Unbricking Dell pre-built

@mnewxcv I’ve taken a look through my storage and have been unable to find my old 5675. Most likely I threw it away. Sorry if you were looking forward to a project…

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no problem, I have the basic 5675 board with 1 pcie x16 slot so I was hoping to get one with both and the m.2 nvme so I could get an NVME ssd. No worries! If anyone else has this issue and wants to sell a broken 5675 board let me know. If anyone else has a broken one that wants it fixed, I will fix it for free if you pay shipping both ways.

@mnewxcv When I couldn’t find the 5675 in my pile of computer junk ('scuse me, parts) I started looking elsewhere. And it eventually turned up, though it’s stripped of most parts.

IIRC, the BIOS chip is soldered on the motherboard, which is what finally dissuaded me from trying to reprogram the firmware. Since it’s an X370 board and has the dual m.2 slots, it has a certain appeal. But in spite of that, the Tomahawk gives me a lot more flexibility. I need to think about this…

glad you found it. Yes, the BIOS chip is in fact soldered. If you want to ship it to me (~$15 each way) I will desolder and program it for you with a 5676 BIOS, but retaining your MAC address, service tag (serial number), and windows key. It will support 2000 series Ryzen CPUs, but not 3000. Let me know after you think about it.

hey, I was going to print a label but noticed I don’t have your shipping address. There wasn’t any info on the paypal payment and the return address on the UPS label is the UPS store. Where should I send this?

Sorry guys, don’t want anybody getting doxxed.

Back to your regular scheduled programming :slight_smile:

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I am so glad that I saw your post before trying to flash my 5675 with 5676 BIOS! It saved me.
I have just ordered an 2700X and it is on the way. (It was a pity that I did not order it when it was $130 earlier this year :frowning: )
Would it be possible if you share your modified 5676 BIOS that can be flashed onto 5675? That would be a tremendous help. Mine had the motherboard 07pr60 which should be the shared same model of MB.

The 5676 BIOS in not flashable via normal flash method. It requires soldering and a eeprom programmer.

@mnewxcv Hey there - I have a 5675 mobo onto which I’d love to flash a 5676 BIOS. Is there any way I can get in touch with you?

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you can go with using an eprom programmer if you have the resources but with the cost of most computers now adays this is usually the prefered way.

If I remember @mnewxcv ‘s comments correctly, he had to de-solder the old chip, find a 5676 bios chip, reprogram it, then solder the modded BIOS chip to the 5675 board.

But if you don’t want to go the Zen+ route, you could simply reflash the BIOS chip with the official Dell ROM, as @Gnuuser suggests. Unfortunately micro-soldering is not in my skill set.

This is an interesting topic . I recently had a customer ask about he’s upgrade options with a Dell 5675
According to some posts in dell forums some say the 2700 and 2700x are supported
the 1st link below for example , it is said the 2xxx series OEM CPU are on Dell’s official support list ( internal )
[Inspiron 5675, new CPU Ryzen 5 1600 (12nm) - Dell Community]
(link prohibited - see image -and/or use google)

However it transpires in another post there are a few different motherboard iterations of the 5750, some do support the 2xxx series CPU and some do not . My customer has the ‘7PR60’ motherboard ( verified by cpu-z) and thus apparently should work with Ryzen 2XXXX CPU . See the link below

[Inspiron 5675, Ryzen 2 CPU - Dell Community]

link omitted - use google- or see image

Some replies to the threads also suggest that a dell OEM CPU was needed but , as far as I know they are technically the same .``

Would the BIOS have to be edited?

It is a shame no one can verify the above?

I have a CH341 programmer and a chip clip on a fly lead . I could likely flash it but , not sure if I have to

I successfully got a 5675 flashed to the point where it can take 2000-series Ryzen chips. But this was only possible with the help of @mnewxcv . He had to mod a 5676 BIOS and then flash it onto an entirely different ROM chip, then desolder the old one, and attach the new one. I know a fair bit about PC hardware, but microsoldering is not in my skill set.

(I’m assuming the old ROM was a 16MB chip and the new one was 32MB, but that’s all it is - an assumption.)

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@imrazor
Do you know which revision 5675 motherboard you had ? According to my sources above ( Dell forums ) there are three

  1. 477DV (compatible with 2700)
  2. 7PR60 (compatible with 2700)
  3. XFRWW (not compatible with 2700)

If you can check on CPU-z this would be helpful (see motherboard tab) .

@mnewxcv
I have a CH314 programmer with an IC Clip on a fly lead . IF you sent me a rom file , I could try clamping the on the pins and overwriting .

If all else fails I will re-solder a replacement bios chip on eBay .

Though before I do that I want to see what motherboard revision has been tested here , mine maybe different .

Let me try and clear up any loose ends.

