Question about BIOS for Asus G550JK / N550JK

[oldfirehand]

Question about BIOS for Asus G550JK / N550JK

Hi all,

Recently my G550JK suddenly died. In the local ASUS service center told me, that the motherboard is defective and that replacing with a new one would cost $1500 /Oh yes, sure /. After this suggestion I tried to repair the MB by myself and almost succeeded, but this is experience for another thread . Either way, I had to order from e-Bay new replacement motherboard for $200 - N550JV Rev 2.1, featuring the same P/N and hardware - CPU Intel i7 4600HQ-3300Mhz, GPU Nvidia GTX 850M 4GB DDR3. As a matter of fact, the PCB appears in an absolutely identical way to the original one including imprints, chips, stickers etc. I installed it, the laptop powered-on normally, all the hardware was correctly recognized and worked just the way as with the old MB. The only visible difference is in the 'ASUS' boot logo instead of 'ROG' because of different BIOS version. The BIOS is reported to be for N550JK platform, instead of G550JK. I desoldered the BIOS chip /Winbond W25Q64VF/ from the old defective MB and dumped it in bin file. Also I downloaded the latest BIOS update file from ASUS official website. In other words, I'm ready to reflash the BIOS of the new MB. But since doing this there is always a chance to end up with a bricked laptop, I would like to hear your opinions whether it makes sense to do it, provided that everything looks good at first glance. The information I was able to find about the ' G ' and ' N ' models is that they differ only in design, but is it true? Is it possible to have any peculiarities in the BIOS of G550, which optimizes the performance of the hardware for this model?

[Lost_N_BIOS]

Send me your dump, BEFORE you erase or write anything.
For that chip, best to use 1.30 software version and ID W25Q64BV instead of W25Q64VF
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fil...5007472602

I will make you new BIOS with your serial etc from the original dump. BIOS you download from Asus cannot be programmed directly to the board, it's not a complete BIOS and you'll loose all your board specific info (if they programmed that in there)

The BIOS on there now is made for the hardware it came with correct? If yes, leave it. If you are sure the other has the same hardware (mainly talking graphics card here) then you can use it instead, if you wanted. You have programmer and will have a checked backup made once you send to me, so you can always recover if it doesn't work smoothly.

[oldfirehand]

Send me your dump, BEFORE you erase or write anything.  
For that chip, best to use 1.30 software version and ID W25Q64BV instead of W25Q64VF
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fil...5007472602

I will make you new BIOS with your serial etc from the original dump.  BIOS you download from Asus cannot be programmed directly to the board, it's not a complete BIOS and you'll loose all your board specific info (if they programmed that in there)

The BIOS on there now is made for the hardware it came with correct?  If yes, leave it.  If you are sure the other has the same hardware (mainly talking graphics card here) then you can use it instead, if you wanted.  You have programmer and will have a checked backup made once you send to me, so you can always recover if it doesn't work smoothly.

 Lost_N_BIOS, thank you very much for your reply and suggestion. Here is the dumped BIOS from the old MB:


  G550JK_BIOS_DUMP_v205.bin (Size: 8 MB / Downloads: 17)

Yes, all seems to be OK with BIOS that came with the new board, but I'm tempted to restore the notebook to its completely original state, espetially if there is no chance to brick it

P.S. In PM I sent you dumped BIOS of the new MB.