LGA 771 to LGA 775 Mod

[shinokozo]

I happened to have two motherboards laying around that I got as throw aways with sockets LGA 775. http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Core/Q35/C2SBC-Q.cfm links to the first motherboard and the other motherboard is an intel desktop board. I decided to go ahead and attempt the LGA 771 to LGA 775 mod with an intel Xeon x4560 and I went ahead and modded everything and plugged everything together. It did end up booting fans were spinning but for some reason there was no display no matter if i used integrated gpu or an external gpu vga/dvi did not get any signal to my monitor. My assumption is that the xeon is incompatible with the motherboards i am using or I installed something incorrectly. If anyone has any thoughts that could help that would be great.

 

[DSzymborski]

You typically also need to dig up a modded BIOS to get this to work. I don't personally like BIOS-tinkering, so I'm not much help for the specifics here.

 

[shinokozo]

You typically also need to dig up a modded BIOS to get this to work. I don't personally like BIOS-tinkering, so I'm not much help for the specifics here.

Right I was also thinking this but it would seem I need to be able to get into windows/bios to flash the modded one in the first place, the problem im having is that I can't get any display at all so I'm unsure of whats going on. I'm thinking to get a cheap lga 775 cpu and see if i can get the display running and then flash a modded bios to see what happens. That's all I can think of but if anyone has any idea as to the root of the problem it would be easier than just guessing

 

[Ecky]

No POST can be caused by nearly anything. As long as you have power, even having a dead motherboard, CPU, RAM and video card, it will usually still provide power to the fans. Considering you can get 775 chips for a dollar on eBay, I'd say it's worth trying though.

You have the socket cut and the sticker installed? It's been a long time since I did this mod myself, but some boards simply won't work at all with Xeons, even with the correct microcode added to the BIOS.

 

[shinokozo]

No POST can be caused by nearly anything. As long as you have power, even having a dead motherboard, CPU, RAM and video card, it will usually still provide power to the fans. Considering you can get 775 chips for a dollar on eBay, I'd say it's worth trying though.

You have the socket cut and the sticker installed? It's been a long time since I did this mod myself, but some boards simply won't work at all with Xeons, even with the correct microcode added to the BIOS.

Right I cut the socket and put the sticker on then attempted to boot up. My cd drive also worked when I booted if that provides any insight as to what is dead/causing this problem. I'm thinking that the motherboard is not booting the xeon properly either from my installation or incompatibility

 

[BFG-9000]

I'm going to assume you got a x5460. The problem is no Q35 chipset board is compatible with any x5xxx Xeon. x3xxx Xeons work fine, apparently even the few S771 ones (most 3000 series Xeons are already S775).

BTW premodded Xeon x5460 (where extra notches are cut in the sides and the mod is performed by pad welding rather than a sticker) are now under $24 so it seems silly to save a few bucks to use a sticker and cut the socket (unless you already have the Xeon).

 

[shinokozo]

I'm going to assume you got a x5460. The problem is no Q35 chipset board is compatible with any x5xxx Xeon. x3xxx Xeons work fine, apparently even the few S771 ones (most 3000 series Xeons are already S775).

BTW premodded Xeon x5460 (where extra notches are cut in the sides and the mod is performed by pad welding rather than a sticker) are now under $24 so it seems silly to save a few bucks to use a sticker and cut the socket (unless you already have the Xeon).

Dang, I probably should have done more research, I'll look around next time. Is there any reasonable budget processor you would recommend for this motherboard? Or would it be worth it to pick up a motherboard compatible with x5460 since I already have one now?

 

[BFG-9000]

A real Q9650 is about $54 and is probably the best option for the Intel board with encrypted BIOS as you can't mod it with Xeon microcodes. The Supermicro is unlikely to have any modded BIOS available so you'd have to mod it yourself if you want to use a cheap 3000 series Xeon, which may be more trouble than it's worth. I'd probably just get cheap $10 Q6600 chips for both and call it a day--you may even be able to padmod them to run at 3GHz/1333.

The x5460 will run at 3.8GHz in just about any P45 motherboard with voltage and FSB controls so it's worth looking for a cheap or free board for it. At that speed it's as fast as a modern low-power i3 for most things but compression or games (although it will use ~150w more power to do so!).

 

[shinokozo]

A real Q9650 is about $54 and is probably the best option for the Intel board with encrypted BIOS as you can't mod it with Xeon microcodes. The Supermicro is unlikely to have any modded BIOS available so you'd have to mod it yourself if you want to use a cheap 3000 series Xeon, which may be more trouble than it's worth. I'd probably just get cheap $10 Q6600 chips for both and call it a day--you may even be able to padmod them to run at 3GHz/1333.

The x5460 will run at 3.8GHz in just about any P45 motherboard with voltage and FSB controls so it's worth looking for a cheap or free board for it. At that speed it's as fast as a modern low-power i3 for most things but compression or games (although it will use ~150w more power to do so!).

I ended up going with the Q6600 for now and calling it a day, maybe in the future i may decide to get a mobo for the x5460 but for now I'll leave it aside. Thanks for the thoughts next time I should do more research before i jump the gun.