First off, no Inspiron 5675 is compatible with Ryzen 7 2700, or any other zen+ cpu natively. Not the 477DV, 7PR60, or XFRWW. The only board that is, is the VYXHD from the Inspiron 5676. I am not 100% clear what physical differences there are between the 477DV, 7PR60, and VYXHD; they appear largely identical to me. The XFRWW is the version that went in 5675s equipped with processors with integrated graphics (lower spec), and therefore have video output onboard, fewer USB ports, no secondary pci express x16 slot (x1 instead), and no nvme slot (likely due to # of pci express lanes being fewer on the A-series APUs compared to Ryzen CPUs).

Anyway, the reason 2nd gen Ryzen CPUs do not work on the 5675 is simply a BIOS limitation. All the boards use an x370 chipset and am4 socket which are both compatible, as we see on the 5676. The configuration of the BIOS is different between the 5675 and 5676, and for that reason, you cannot write the 5676 BIOS to a 5675 without bricking the board. Here are the different CPUIDs (microcode) in each BIOS, 5675 on top, 5676 on bottom:

As you can see, despite the 5675 getting a recent BIOS update for a security patch, it still lacks the CPUIDs 800F82, 810F10, and 810F00, which are included on the 5676 BIOS from 2018. The 800F82 cpuid applies to zen+ cpus, while the 810F*0 ones apply to Ryzen 2000 series APUs (though I don’t believe these APUs are officially supported or equipped by Dell).

Now since the 5676 board is virtually identical to the two 5675 boards, I was confident a 5676 BIOS would work on a 5675, and because even the clearly different XFRWW board shared the same 5675 BIOS file as the other two, I was confident the same would apply for it. I downloaded a 5676 BIOS from dell, tweaked the installer config so it would force overwrite despite the different model number, and… BRICK. I guess I should have seen that coming.

At this point, I had a dead motherboard and was more curious if I could ever get zen+ support on the 5675 than anything. I looked into adding the microcode to the 5675 BIOS, which is virtually impossible since they use an entirely different AGESA and different parts of the BIOS are in different locations, so calls to one area of the BIOS would be calling on something that is not there or is somewhere else. So that was out of the question. Also, the BIOS you download from Dell is not a ‘full’ BIOS, but just the parts needed to upgrade from a previous version, so you cannot simply download the BIOS and write it to an EEPROM.

So what I did was I bought a Dell 5676 so I could get my hands on a ‘full’ 5676 BIOS using an EEPROM reader. I was able to do this, but it does require desoldering the EEPROM from the motherboard, as the BIOS cannot be accurately read or written while the chip is in circuit (believe me I tried). I did the same with the EEPROM from the now dead 5675 I had, and compared the BIOS between the two, as well as compared the downloadable BIOS for each model. There were extensive differences in the BIOS, but I was able to locate the key information I was looking for.

What I did was essentially take the 5676 BIOS, replace the service tag (1 instance), MAC address (14 instances), and windows key (1 instance) with those from the 5675 BIOS, and then wrote that modified 5676 BIOS to the original 5675 EEPROM, and soldered it back onto the 5675 board. And it booted back up, unbricked, thinking it is now a 5676.

By the way, the 5675 board I had was the XFRWW, so the least likely to work. I fixed @imrazor board, which I believe was the 7PR60, but it might have been the 477DV. Either way, my board was the single x16 slot, his was the dual.

I think I pretty much can call this wrapped up, there is no way to flash a 5676 BIOS onto a 5675 without having a 5676 ‘donor’ BIOS first, and modifying it to contain those three pieces of system info from the 5675. Dell is 100% wrong in saying the 2700 will work in a 5675, despite what their parts lookup shows; the CPUID is simply not in the BIOS.

For my board, I ran a ryzen 1600AF (which is zen+, same as a 2700) with no issues, and I think imrazor ended up using a 2700(x). I later ran a 2400g in mine (since I had the onboard video output), and it worked, but for some reason had some usb issues with that APU. I think it just isn’t supported beyond having the microcode in the 5676 BIOS, but the 5676 never came with video output onboard, so no point in really running one.

I hope that answers everything. @90Ninety , if you want to send me your BIOS file that you read off of the 5675, I can send you back a modified one, BUT I assure you that it will require desoldering (heat gun and be patient, that lead free solder takes some time to let go. I ripped a trace on my board when I was impatient and had to run a jumper ultimately).

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Hi guy. I have dell Inspiron 5675 and want to upgrade to 5676 with spi-programmer (my cheapest ch341A). Could you share bios dump with me? If it cost, i can pay via paypal or your wish.

@Toan_Pham I’m not sure if @mnewxcv is still around or not, but if he’s not I’d be happy to dump my bios, though it’s been a while since I attempted such a thing. Let’s give him/her a few days to respond, and if you don’t hear anything ping me and I’ll see what I can do.

As an aside, I now wonder if it’s possible to include Zen 3 microcode with the 5675 BIOS. I tend to doubt it since @mnewxcv had to shoehorn a closely related BIOS (i.e., the 5676 BIOS) into the 5675 to get this to work. I doubt that Dell made any similar model with Zen 3000/5000 chips.