BIOS problem with HP Pro. Wrong section?

Steo · July 23, 2017

EDIT: This actually should've been in the troubleshooting forum. I cant move it now so oops.

So I managed to get a cheap 60 euro pc with no hdd for 60 euro. It's a HP Pro 3400. It has an i3 2120 and 4gb of ddr3. Pretty decent deal for that price imo. So I stuck a 640gb hdd into it I had laying around and installed windows 10 and everything is fine.

I decided I want to put a GPU into it so it's good enough to play some games. I'll need a new psu but that's not the problem here. Anyway I can use a HD7770 I have here and it works, the HD6950 also works, but when I tried to use my GTX 680 it wouldn't start it just hangs on a dark blue screen like the background that's behind the HP logo usually. If I leave the GPU inserted then try boot plugged into on board I get a beeping error instead. Then I tried a GTX 970 just to rule it out and there's no video at all when I try use that. Same scenario with the 970 if I leave it then try boot with I'm board I get the beeping.

I'm not sure if it's something to so with UEFI since this is legacy BIOS but I lost all hope for it... until just now having watched scrapyard wars 5.

The computer that Linus and Luke used is identical to this one and he got a GTX 980 Ti to work in that one meaning it must be somehow possible. I can't find any information about the motherboard itself except system info tells me it's a foxconn is all.

Anyone have any experience with this type of problem before?

I'd like to ask him himself if his from that video had any problems or what bios it had etc. But I know he's way too busy and probably has people trying to ask him questions all the time which in fairness would drive me insane if I was him.

Thankfully there's this forum to try get some help.

Thanks in advance.

Steo · July 23, 2017

I tried setting the primary video to on board and it works but as soon as I change it to the Nvidia card it won't boot again it just hangs at the very start of the bios displaying video through the GTX680. It literally only draws the background.

I heard the HP Pro 3300 is meant to have the same bios and it has a newer one available but I can't get it to flash.

This one only has a bios available under windows 7 but it's listed as 3300/3400. The other thing is extracting the exe files I noticed the bios is 4mb in size while the 3300 has some 8mb, yet the 3300 has that same 4mb listed under windows 7.

I even tried to modify the bios with amibcp to see if any hidden options might fix it but I keep getting error 46 problem getting flash type when I try use afudos. Any other AMI bios utilities that might be of use?

I also seen that using legacy mode and disabling secure boot can fix it but my bios is missing the options which is why I'm trying to modify it or find another bios.

Steo · July 23, 2017

I found out it's a Foxconn 2ABF motherboard version 1.30. If nobody has any ideas I'll just leave this thread alone after this post and stop bringing it back up. Sorry for bothering you people.