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Updating ASUS XG-C100C’s Aquantia AQC107 Firmware and Drivers

Rashed Talukder
ASUS XG-C100C firmware flash guide

Update your ASUS XG-C100C or Aquantia ACQ107 firmware

If you’ve purchased network card that uses the Aquantia AQC107 chipset such as the ASUS XG-C100C, ASUS ROG AREION 10G, or others, you might be wanting to update your firmware to resolve some connectivity and speed issues. The Aquantia line of chips gives a lot of performance for the buck. While NICs and motherboards with integrated LAN using the AQC107 are some of the most affordable options today, the reliability with the included firmware left me wanting. However, when searching for a firmware, it was impossible to find anything because it turns out that Aquantia was purchased by Marvell. Along with the acquisition, it seems they removed all firmware from Aquantia’s site and left no reference to go to Marvell. So if you’re looking to update your firmware to your ASUS XG-C100C like I was on, then follow the steps below:

Firmware update is only possible on Windows. You must execute an EXE file. These steps are not officially supported. Follow the steps and flash at your own risk!

Flashing Aquantia AQtion firmware on unsupported devices

  1. Download the latest firmware and drivers from https://www.marvell.com/support/downloads.html#.
    • Select your platform (e.g. Windows 10 64-bit that’s towards the bottom, past the other Windows versions at the top).
    • Select your part number as ACQ107 (these steps may work for other chips like the AQC108 or AQC100).
    • Extract the zip files to any directory you want. For this post, we’re going to be referencing it from C:\.
  2. Open command prompt as administrator.
    • Windows button, and type CMD into Windows search.
    • Select “Run as administrator” on the right options pane of the search results for Command Prompt.
  3. Go to the firmware flash directory.
    • Type in CD \MarvellFlashUpdate.
    • Press the tab button to autocomplete the rest of the folder name. Press enter.
  4. Run the flash utility
    • Type atlflashupdate.exe and press enter to execute.
    • Press Y to proceed.

Now you’re going to see an error that says “no adapters can be updated” and the program will exit. To fix this,

Marvell Aquantia AQtion firmware update tool screenshot
  1. From your Command Prompt window, take a look at the output “Device” column.
    • did is the first 4 digits
    • sdid is the first 4 digits after the hyphen.
    • svid is the last 4 digits.
  2. Open updatedata.xml file using Notepad or XML editor like Notepad++ or Visual Studio Code. If it opens in Microsoft Word or Wordpad, do not save it! That will corrupt your data. Right-click in file explorer and Open with notepad.
  3. Add the string <pciid vid="1d6a" did="YOUR_DID" sdid="YOUR_SDID" svid="YOUR_SVID" />, replacing the placeholders with their respective values to the hwids element of bdp option id=1. It should look like:
<bdp id="1">
    <hwids>
      <pciid vid="1d6a" did="d107" sdid="d107" svid="1849" />
      <pciid vid="1d6a" did="07b1" sdid="d107" svid="1849" />
      <pciid vid="1d6a" did="d108" sdid="d108" svid="1849" />
      <pciid vid="1d6a" did="08b1" sdid="d108" svid="1849" />
      <pciid vid="1d6a" did="07b1" sdid="8741" svid="1043" /> <!-- NOTE: paste the new entry here so it looks like this. These values are for XG-C1001C -->
    </hwids> 
 
 <mac>02010000c0000000060000000000000001000000c00000000e00000021000000ffff0000c00000000b000000000000000800000000000000</mac>
    <phy>030184011cc471adffff1dc471adffff1ec40100ffff0000</phy>
    <image>AQC107.clx</image>
</bdp>
  1. As the final step, rerun the Marvell/Aquantia AQtion firmware flash tool again by executing the command atlflashupdate.exe. It should recognize the board. If not, check your values with the output.

Conclusion

Hopefully with these steps, you’ve been able to flash your firmware on the ASUS XG-C100C or other devices using the Aquantia AQC107. Credit goes to MikeMike’s post on SNBForums that I eventually found and got me most of the way there. Hopefully this helps others be able to use it on any other board featuring an AQC100, AQC107, or AQC108.

In the next post, I’m going to go through a few quick steps to show you how to get full 10Gbps speeds with an ASUS XG-C100C.
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