Quanta BIOS update

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josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
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I'm very fearful of BIOS updates as I've bricked a motherboard before.

I purchased a Quanta D51B-2U that came with an older BIOS that does not support V4 CPUs. I have managed to find a V3 CPU and a couple of BIOS update packages with the required files to upgrade it to a supported BIOS. Quanta - Google Drive

I am currently on S2B_3A17. I tried using the CPU upgrade package on the official Quanta website (to 3B04) but it refuses to update the BIOS even though it throws no errors and the BMC updates successfully to 3.45.01.

One of the update packages has instructions:

1. It is very important to follow the flash option provided in the batch file to update BIOS
under UEFI SHELL/WINDOWS/Linux environment.
Using incorrect flash option to flash BIOS may cause damage to your system.

A. Burn S2B_XXXX.BIN via fixture, or
B. Follow below steps to update BIOS:
EFI Shell:
(1) Copy BIOS package to a USB flash drive.
(2) Attaching the USB flash drive on system.
(3) Boot up the system to EFI SHELL.
(4) Change directory to BIOS package.
(5) Exectute BIOS_efi64.nsh for BIOS region update or execute ME_efi64.nsh for ME region update.
(6) Reset system while the procedure is success.
Would appreciate some clarification on these issues:
  1. There are many versions of the BIOS provided in the folder. Do I need to update them sequentially or can I jump straight to the latest BIOS version?
  2. There is a web BMC that I can go into via the BMC IP that has a section that allows BIOS updates. It accepts .BIN files. Can I use this to upload the .BIN file in the package? The first line of the instructions seems to say we shouldn't do it.
  3. If using the web BMC is not a good idea, do I need a special EFI boot disk or can I use the built in UEFI shell?
  4. The BIOS instructions says that a higher BMC version is required. Do I update the BIOS first or the BMC? Can I upgrade the BMC all the way to the latest (2020 version) while leaving BIOS on the 2015 version before starting on the BIOS update?

Thanks!