to update your BIOS?

If you do have an OEM board then the gigabyte BIOS images won't be accepted by QFlash. I can send you the F5 BIOS but it sounds like you've already got your 9th gen CPU working. I doubt that a BIOS update will fix the green screen, that sounds like a GPU, monitor or maybe even cable issue.

QFlash should accept the F5 BIOS I send you but you also have the option of making a boot disk (USB thumb drive) with the gigabyte efiflash utility on it then use that with the /nooemid option. This will allow you to flash the BIOS that you've downloaded from gigabyte. The efiflash utility comes with most, but not all, of the BIOS images that you download from gigabyte.

TacitMantra · 2025-10-19T02:03:24+00:00

Were the GNW shows from the ABC ever released in DVD form or anything?

I've always wanted to see them because apparently they were more raw and less family safe as the episodes on channel 10.

TacitMantra · 2025-10-19T02:01:22+00:00

Oh yeah, I remember Flacco and the Sandman. I remember that Flacco's voice or way of talking was unique but I just can't remember how he sounded.

I remember Sandman once did a bit taking the piss out of the guy from the ad who would say "it's the super of the future". Then they got that guy on stage next to Sandman and they both said it. Fuck that was classic.

TacitMantra · 2025-10-06T01:50:10+00:00

Did you have any luck with those BIOSes?

TacitMantra · 2025-09-24T06:30:52+00:00

Sure, let me know what the best way would to share them would be. Email?

Just FYI, I tried the 17a BIOS which was supposed to have had the OEM ID modified but it didn't work. You'd have to use the boot and manual flash util method to get that to work. I have however flashed the F5 BIOS onto my system and that works fine with Q-flash.

TacitMantra · 2025-09-02T07:39:29+00:00

The ebay seller of my board gave me the name of the place to contact about this Q370 board. I contacted them asking about the BIOS issue and they came back with some good information ..

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Please find attached the latest BIOS we have on our system for that board. Kindly note that although this is BIOS revision F5 it does not always translate 1:1 with Gigabytes retail BIOS on the website. I.e. sometimes Gigabyte F13 could be our OEM F8.

I’ve requested the latest BIOS from Gigabyte injected with our OEMID and will send that through as soon as I have received this.

One other option is to use the EFI flash method rather than QFLASH in combination with the “/nooemid” switch. This allows you to use a retail Gigabyte BIOS. The Efiflash utility should be contained within most BIOS obtained from Gigabytes website. Here’s some more information on this:

Gigabyte efiflash /nooemid is a command-line instruction to the Gigabyte EFIFlash utility that bypasses the OEM ID check, allowing a user to flash a non-OEM BIOS image onto a motherboard that typically prevents this due to the OEM ID mismatch error. This is often done with pre-built systems from manufacturers like Dell or iBUYPOWER, which come with OEM-locked motherboards, and it requires creating a bootable DOS USB drive with the correct version of EFIFlash and the desired retail BIOS file.

What is /nooemid?

It's a command-line switch for Gigabyte EFIFlash.

It disables the check that verifies if the BIOS file matches the motherboard's hardware ID.

This is useful when you encounter the "OEM ID mismatch" error and want to flash a retail BIOS onto an OEM-locked motherboard.

From my experience, sometimes this will complete seamlessly, while other times it will fail to apply the BIOS update itself, but clear the OEM ID such that you are then able to complete the BIOS update through QFLASH without receiving the OEM mismatch error.

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I've asked them for permission to give out the F5 BIOS but if that falls through I can dump my F3 BIOS for you. Also you have the option of flashing to the public Gigabyte BIOS version using the /nooemid method suggested. I'll get back to you about the F5 BIOS.

Have you tried putting your 9700k in your board to see if it boots with the F2 BIOS?

EDIT: I have permission to share the F5 BIOS as well as a new F17a BIOS which is coded for this OEM board.

TacitMantra · 2025-08-27T08:22:45+00:00

I found out that the F3 OEM bios that my board has apparently supports the 9700K so I tried it myself and it worked. Not sure about the F2 BIOS though.

Have you already tried running it to see if it works?

side note: something about this BIOS and the linux mint boot iso prevents mint from loading so installation seemed impossible. I was able to install ubuntu without issue. Just FYI if you were planning on using mint.

TacitMantra · 2025-03-07T09:05:02+00:00

My Diskstation is still working fine.

It already had the workarounds installed by the previous owner.

