Asus M2N-E uses AM3 CPUs?

[bigbeark]

Accordng to the ASUS website, if you apply BIOS 5001 you can use Socket AM3 CPUs on the M2N-E motherboard.

I have two of these boards that are working. The CPU support info on the ASUS site says you can use ATHLON II X2 CPUs, Athlons II X3, and even Athlon II X4 CPUs.
These CPUs seem to be readily available at reasonable prices. There are some that consume as little as 45 watts.

The notes say "Due to Bios ROM size limitation remove LAN PXE ROM and change Crashfree3 to Crashfree".

I assume these are options in the BIOS setup you can change,

Has anyone done this and what method did you use to flash the BIOS? Apparently there is some ASUS software to do this.

Grateful for any tips!

[piernov]

Re: Asus M2N-E uses AM3 CPUs?

You can update the BIOS from within the BIOS itself using a FAT32 USB drive.
It'll most likely not boot K10 CPU without the BIOS update so you'd need to do it using a K8.
The upgrade is definitely worth it if possible.
The Athlon II have L3 cache disabled, so prefer a Phenom II if possible instead. They're not crazy cheap but $17 for a Phenom II X4 945 is not bad. Prefer getting the 95W version. The CPU support list shows some 125W TDP CPU but I wouldn't fully trust that.
Crashfree is a BIOS recovery feature, shouldn't really matter. LAN PXE ROM allows booting from a PXE server on the network, if you don't know what it is you probably won't need it.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Asus M2N-E uses AM3 CPUs?

The notes say "Due to Bios ROM size limitation remove LAN PXE ROM and change Crashfree3 to Crashfree".

I assume these are options in the BIOS setup you can change

Just to clarify this changelog means that these two features where removed / downgraded to make the upgraded CPU support fit on the BIOS EEPROM chip.
I.e. it is not something you need to do / change after flashing the BIOS, just a note that you will loose PXE functionality after upgrading.