So the other day I ordered the cheapest hp z820 workstation I could find on eBay with the intent of upgrading it to a monster of a system. After ordering all the upgrades ie 2x E5-2680 V2 processors ect the bios with a boot block date of 2011 will not support them. So after an hour of cussing and spitting I think I’ve developed a work around Order a reprogrammed bios chip. With luck it will work there’s a outfit in Germany that sells new chips for 15 + 10 dollars shipping so I’m gonna give that a try.
Worst case I hose up the soldering job and turn a 500 dollar motherboard into scrap best case I get a 20 core computer. I really don’t see a major problem its a 16 pin soic chip.
If its a Z series the bios chip should be socketed. They used the same motherboards for a lot of the release blocks and just popped separate chips in. Gaming / workstation laptops are handled the same.
I Know this thread is a little old but i was wanting to see how the bios replacement went. I just had a bad bios flash and i have tried all the recovery items and ways to do it. with nothing working. I figure next way to do it is replace the bios chip and cant mess it up because the computer is already dead i cant hurt to try and do this by hand and save 310 bucks.
I never needed to do it I ordered all of the parts, and then found out the motherboards bios boot date was high enough to allow the cpu’s I needed. Its not too hard if you have any soldering skills if you can find a programmed chip.
thanks i ordered my chip should be here saturday and i have very mild soldering skills but i figured this motherboards already toast may as well try and fix it if i can.
well i replaced my chip but now it says my cpu doesnt work with it. all it does is turn on for 1 second or so fans spin then off and repeat. one other odd thing it does is i dont get the bios code until the machine is unplugged. Not really sure why but the chip is fully connected and at least is working in the since of getting a code.
