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Comment by karmakaze | Hacker News Reader

At least users can go back to older firmware and get 5.0 back.

There was a story not long ago about some exercise equipment (I think) that remotely bricked the devices (when the company was being shutdown or something) though they could have worked offline just fine without that final update.

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Lately, some BIOS updates have been advertised as not revertable. I'm sure you can still program the old firmware with an external programmer, but "for security reasons", the in-system update won't let you revert some updates that fix security issues.

Even without that barrier, it's not great when you have to pick between things like the bus speed and memory stability or other updates you want.

I almost never install BIOS updates unless I'm encountering a specific issue. Vendors tend to discourage it as well. It's just one of those things where "if it works, don't fuck with it" is good advice.

I keep updating BIOS because newer versions often provide stability improvements and let you push higher overclocks. That in itself is not very interesting for an everyday overclock (which shouldn't push the hardware limits), but do allow for lowering the voltages used for sensitive components (like VSoC which was responsible for burning CPUs a couple of years ago). Lower voltage means safer operation and slower silicon degradation.

For example, I'm now running 6000 MT/s on stock VSoC which definitely wasn't possible on my hardware 1.5 years ago.

That said, my mobo vendor of choice is not known for doing rug pulls (unlike Gigabyte, who are also fond of releasing several board revisions under the same model with significant differences between them). It's the opposite — for example, a recent BIOS update added support for running internal graphics at 4K/120Hz on the same hardware that could only do 4K/60Hz before.

Makes sense if you're into that I guess. I never change the BIOS settings from their defaults unless something is causing a problem. I definitely don't fool with overclocking.

You still might want to look into curve optimizer, which is just a marketing term for an automatic undervolt. Since these AM5 CPUs are power limited, you can get (potentially) much higher clocks while still staying within the same energy budget. It's perfectly safe (AFAIK) since it doesn't involve pushing more energy into your chips (neither voltage nor TDP), and won't take very long.

I'm all for naming and shaming, but why not also name and praise when a company does good by its users?

I'm not exactly in the market for a mobo right now, but I think that's useful information.

TBH, I'm not sure how much good these anecdotes do. I had bad experiences with all major brands; a high quality & expensive ASUS motherboard was the worst, even though top ASUS is considered the safest choice in circles I tend to spend time in — if you have the money (it caught fire in the middle of light code editing for no reason I could establish after five years of excellent work).

Anyway, I now stick with ASRock. This will now attract anecdotes from users who have run into problems with them, and will describe at length how crappy their products are. Works with literally any brand, so I try not to mention any unless prodded.

IMHO, anytime they write "stability" or "memory compatibility" is a pretty compelling reason to update. Modern systems run pretty close to the edge, and DDR5 has some nasty training times that maybe an update could help with. How much you care about security fixes for microcode loading or boot time stuff is up to you... some of that is pretty esoteric, but some people are compelled to have all known security fixes.

Updates to support new CPUs are a maybe... I can probably wait and run that update right before swapping cpus, but some people might prefer to run them now, in case their cpu fails and they need to replace it ... a lot of boards can flash without a cpu installed, but you get a lot less feedback, it's nicer to flash when things are working.

> DDR5 has some nasty training times

I was having a hard time figuring out what’s wrong with my new system, until I read an offhand comment about DDR5 having long training times on AMD, and I should just leave the system running for 5-10 minutes… sounded like an urban legend, but turned out to be reality.

Yeah, it's super frustrating, I'm happy I knew about it before I did my ddr5 build. And then my board has this cool feature where when I load the XMP/EXPO profile from the ram, it turns termination from Auto to Off, and won't boot... sometimes it figures it out and goes back to the JEDEC profile, but usually I have to clear the CMOS. Tons of fun! And latest BIOS does the same thing, I updated recently cause I was having weird things, which did go away but not sure if the BIOS update or new fan settings helped more.

This one?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/firmware-update-hind...

The company isn't shutting down, probably just an attempt to get more subscriptions.

The company used to support Strava integration from their app in Free Ride mode. That broke last year, the app still reports that a ride happened, but the ride is reported as 0 miles, 0 minutes long. I have the low end bike and rower from them. The machines are great physically.

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