Why... why would I lie? What could I possibly have to gain from lying about this? I only have HN karma to lose, which I don't have much to begin with.
You can, before simply defending AMD, research and see for yourself that required BIOS updates are indeed an issue.
I tried it with an MSI Tomahawk, and an Asus B350 Prime. Had a Ryzen-5-1600 and a Ryzen-7-1700, as well as a pair of DDR4-2133, and DDR4-3000 modules each, and tried every combination, and was never able to post.
Switched to Intel CPU and Asus Intel-supporting MB with the same DDR4-3000 RAM and POST'd on the first try. I'm saying that to 'prove' that the other components were fine.
I'm glad that it worked out for you, and I wish it had gone smooth for me too.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3387164/am4-motherboa...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/66b7vu/to_all_ryzen_5_...
... so many of these.