Another reason to hate OEMs

[Sat1600]

I was picking up a CPU from someone on offerup. I always ask if they have other parts for sale. He had a HP pavillion TG01-2170m. Barebones no CPU or Ram just the mobo, case and 400w power supply. Stupid thinks " i can do something with this" so I gave him $40 for it. 

 

I figured it's a B550 motherboard, surely it can take a r5 3600. Nope. Hp has locked it to 3 CPUs apparently. The 5300g, 5600g and 5700g. WTH HP? Why? Even Dell doesn't do that.

 

With a 3600 installed it does nothing. Hp really wants this stupid thing in a landfill. I have a GTX 1070 mini I got for $50 that would fit perfectly in there. Now I either have to hunt down a 5000 "g" cpu which are overpriced, or scrap the stupid thing and cut my losses. 

[Thomas53]

There are a few methods available to unlock your system, the most useful being HP Unlocker, available from many sources.

[Sat1600]

12 minutes ago, Thomas53 said:

There are a few methods available to unlock your system, the most useful being HP Unlocker, available from many sources.

IIRC HP unlocker is a tool for getting around a PC with a password locked bios. It cannot add support for a CPU that is not supported.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

looking online the board is a proprietary formfactor with 2 dimm slots and the socket is white so is that the board you have?

 

bios mod might be possible maybe its something to do with microcode since those are cezzane apus so maybe just need to add the microcode for the other ryzens via mmtool or whatever you use these days to update microcode on a modern uefi bios

 

otherwise id just keep crossflashing bioses of other mobos till you find one that works, from the pics online seems like board has a socketed sop chip which i find kinda strange but makes this a whole lot easier since you dont have to desolder/resolder every time (though need sop8 socket adapter on your bios programmer) nor have to use the spi debug header

vid on how to open the thing cause ive personally not dealt with this before aside from my classified 4 way having a couple of these but that board is off for repairs atm and im not crossflashing it unless the stock bios is trash otherwise flash to x58a oc

 

id try the asrock b550m hdv, giga b550m gaming, asus b550m-k, etc. just make sure to backup the bios first so you have a working one if all the other bioses fail

[Sat1600]

1 hour ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

looking online the board is a proprietary formfactor with 2 dimm slots and the socket is white so is that the board you have?

 

bios mod might be possible maybe its something to do with microcode since those are cezzane apus so maybe just need to add the microcode for the other ryzens via mmtool or whatever you use these days to update microcode on a modern uefi bios

 

otherwise id just keep crossflashing bioses of other mobos till you find one that works, from the pics online seems like board has a socketed sop chip which i find kinda strange but makes this a whole lot easier since you dont have to desolder/resolder every time (though need sop8 socket adapter on your bios programmer) nor have to use the spi debug header

vid on how to open the thing cause ive personally not dealt with this before aside from my classified 4 way having a couple of these but that board is off for repairs atm and im not crossflashing it unless the stock bios is trash otherwise flash to x58a oc

 

id try the asrock b550m hdv, giga b550m gaming, asus b550m-k, etc. just make sure to backup the bios first so you have a working one if all the other bioses fail

I have never reprogrammed a bios, but I would give it shot. Any good tutorials on the subject?

[Sat1600]

2 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

looking online the board is a proprietary formfactor with 2 dimm slots and the socket is white so is that the board you have?

 

bios mod might be possible maybe its something to do with microcode since those are cezzane apus so maybe just need to add the microcode for the other ryzens via mmtool or whatever you use these days to update microcode on a modern uefi bios

 

otherwise id just keep crossflashing bioses of other mobos till you find one that works, from the pics online seems like board has a socketed sop chip which i find kinda strange but makes this a whole lot easier since you dont have to desolder/resolder every time (though need sop8 socket adapter on your bios programmer) nor have to use the spi debug header

vid on how to open the thing cause ive personally not dealt with this before aside from my classified 4 way having a couple of these but that board is off for repairs atm and im not crossflashing it unless the stock bios is trash otherwise flash to x58a oc

 

id try the asrock b550m hdv, giga b550m gaming, asus b550m-k, etc. just make sure to backup the bios first so you have a working one if all the other bioses fail

The bios chip looks soldered on. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, Sat1600 said:

The bios chip looks soldered on. 

and the spi debug header isnt populated so youd have to solder on some pins to even use it and god knows where the pinout is

 

send a full pic of the mobo cause it definitely looks different to the oem board i thought you had

 

2 hours ago, Sat1600 said:

I have never reprogrammed a bios, but I would give it shot. Any good tutorials on the subject?

the only annoying part here would be moving and soldering the bios chip around otherwise its pretty easy

 

equipment wise youll need a programmer like the ch341a alongside some basic soldering tools (make sure you get good flux and solder wire as that makes things alot easier) optionally and i do highly reccomend this an sop8 socket so you dont have to solder the bios chip onto the programmer every time you want to flash the chip, technically you can also solder one onto the board aswell so the bios is socketed and no more soldering required after installation but good luck with that cause itll probably be very annoying with the tiny wires youd have to run

 

software wise i use asprogrammer albiet a fork of it or something like that (neoprogrammer)

 

to program the chip you just have to put it onto the programmer wether thats via soldering or with a socket adapter and use asprogrammer to program it, i cant see the text on the bios chip on that photo so maybe take a closer shot at it and i can pinpoint what chip it is but you just have to select your chip in the menu that has the ic selection

 

for backing up the existing bios just press the read button then save it as a file and flashing there should be an option to do all the steps at once on one of the dropdown menus but manually you just have to get rid of the write protection, write, then verify and done bios is now reprogrammed

[Sat1600]

1 hour ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

and the spi debug header isnt populated so youd have to solder on some pins to even use it and god knows where the pinout is

This sounds like a lot more work than it's worth