AMD Ryzen 5000 BIOS updates are live now

News
By published

Asus is the first to announce BIOS updates for its X570 and B550 motherboards.

Asus ROG Strix B550-XE Gaming WiFi with Hyper M.2 x16 Gen 4 card.
(Image credit: Asus)

AMD hasn't released any new motherboard chipsets to go with the launch of the Zen 3 chips. This is because these chips are designed to plug straight into existing motherboards. Asus has just announced that BIOS updates are now live for its 500 series motherboards, with the updates supporting current generation chips as well as the new Zen 3 processors that are going to be announced later today.

Prime Day deals are coming...

(Image credit: Future)

Amazon Prime Day 2020 deals: the place to find all the best Prime Day bargains around October 13 and 14.

Asus has provided a comprehensive list of all of its 500 series motherboards, along with the BIOS version numbers that support the new chips. It really does have a lot of models out there. We'd expect the other motherboards manufacturers to follow suit shortly as well.

Notable in their absence from this announcement are 400 series motherboards. We don't take from this that such upgrades are not coming, as AMD promised to support them after an initially saying 400 series motherboards had had their day. A notable point about the BIOS update announcement is that the 500 motherboards will support Zen 2 and Zen 3 processors, whereas it is expected that 400 series boards will lose support for Zen+ when they're updated to handle Zen 3.

Asus has also unveiled three new motherboards: ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero, TUF Gaming X570-Pro (WiFi), and ROG Strix B550-XE Gaming WiFi. This last inclusion is an interesting one, as Asus is calling it its new flagship B550 motherboard, with 16 power stages, improved VRM cooling, and an extra M.2 x16 Gen 4 card to complement the existing pair of M.2 slots.

Alan Dexter
Alan Dexter

Alan has been writing about PC tech since before 3D graphics cards existed, and still vividly recalls having to fight with MS-DOS just to get games to load. He fondly remembers the killer combo of a Matrox Millenium and 3dfx Voodoo, and seeing Lara Croft in 3D for the first time. He's very glad hardware has advanced as much as it has though, and is particularly happy when putting the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs, AMD processors, and laptops through their paces. He has a long-lasting Magic: The Gathering obsession but limits this to MTG Arena these days.