ATTN: People with Asus P6T Deluxe V2

[smokenstein]

Hi I was referred to this place from a friend of mine, so far it look's really nice. The Reviews and guides are awesome here!

I'm actually planning on building a computer with said mobo and an i7 920. This would be my first time building a computer. I've heard from MANY reviews and MANY forums that this mother board requires a BIOS update pretty much right out of the box in order for it to function with a 64bit OS and/or to utilize more than 3 GB of RAM (I intend to use 6 GB DDR3 1600). Now my question is:

***NOOB ALERT***
How do I update the BIOS? lol.. I kind of have an idea of how to do it (download new bios version, burn it on a bootable cd, reboot with XP CD and run in DOS mode, pop in BIOS CD and it'll do it's thing) ...am I close?

I've done a decent amount of research online and MOST of them say to do it from a floppy. I don't understand this, why floppy? I also don't have a computer with a floppy drive at my house or any of my friends for that matter. If I was wrong about how to update it, how do I go about updating the BIOS correctly?

Also, how do I boot into DOS without having an OS installed on my computer?

ALSO, I've seen people refer to the new BIOS version as 0202. I'm on the website and there's no 0202. I only see 0102 (original) and 0302 (3/04/09) soo...does that mean version 0302 will have 0202 in it?

I would appreciate it very much if someone could answer my questions. Also, what do you guys think of this mobo/processor combo? I've heard nothing but good things. Do you guys have any tips/tricks for a beginner? (I'm aware of the antistatic straps/mats)

Thanks in advance.

 

[nineball9]

I don't have a P6T but most Asus BIOS updates are done in the same manner. I pulled this from the Asus P6T Deluxe V2 support forums:

Please don't use ASUS Update to upgrade BIOS!
Instead, use EZ Flash 2 (BIOS - Tools menu), with the unzipped BIOS file on a FAT/FAT32 formatted USB Flash Drive, that has to be inserted before (re)boot.
(Note that the drive letters in EZ Flash are not necessary the same as in Windows)

To download and unzip the BIOS file you will need to use another computer. There are several methods to format a USB flash drive in FAT/FAT32; poke around with google for more info or ask here. The P6T board supports the AFUDOS BIOS update method which I prefer. With this method, you create a bootable DOS flash drive, copy the AFU236U.exe (unzipped) program to the flash drive along with BIOS (unzipped) and boot from the flash drive. Run AFU236U.EXE and update your BIOS.

- OR -

Use the EZ Flash BIOS update method.

Updating the BIOS under Windows (ASUS Update) seems to fail a lot - at least from the posts I've read on the Asus support forums though I've never tried it - so use update your BIOS using EZ Flash or AFUDOS instead.

You might try borrowing a floppy drive for a few days if you want to install RAID or AHCI drivers too.
Good luck!