GA-G31M-ES2L (Rev 1.1) compatibility with Intel E5300 CPU

[Tony_M]

Hi

I am a newbie to the art of PC building (other than replacing one failed motherboard with another identical one from eBay).

Have just received a G31M-ES2L plus a E5300 CPU from Ebuyer, no probs (very quick delivery), except the board is Rev 1.1 (Ser# 091900051315), and have just seen from the Gigabyte CPU compatability table on the website that this motherboard version will only support the E5300 if the BIOS is ver F5 (or later).  Of course I cannot check the BIOS version without unsealing the Intel retail box to fit the CPU and powering the board up.

Does anybody out there happen to know (maybe if they have bought one of these motherboards very recently, or sombody from Gigabyte) whether this board is likely to have BIOS ver F5 or later, so that I can be reasonably sure the 2 items are fully compatible before I go any further?

Many thanks in advance for any help.

[oggmonster]

Even if the BIOS version is a lower version it should still work with that CPU but will just say "cpu not recognised" or something. Then from there you can enter the QFlash and flash with the latest BIOS revision.

[R_N_B]

You will have no problems as oggmonster said.

If you are going to flash your bios I strongly suggest you do it from DOS rather than via windows.

[Tony_M]

Thanks oggmonster and R_N_B for your replies - I will just have to keep fingers crossed that the mobo BIOS does recognise the CPU 'cos as a newbie the thought of having to update the BIOS version is scary to say the least, especially as presumably this would have to done before I could install drivers and operating system (Win XP Pro SP2 in my case).

Cheers.

[R_N_B]

It is not as scary as you think - and no you can update your bios at any time.

Up dating your bios can be done using one of the gigabyte utilities found at boot up. Just look at the bottom of your flash-screen (the welcome page image) when you boot up your PC. I would suggest that you download the new bios file from gigabyte and save it on a USB flash drive, or burn it onto a CD rom. There are a number or outstanding tutorials that will take you through a step by step bios flash.