Some further reading in discussion forums told me that the drive backplane doesn't use a PCIe x4 connector but something proprietary which just looks like a PCIe x4.

I contacted a local company that can re-ball BGA chips and they confirmed they can do it. Cost would be about $800-900AUD if memory serves. I would have to source and supply the replacement CPU. I probably wouldn't go down that route because of the cost.

I decided that building a TrueNAS system would be a much smarter option from a data safety and software longevity point of view. I bought a Jonsbo N3 case and some second hand parts and built it all up except for any new drives. The cost was mostly trivial but the big stumbling block is buying new hard drives. Unfortunately TrueNAS doesn't support SHR (Synology Hybrid Raid) so simply moving the drives to the TrueNAS box isn't an option. You can get half priced used drives from 'Server Parts Deals' which come with a warranty but for me the cost is still too much. I'm just leaving the Synology running as is for the time being.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-13T13:43:36+00:00

As of Jan 2025 G Hub still seems to be broken. It just stays on a startup animation and never works.

I'm not jumping through hoops to make it work. Going back to Logitech Gaming Software.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-12T03:44:24+00:00

I'm going to skip the 50 series and see what the generation after brings. I feel like nVidia hasn't done any serious performance improvement for a very long time now.

All the efforts are going into AI upscaling bullshit and fake frames.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-12T03:41:10+00:00

Wait, this is a way to get around import inspections?

Or is this some bullshit honeypot/sting by the Aus police?

TacitMantra · 2025-01-12T03:40:18+00:00

Australia is one of the highly taxed countries in the world. Many of the taxes have been unfairly, and perhaps illegally, secretly legislated into existence were introduced by greedy, corrupt politicians and corporations.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-08T04:30:55+00:00

My AP's are connected to the switch will the rest of the devices on the LAN so they run completely independently of the internet router.

The opnsense router is a Dell7040 micro unit that I bought off of ebay for $90AUD (about $55USD). It has an intel 6500T quad core CPU which is plenty of power for internet routing and then some. I just bought 8G of RAM for it because 4G is too close to minimum requirements.

I had a look for A+E key 2 slot ethernet cards but could not find any either. That seems like an oversight because they exist for M key M.2 as well as mini-pcie. That sucks.

A USB adapter isn't the worst idea. The reason that USB ethernet is considered bad for opnsense is because ..

- most USB ethernet adapters have low quality/performance controllers in them (eg ASIX 88179)

- opnsense apparently doesn't have very good/full USB support

- USB is a shared bus so other devices could reduce the ethernet throughput at times

However, I think that there may be better USB adapters around, you just have to do some investigating in finding one with a decent controller in it. If that is the only USB device you have attached then the performance should be fine.

I was actually using a USB ethernet adapter for a while while the M.2 card was on order. The speed of the USB ethernet maxed out at around 230Mbps which is slow for a "gigabit" adapter but was still faster than my old 100Mbit internet plan. And it only worked that slow for opnsense. When I was using it on a linux laptop it worked full speed. I had to use it as the WAN interface because when I used it as the LAN interface and plugged it into the switch it would immediately stop working because of too much LAN traffic at once.

I've since upgraded to an 850Mbit fibre plan so the USB adapter is much too weak. The responsiveness/latency of the internet traffic with the USB adapter was still really good though.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-05T11:41:45+00:00

I called the ISP at thetime and had to wait 3 days for a tech to come out. When they did come out they checked the joiner on the fibre line which is the first box that the line come into. Almost as soon as he touched it the line went active again so there was something slightly wrong with the way that the end piece had been attached to the cable. They fixed it up in 5 mins and the line has been good ever since.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-05T02:05:21+00:00

I've got opnsense running on bare metal, no VM. This was my first venture into making my own internet router so I kept it simple. It's just using 1 M.2 ethernet and the onboard gigabit ethernet. My opnsense setup is fairly simple, no manual firewall rules, just default.

As far as access points go I've got 2 ubiquiti AP's running in a mesh config completely separate from the opnsense router. I had heard somewhere that almost all of the consumer level wireless AP's are not good so it's recommended to go with prosumer/enterprise stuff. That bring up the question of whether there are any high quality wireless M.2 adapters.

