alt Hacker NewsNever update your BIOS unless you have a specific bug that needs fixed.
I remember a Thinkpad BIOS update ended up destroying both undervolting and overclocking, and required a "chip-clip" programmer to revert.
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I built a tower several years ago and it had CPU temp issues from the start. I RMA’d the cooler, reapplied the thermal paste a couple times, reassembled the whole build, etc. It wasn’t my main machine, but every time I sat down to use it the CPU would run hot and thermal-throttle. It’s an i9 with P/E cores, so I just chalked it up to Linux power management woes. A couple months ago I was on the brink of selling it for parts, but updated the BIOS as a Hail Mary. Totally fixed it.
I guess I did “ have a specific bug that needs fixed”; I just didn’t know it!
Most of the laptop BIOS updates are now for CVEs and other security fixes, from my experience. You don't have much choice but upgrade.
People don't have a choice to update their BIOS, as updates like this are automatically installed, by both Windows and the underlying Intel ME tools.
(And I'm trying to avoid talking about microcode updates, which is a whole other story of fuckups)
Regarding Thinkpad BIOS: I have a Raspberry Pi Zero and a self soldered RP2040 programmer [1] in my travel kit for a reason. When travelling, a lot of the Cellebrite rootkits rely on an OEM BIOS, so they typically reflash your BIOS in the "we gonna check your laptop" phase.
[1] would totally recommend serprog, it's awesome: https://codeberg.org/Riku_V/pico-serprog
That advice doesn't hold up very well when in recent years we've had multiple instances of a BIOS update being necessary to deal with the problem of "the CPU gets fed too high a voltage and dies prematurely". That's happened to both Intel and AMD desktop CPUs.
It's a real problem that BIOS updates for consumer systems never come with a meaningful changelog, so evaluating whether a particular update is a good idea or not is basically impossible.