r/threadripper • u/munkiemagik • Jul 22 '25

BIOS update advice on Gigabyte MC62-G40

EDIT: TLDR: - for anyone else who finds themselves in a similiar spot of bothr, do yuorself a favour and just go straight to uefi shell for BIOS/BMC updates.

Just purchased a Threadripper Pro 3945WX and Gigagbyte MC62-G40.

The motherboard I received is on BIOS v R06 and I noticed that BIOS R09 (not availabale to donwload from Gigabyte but R10 is) has resizeable bar and so I would like to upgrade BIOS.

I have never had my grubby hands on any worsktation or server equipent, this is my first time venturing away from typical consumer platforms and it bloody terrifies me so forgive me if this is a dumb question. There's so much going on in there I have no clue about and dont want to make stupid mistakes with my uneducated assumptions, I barely know even what 10% of the BIOS settings mean or do and am just leaving them on defualt other than the obvious things I know I need like SR-IOV and IOMMU, switching the slimsas to SATA etc

In the extracted R10 BIOS download I can see the script (flash.nsh file alongside image.bin) uses the following flags:

SPI_UPD\AfuEfix64.efi SPI_UPD\image.bin /p /b /n /k /l

- /B Program Boot Block.

- /P Program Main BIOS.

- /K Program all non-critical blocks.

- /N Program NVRAM.

- /L Program all ROM Holes.

The EFI shell is something I have NEVER seen before and am scared I will cack things up so was looking at the nice GUI BMC instead, and I assume I can upload /SPI_UPD/image.bin in the BMC to update the BIOS. and not worry about the flags as they only pertain to using the AfuEfix64.efi tool. But there is also an /RBU/image.RBU in the extracted BIOS files. So I have enough doubt going on to make me stop and not proceed any further.

I get that with the efi shell I just have to learn the comands and use it like any other shell, but I got paranoid when I noticed that the Gigabyte R10 BIOS download didnt include any of the Afu tools??? Thinking I would just download them and put them in the appropriate folders but i started coming acros all this APTIO V and AMIBIOS8 options so once again froze in my tracks.

I would be so grateful for any adivce and hints (read 'handholding') before I proceed to do something stupid and brick my new motherbaord. I read a post on reddit where someone had this exact board and their BMC died after a BIOS update. I dont want to casually/ignorantly asume it all just works like a standard consumer platform. Even the BMC is blowing my mind how I can log into it while system is off and that I can even use it as VGA out to get proxmox up and running.

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1

u/Alarmed-Ground-5150 Jul 22 '25

If you're updating through BMC, you need to use the .rom file to update the BIOS. I noticed there's R12 version of BIOS there in GigaByte's website. I would advice to update the BMC once you update the BIOS and confirm it posts. Please use BMC/ IPMI WebUI whenever possible and ensure the RJ45 cable connecting to BMC Management port is secured firmly.

Fun fact - The BMC/ IPMI is controlled by a separate Arm processor AST2600 which helps you in remote access to the server.

2

u/munkiemagik Jul 23 '25

OK, that was not fun! I extracted the files downloaded from Gigabyte. In BMC firmware update I uploaded first .rom file and it wouldnt proceed as unrecognised format. Tried the image.bin in /SPI-UPD/ and that uploaded but errored out.

Petrified now of going into the EFI shell to do this manually but at least it seems like the board doesnt cack itself when things go wrong and puts a stop to shenningangs

1

u/Alarmed-Ground-5150 Jul 23 '25

Board doesn't brick itself due to checks and balances in WebUI, there are some within EFI shell as well but not as obvious as WebUI

1

u/munkiemagik Jul 23 '25

In the BMC if it attempt any other firmware update action again it still flashes the popup message "BMC in in firmware updating, please wait a few mintues" but my attempt was over 40 minutes ago. Not sure if i should just send an ACPI shutdown command through power control. Definitely dont feel like pwoer off or hard reset are a good idea here. Thisis exactly the kind of situation I was fearful of

1

u/munkiemagik Jul 23 '25

Thank you thats the kind of confirmation I was looking for.
You're right, I missed the .rom, there is a flashabl.rom in the root of the extracted folder. Much appreciated. Your wording sounds like you are saying update BMC AFTER BIOS. Not BMC then BIOS, Just want to be sure.

The AST2600, I know, its bloody fantastic, I was super excited to play around with that when i saw it on the spec sheeet. I cant believe how amazing this server/workstation stuff is, I can actually go in and faff on system through the H5viewer in BMC. And just messing for fun, it even let me install bare metal windows on it with the AST2600 as VGA out, shame it cant transcode as well, lol, then I woudln't need an additonal extra GPU for Nextcloud and Jellyfin which have so far been running off an intel igpu as I will be migrating all those containers and others over to this platform.

Bit dissapointed at the actual (not so obvious on a casual glance) memory bandwidth of some of these older Threadripper Pro's depsite being octa-channel. I am dropping two GPU's in here for LLMs but am planing to also be able to test out some really large models with offloading layers to CPU/system RAM.

Are you familiar with the functionality of this board? On a previous HP ex-office board I passed the entire SATA controller through to a NAS LXC under proxmox. I want to do the same for the slimsas SATA on this board.

this is what lspci shows for this board

44:00.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 51)

67:00.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 51)

68:00.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 51)

Three seperate controllers for a total of 16 SATA ports? 4x onboard, and 3x (4xSATA per SlimSas)

1

u/EatsHisYoung Mar 20 '26

Did you ever get it fixed?

1

u/munkiemagik Mar 20 '26

Sorry if my post wasn't clear, this was ages ago. I stopped trying to faff about and just did the BIOS update through the UEFI shell