Can I upgrade CPU from i5 to i7 on ASUS M11AD (H81M-A Motherboard)? PC won't boot

[Samwise Ganges]

I own an ASUS M11AD pre-built tower with an Intel Core i5 4770S CPU. It is a bit too slow for my processing needs so I bought a Core i7 4790S, which I know is compatible with this motherboard and chipset, since there is a higher-end version of the M11AD that uses that exact CPU.

The motherboard used in this box is an OEM version of the H81M-A motherboard:
http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/H81MA/HelpDesk_CPU/

I also just updated the BIOS to the most recent version from ASUS using the built-in BIOS flashing tool.

After I installed the i7 into the socket, and installed the heat-sink fan assembly that it came with. I powered on the PC and the fan spins, motherboard LED glows green, and I can hear the hard drives spinning. There were no beeps or any other error signals, but there is no output to the monitor.

I followed proper procedure installing the CPU and it was bought new in-box with factory seal. After installing the CPU and trying to boot once, I cleared the CMOS with the RSTRTC jumper before booting. Then I repeated with also removing the battery. Still nothing. I put the old i5 back in, and got it to run fine without changing anything else.

Has anyone else upgraded the CPU on one of the M11AD towers? Any idea on what's wrong here or possible things to try? Is it possible that ASUS modified the motherboard in the pre-built machines to not accept any other CPU's?

Thanks!
-Sam

 

[rolli59]

Strange and it should work but Asus is probably the only one that can answer the question for sure, my answer would be doubt the locked it to I5 and something is wrong with the I7.

 

[amd4lif3]

looking at the image i cant see a post beep speaker on your motherboard so get one plug it in and boot if you get an error message then trouble shoot

 

[Samwise Ganges]

Update: I went to my local PC store which has technicians that I actually trust to see if they could get it to post, but they came back saying that it is "not compatible" which is very strange since the motherboard specs specifically call out this CPU as being compatible. They also confirmed that the chip is not bad, which is to be expected as I bought it new in a sealed box.

The only conclusion I can come to is that when ASUS wrote the BIOS for this pre-built tower (M11AD) they wrote code that detects if someone has tried to install a different CPU and won't allow the system to post, thus making it impossible to upgrade the tower and forcing the user to buy a stand-alone motherboard. This would be beneficial to them in two ways since it would make it so they don't have to do any support for upgrading pre-built systems, and it would force consumers to buy their stand-alone motherboards which they make more profit on than the pre-built towers. However, I can't stand business practices like that which is why I never buy Apple products.

The last thing I can try is to go to the ASUS site and download the BIOS for the stand-alone motherboard (H81 M-A) its self (which is different than the BIOS for this tower even though physically it's the same board) and install it, hopefully sidestepping this barricade. Essentially, I would be "tricking" the system into thinking I had bought the motherboard stand alone, so it would allow me to use any compatible Haswell chip, not just the one that came pre-installed. Of course I'll back up the BIOS first.

I will update this thread after I've tried this.

 

[rolli59]

Yep that may do the trick.

 

[Samwise Ganges]

Update: I went to the ASUS site and downloaded the BIOS drivers for the actual H81M-A motherboard. First I tried installing their executable BIOS updater as they "strongly recommend" but it would not install.

Then I just tried to use the EZ Flash utility in the BIOS to directly install the drivers and I got a message "Security Verification Failed" and it would not flash the BIOS file. It must have detected that I had the M11AD version of the board, not the stand-alone model and blocked me.

It seems ASUS really went through great lengths to make it impossible for me to upgrade my computer with a CPU I bought (for $300). This really bothers me and makes me lose just about all faith I had in the company. It's so far from their previous image of DIY PC building. Also, with so few people who would actually be trying to mod a pre-built tower, I don't see how it's even worth their while to put so much effort into stopping them. The support calls they would get would be few and far between.

I have emailed them and am still awaiting a reply.

 

[JLiRD808]

Any more updates? I'm about to buy an ASUS M11AD-US017O prebuilt and am curious about its CPU upgradeability.

Ur problem worries me..