Reusing an old AMD motherboard (X370)

[Snowy]

Hi all,
I have an ASUS Prime X370-Pro motherboard and a Ryzen 7 1700X I purchased in 2017 before upgrading in 2021. Since then, the components have just been sitting in my closet collecting dust, but I'd like to revive this build to give to a friend. As part of this, I'd like to upgrade the CPU to a 5000-series processor (probably a Ryzen 5 5500) and I have some questions:

What should be the order of operations for getting the motherboard ready for a new processor?

I suspect I should do the following:

1. Install Windows 10 with existing PC components (X370-Pro, 1700X, 16GB Ram, Radeon 6700XT)
2. Update X370-Pro chipset drivers
3. Update X370-Pro BIOS
4. Install new CPU
5. Re-install Windows

Does this order seem right to you? Is there something I'm missing?

I don't think I ever updated any BIOS or chipset drivers when I ran this MOBO as everything just "worked", so I suspect it still has something from ~early 2017 loaded on it.

Thanks for your help

 

[Grimlakin]

I would see if that motherboard supports a power off or pre boot bios update. If so i would start with that with the 3000 series cpu still installed. Only then swap to the 5000 series cpu then do your installs. Reason being your memory controllers and i/o are different between gens and built into the cpu. Otherwise you'll be reverting and reinstalling drivers over after the cpu swap.

 

[Denpepe]

I would start with updating the bios and go from there, don't see any point in doing a windows install prior to that for the old hardware, you don't need windows to update a bios.

Do make sure that you don't skip any bios updates as sometimes you need to do a couple older ones first

 

[DrezKill]

Yeah the first thing I would do is UEFI update.

Then you can throw the Ryzen 5000 series CPU in there, configure the UEFI, install Windows, install chipset drivers, and go from there.

Do make sure that you don't skip any bios updates as sometimes you need to do a couple older ones first

If there are a lot of UEFI updates that could take a long time. And UEFI updates, while generally safer than the old-school BIOS updates, are still not without risks. I would go straight to the latest UEFI version unless the motherboard manufacturer mentions you should do otherwise for one specific reason or another. For example, on an X470 Gigabyte board I handled early last year, I first had to flash the UEFI to version F31 before I could go to F64 (see this page for reference: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X470-AORUS-GAMING-7-WIFI-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios). This is because F31 updates the Q-Flash utility that is used to update the UEFI. It mentions this on the page, and for the version after that (F40), it says "if you are using Q-Flash Utility to update BIOS, make sure you have updated BIOS to F31 before F40". I tried going straight to F64 from F3 just to see what would happen cuz I was curious, and it actually warns you about the issue and won't let you update the firmware. Anyways that's just one example of why for a particular board you might want to update to an earlier UEFI version before going straight to the latest. But in general I think it's usually fine to go straight to the latest UEFI.

don't see any point in doing a windows install prior to that for the old hardware

Same.

 

[Denpepe]

For example, on an X470 Gigabyte board I handled early last year, I first had to flash the UEFI to version F31 before I could go to F64 (see this page for reference: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X470-AORUS-GAMING-7-WIFI-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios). This is because F31 updates the Q-Flash utility that is used to update the UEFI. It mentions this on the page, and for the version after that (F40), it says "if you are using Q-Flash Utility to update BIOS, make sure you have updated BIOS to F31 before F40".

This is a more elaborate way to say what I meant

 

[Dan_D]

Do make sure that you don't skip any bios updates as sometimes you need to do a couple older ones first

Sometimes, but this is rare. It's usually denoted on the page when this is the case.