I have a work/gaming computer. The work side is a SSD with linux and the game side is a SSD with Win7 (all security turned off, planning to get viruses and rewipe every LAN). Only one of the drives is physically plugged in at a time. So long as the two drives are never both plugged in the only way I can see to get a virus from the Win7 to the Linux drive is if it infects the BIOS and then gets the other drive when I switch em. (If this is disputable please comment, and we can talk on another question.)

I have heard of this "TPM" thing, but only in so far as it will possibly allow manufacturers to stop me from installing a different OS, which is not what I am trying to protect myself from.

So the scenario is this: assuming the Win7 boot is compromised to the max, how can I protect my BIOS (or at least know if its been tampered). I have seen this question, and it leaves some ambiguity if TPM is sufficiently low-level to actually validate a compromised BIOS. [How to check the integrity of my BIOS?](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/3786/how-to-check-the-integrity-of-my-bios)

I am willing to buy a special motherboard for this purpose.