Asrock Gen 3 MoBo Problems

[n0cturnal]

That is why most people would advice you to go with a Z77 motherboard for Ivy Bridge CPU. Also next time you plan to build a computer I would suggest that you go to the motherboard manufacturers site and look up both CPU support as well as RAM memory support list.

[Theodon]

you could buy a cheap 40$ sandybridge celeron just to update the bios .. but i guess thats ur last resort

Definitely my second resort if the BIOS chip thing doesn't work out. Just waiting on the reply from AsRock to see if a temporary CPU is needed or not.

That is why most people would advice you to go with a Z77 motherboard for Ivy Bridge CPU. Also next time you plan to build a computer I would suggest that you go to the motherboard manufacturers site and look up both CPU support as well as RAM memory support list.

That board was actually the one suggested on these very boards, so I got unlucky on the advice it seems. I did actually check that it supports both Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge CPUs and both types were listed as supported. It's just a case of the Motherboard in particular I've ended up with likely being one of the earliest ones from the earliest batches produced and it having the old BIOS chip, I think.