Free Am4 Processor kinda

This news article just popped up on my feed that I thought was interesting. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/amd-sending-out-free-processors-to-solve-firmware-flashing-catch-22/

TLDR: Amd will send an a6 9500 to all the people that need to update the bios of their motherboards to make them compatible with raven ridge apus as long as you send it back after.

Here’s the Amd support page link https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/2Gen-Ryzen-AM4-System-Bootup.aspx

And pertinent information:

Boot Kit Solution

AMD will provide affected and qualified users a boot kit to perform the BIOS update on their motherboard.

This solution is offered through AMD warranty services and is available only for affected and qualified users of this specific boot up issue. This boot kit is fee of charge.

To obtain the boot kit, please carefully follow these instructions:

Go to the AMD online warranty claims page: https://support.amd.com/en-us/warranty/rma
Fill in your full contact and product details
In the Problem Description field enter “Boot kit Required” (without quotes)

NOTE: The product must be a valid AMD processor with authentic OPN and serial number.

Once the claim is received and approved, confirmation details and boot kit instructions will be provided in a follow up email.

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Coo

had you beat in the lounge, but deff cool of AMD to do it.

Lol I wasn’t 100% sure where to put this so I shoved it in the cpu section.

1 Like

na its all good here, good for people who dont lurk in the lounge to see

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I don’t lounge, so was glad to se this, so well done @Nachosauce! a techtuber I follow ran into this (click tech tv), and it’s a little dissapointing that AMD got it’s partners to prepare boards for RR graphics outputs included, but something came unstuck along the way.

I’m a fan of AMD, but a little dissapointed.

On the other hand, Intel doesn’t allow cross chip/board compatability at all, so this is a step in the right direction!

You have to return the processor to AMD though, but for some reason you get the keep the crappy heatsink.

Once you’ve got everything up and running on the new chip, you’re then meant to send AMD back the temporary chip, though oddly, without its required heatsink. The heatsink isn’t compatible with the Ryzen chips, so it’s not particularly worth keeping, but apparently AMD has no use for it either.

Heatsinks can be reused for things that aren’t CPUs, like high powered LED lights or music amps or power supplies. Although, the contact area is slightly large.

@Nachosauce

Thanks for the PM too, now I’m really torn about just buying the Gigabyte board now or waiting until I actually see the MSI out there…

So far I’ve had Geek Squad say they won’t do a BIOS flash on a “custom” system (wtf it’s just a motherboard), and another local shop has no AM4 socket parts so can’t do anything, so this mail-in option might be the simplest one for me.

Don’t know what I’d do with the heatsink… I still have the old wraith from my FX8350 that’s sitting around collecting dust…

Ehh, I’m too lazy to bother since I don’t really need a temp CPU to flash.

But yeah, keep your APUs handy if you’re going through AMD.

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No response for me yet, but it’s sitting on my desk just waiting for it!