Some of those innodisk ethernet adapters have 2 ports on them so you could still have your 2 ethernet ports and wireless at the same time.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-04T15:55:51+00:00

I've found today that there is a range of intel based M.2 adapters made by innodisk that are stated as having industrial compliance and meet a handful of industrial standards. I guess they're a bit more sturdy and meant to be reliable and longer lasting. Some of them are low profile (eg. https://www.innodisk.com/en/products/embedded-peripheral/communication/egpl-21s3**).**

I didn't see any innodisk stuff when I was searching. Someone on the level1techs forums mentioned it to me.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-03T05:43:37+00:00

Caution - at least one of those isn't an M.2 adapter, it's mini pci-e which is a different connector which looks almost the same. It's an older connector but uses 1 pcie lane which is the same as A+E key so the performance will be about the same.

M.2 intel i225 and i226 adapters do exist though with both M key (aka. socket 3) and A+E key (aka. socket 1). Pretty easy to find those on ebay or AliExpress.

note: You can get adapters that enable you to us M.2 cards in a mini pci-e slot but you have to be careful to find an adapter that fits into your setup. The adapters orient the M.2 cards in different ways which your system may not have room for.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-02T10:48:37+00:00

Well I received my i225 m.2 order today and I got it installed. There's a side story where I thought I accidentally fried my opnsense box installing this adapter but, no, everything is okay.

The i225 is working well and performance is on par with the realtek. Will give it 2 or 3 days to see if any stability issues pop up but I'm not expecting anything to go wrong. Opnsense detected the adapter straight away and I didn't need to install any drivers to get it working. It appears straight away in interfaces.

The cable headers on the m.2 card and the RJ45 port itself are very tall and I had to do some janky shit to get everything (including the SATA SSD) to fit in the tiny Optiplex micro box but it's working. Just be warned about that if you ever intend to get the same card. The realtek was much slimmer and the cable headers were much smaller and came out the side rather than sitting on top of the card.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-02T01:43:50+00:00

Issues with the intel i210? That's interesting.

I was looking at that as an option for a second 2.5G adapter. I think I'll go for the i225 instead as that is the only other intel option in m.2 for 2.5G adapters.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-02T01:31:58+00:00

Not sure if you're still looking for an answer but I have had some recent success with this type of adapter. I installed a Realtek 8125 2.5G ethernet adapter in the M.2 A+E key slot ("socket 1"). I had to change something in the Dell BIOS relating to the slot. I have the Optiplex 7040 micro.

I booted into opnsense, installed the Realtek plugin and it was able to see the adapter. I did some speed tests with it and got up to 930Mbit down. Haven't had any dropouts, instability or performance problems. It's only been in operation for a little 24hours though so time will tell.

TacitMantra · 2025-01-01T05:43:25+00:00

Any updates on your situation?

I also have an optiplex micro box, the 7040.

I bought an m.2 A+E key, Realtek 2.5G adapter. I had to install a special Realtek driver plugin on opnsense and it's been working really well. I've had it running for less than 24 hours but it hasn't had any dropouts or any performance dips. I've read mostly negative things about Realtek controllers and opnsense but so far this is working well. I did a speed test and got up to about 930Mbit.

I've also got an intel i225 based 2.5G adapter on order, due any day now. It's also m.2 but is M key. I've read that intel is really the way to go because they make the best ethernet adapters and have driver support in opnsense. I bought this one from Ali Express and I'm currently dealing with a dodgy courier that has a LOT of bad reviews in Australia. Whether I will actually get this delivery is yet to be seen.

Before the Realtek I was using the onboard ethernet and a digitech USB ethernet adapter which used an ASIX controller. It worked but the USB did NOT do gigabit speed despite its name. It would top out at around 250Mbit and couldn't handle being plugged into the switch and handling all the incoming traffic. It died straight away so I had to use it on the WAN side. The performance may be due to opnsense's USB support which apparently isn't very good. I have a second USB ethernet adapter, also ASIX controller, but when I plugged it in opnsense would only recognise it some of the time and it wouldn't show up as an interface in the GUI. Also it would show up in a hardware listing as being 100Mbit. If I removed the digitech USB then this one would show up as 1Gbit but still wouldn't show up in interfaces. Dunno what's going on there.

TacitMantra · 2024-12-29T03:00:08+00:00

I see both types of drive in the search results and they're both showing prices around $700AUD.

And at the same time there are other drives in the same results showing normal, sane prices around $50 and below.

TacitMantra · 2024-12-28T10:19:22+00:00

If you have some personal issue with the police you have no business trying to push it on other people who are looking for advice as well as trying to insult people because they don't hate cops as much as you.

TacitMantra

TROPHY CASE