11th Gen Intel Core BIOS 3.20 Release and Driver Bundle Update

I would have backup power connected, eg: UPS for the best situation in the event of child, cat or other calamity

This looks like it’s failing in the ME update, what is your current ME version? Did the bios update to 3.20 while your ME is left behind to a previous version, eg:
ME.15.0.42.2235.bin
ME.15.0.45.2411.bin

What does ME mean and where would I check that? And also: How to solve it? I just followed the instructions and would think that it works OOTB.

I solved this by turning off EFI secure boot in the bios prior to starting the upgrade.

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Running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on a Laptop 13 with 11 gen processor. So far, so good, after upgrade to 3.20.
Looking into getting a new RTC/CMOS battery as I have had some booting problems recently.

Thank you Sir, this indeed worked very well. Perhaps this should be reflected in the instruction above. :wink:

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(Issue 1) Hum…looks like charging flicker / toggling / flipping is still a thing when, in my case, Stop Charging threshold is set to 72, with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Kernel 6.8.0-31. (When looking at the battery indicator in the GUI, or Settings → Power). While idling.

Side-LED charging indicators stays white though.

In Windows 11, if you hover the mouse cursor over the battery icon in the system tray, I would see the popup tooltip of “Battery status: 72% available (plugged in)” changes to “Battery status: 72% remaining”…and back and forth once in a while (at lease once every 5 minutes of human monitoring period).

(Issue 2) And somewhere along a reboot from Ubuntu 24.04 to Windows 11, the laptop would momentarily continue to charge (ignoring the charge threshold of 72%)…and I see 73% in Windows?

Update (on Issue 1):
And looking at this, I guess it’s because 24.04 LTS currently doesn’t have an OEM kernel? Meaning if I don’t want to see this issue, I need to go back to Ubuntu 22.04?:

Update (on Issue 2):
If I only do Windows–>Reboot–>Windows, I still see the battery charged percentage increase from 72% to 73%.

So, seems like the implementation of the stop charging threshold still has gaps after 2.5 years (since feature release). Hope the BIOS team can look into this.

Both issues are observed with Framework’s 60W charger (and Framework’s USB-C charging cable), and Lenovo’s 65W USB-C charger.

See the “Update (on Issue 2)” section in the previous message.

I proceeded to testing rebooting from/to the same OS…and eliminate numeric representation differences between OSes.

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So far I’ve had no success with standalone mode. Windows exe says add a battery, and efi just reboots after updating ME firmware.

Base BIOS version doesn’t update

Did you try this:

The update failed for me.

The mainboard is an 11th gen Batch 5 on 3.17 with a coolermaster case and the BIOS is in STANDALONE mode.

I downloaded the 3.20 update, burned it to a bootable FAT USB, booted, and watched it run startup.nsh. It looks like it updated some stuff under EFI, then rebooted itself and came up with a blank screen.

I unplugged and rebooted the machine and it came up still on 3.17.

Tried again. Booted the USB, but this time it ran startup.nsh, tossed out some red text, rebooted before I could read anything, and same–still on 3.17.

I’ve confirmed secure boot is OFF.


The following may or may not be relevant.

Just out of curiosity, I ran “fwupdmgr get-devices” and see the following in the output

UEFI System Firmware:
│ │   Device ID:          4e494f28c524fcd4beef1b131512b664c09476d1
│ │   Summary:            UEFI System Resource Table device (updated via NVRAM)
│ │   Current version:    785
│ │   Minimum Version:    1
│ │   Vendor:             Framework (DMI:INSYDE Corp.)
│ │   Update State:       Transient failure
│ │   Update Error:       failed to update to 0: error-pwr-evt-batt

I just tried to update to 3.19, but get exactly the same behavior.

Meanwhile, I was reviewing Getting started guide with a bare motherboard and suspect this has to do with the (lack of a) battery. I know the rtc is good, because the mainboard keeps time properly between shutdowns.

I just found the error.log on the boot USB, which says

Error 331: Full FW Update using same version is not allowed. Include -allowsv in command line to allow it.

I opened startup.nsh and appended the “-allowsv” flag to permit a retry.

fwupdlcl.efi -F fwupdate.bin -y -allowsv

Re-booted the USB and carefully watched it run through to 100% successfully updated. Again, it rebooted, but I’m still on 3.17. There’s no error.log file, so I presume it thinks it worked properly.

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fwupdlcl.efi does the ME, you want to run the line that has the graphical winux thing - but without the winux so you can see the bios updater log - I’ll try to find my laptop in a few and post more details

11th Gen Batch 3. Updated from 3.19. Everything went smoothly. There was a restart after the Framework symbol with a completion bar where the screen took a minute (or longer, can’t remember) to come back and fully update. I think the update took somewhere around 10-15 minutes.


Yep, no go just like the poster above. Hopefully in time FW will get a better updater. I might eventually try creating a windows to go usb drive and using the exe.

Thanks. Looking an awful lot like this is an unsolved problem with standalone 11th gen mainboards.

Can anyone with an 11th Gen CoolerMaster confirm they’ve successfully the updated BIOS?

I have this same issue, only I was on 3.19 already. It boots from the USB, and installs the firmware (or so it thinks) but when you reboot it’s still showing 3.19 for me. I’m on Linux Fedora and used the UEFI Shell.


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I’m running Manjaro Linux with Ubuntu installed on a second partition (for when Matt asks :wink:

@Matthew_Finnie Is your mainboard in a laptop, or standalone?

This update will check for the battery being present before updating. So you will need to attach a battery before updating.

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Mine is the full laptop not just the mainboard.