HP 650 - motherboard upgrade possible?

crepper4454

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Jun 30, 2018
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Hello everyone,

I have an old laptop (HP 650) and I want to give it a new life, but the dual core pentium B980 is very weak. I've done some research about changing the CPU and I found out that I have the HM70 chipset on my board, and upgrading to any i3, i5, or i7 CPU will make the laptop shut down after 30 minutes (and that it is linked to Intel Management Engine). So here is my question, is there a motherboard with a HM77 chipset compatibile with my case OR is there a sure way to upgrade to an i5 or an i7 on HM70 and override the shutdown clock? Thanks in adavance.
 

gamerbrehdy

Honorable
Jun 15, 2018
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I don't think there are HM77 motherboards that are compatible with your motherboard. You can sadly only upgrade to CPU's that are compatible with the HM70 chipset.

These CPU's are stated on HP's website for the HM70 chipset:
  • Intel Pentium B970 (2.3 GHz, 2MB L3 cache, 2 cores)
  • Intel Pentium B960 (2.2 GHz, 2MB L3 cache, 2 cores)
  • Intel Celeron B815 (1.6 GHz, 2MB L3 cache, 2 cores)
  • Intel Celeron B820 (1.7 GHz, 2MB L3 cache, 2 cores)
  • Intel Celeron B730 (1.8 GHz, 1.5MB L3 cache, 1 core)
 

sdedu77

Respectable
Dec 9, 2018
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Not sure what to say about the Intel MEI shutdown issue. The HP support page for the 650 does list i3's, so they are supposed to be compatible.
This cpu-upgrade page suggests that the i5-3210m can run on your system. Interestingly enough, when I checked Intel's Ark, there is a 3210m for FCPGA988 and a 3210m for FCBGA1023.
Anyway, replacing both the motherboard and the cpu equals to getting a new computer. If you want to give life to your old laptop, the best thing to do is to get and SSD.
 
Its incompatible with the PCH chip on the motherboard, there is noway to "fix" it even if you flash me region straight to bios chip with programmer.

Ive seen HP 650 models with i7 so new motherboard might be choice, keep looking.
 
Intel management engine has boot rom in your SPI (8 leg bios chip on your motherboard) and it looks for intel signatures, adding unsupported cpu and you get shuttdown after 30min. Unless you time sleep mode every 25min with task scheduler.

I remember hm70 had issues with PCH been incompatible with these cpus, might be wrong. You can always try to partially disable ME firmware (only leave boot rom) but you need external programmer to flash it (ch341a usb) like this https://www.ebay.com/itm/SOIC8-SOP8-Test-Clip-CH341A-Flash-BIOS-USB-Programmer-fur-EEPROM-25CXX-24CXX/114031747365?

If you try to flash internally this will probably end in bricked bios, meaning then you need SPI programmer like ch341a.

ME_CLEANER : https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner
 
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sdedu77

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Dec 9, 2018
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Its incompatible with the PCH chip on the motherboard, there is noway to "fix" it even if you flash me region straight to bios chip with programmer.

Ive seen HP 650 models with i7 so new motherboard might be choice, keep looking.
Right, I missed the fact that you need HM75 to run Core skus. My bad.
 
Looks like HP 650 motherboards with hm75 chipset are completely same on the outside, meaning only difference is chipset. So basically if replace motherboard for about 50$ you can use that i5 cpu on it, i7 might be a struggle depending if they added cpu microcode in the bios.


This is just random seller i found, you can look elsewhere too, just search HP 650 HM75 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32952740993.html?

Make sure its otherwise identical, only difference is PCH
 
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