[SOLVED] Swapped i3 for i5 but PC won't boot - Error 1 Long Beep, 3 Short Beeps

[JimboJambo86]

In amongst a load of old computers a friend was showing out, i stumbled across a neat looking Asus P6-P7H55E, and thought rather than chuck it ill see if its worth turning into a Media NAS Server, and potentially functional for other 'always on' pc tasks.
It only has 2 x 2gb DDR3 Ram, but i have some spares and will upgrade to 8gb, also will swap the HDD for SSD. But before fussing with it too much I thought I would try upgrading the processor. It had a 1st Gen i3 540 inside, which was a little disappointing as the PC looks a lot newer than 10 years old! I looked into what processors could be supported if i upgraded it, and found a list here " https://www.asus.com/uk/supportonly/P6-P7H55E/HelpDesk_CPU/". I subsequently purchased an i5 760 for£10, and thought it would be a pretty reasonable upgrade, going from 2 cores to 4.

The processor arrived and i installed it, but haven't been able to get the PC to boot even to Bios. I receive error beeps: 1 Long, then 3 Short... which everywhere online points to a GPU failure, now I'm only using on board graphics, but receive nothing on screen through the HDMI or the VGA ports. The HDD does sound like its working however.
I replaced the original processor and the PC booted fine.
I have since tried various different things, I tried a different PSU as i wondered if the small PSU within the PC wasn't powerful enough. Ive tried different RAM, reset the CMOS (by taking the battery out) but all produces the same result.

I purchased the i5 CPU with the attitude, its only a tenner, if it doesn't work its not a big deal. But im not satisfied with that and want to know why it won't work as the tinker man in me wants it to work!!
Reading elsewhere it suggests CPU failure is rare, but could this be the problem?

Thanks,
James.

 

[Phaaze88]

I3 540
I5 760

The I5 doesn't have an igpu, but the I3 does.
You will need to pair a discreet gpu with the I5, or it won't display anything.

 

[JimboJambo86]

I3 540
I5 760

The I5 doesn't have an igpu, but the I3 does.
You will need to pair a discreet gpu with the I5, or it won't display anything.

Thank you for the quick reply. I have some spare standard GPUs, I assume these will suffice too?
I was so close to sticking one in when I was trying everything I could think of, but was put off by the fact a standard one won't fit in the case without a bit of manipulation! I just assumed it couldn't possibly be a GPU error as there wasn't one and knew the iGPU works fine.

 

[Phaaze88]

A standard two-slot card won't fit, or is it simply not 'user friendly'?

The motherboard should be equipped with a PCI Express x 16 v2.x slot. Newer cards are backwards compatible with the older PCIE v2.x slot.
Are those more modern cards you have on hand?
Older prebuilt PCs sometimes had a custom bios implemented that was very anti-consumer.
There were restrictions on the kind of cpu, ram, and gpu upgrades users could make - to force people into buying another PC.

 

[JimboJambo86]

A standard two-slot card won't fit, or is it simply not 'user friendly'?

The motherboard should be equipped with a PCI Express x 16 v2.x slot. Newer cards are backwards compatible with the older PCIE v2.x slot.
Are those more modern cards you have on hand?
Older prebuilt PCs sometimes had a custom bios implemented that was very anti-consumer.
There were restrictions on the kind of cpu, ram, and gpu upgrades users could make - to force people into buying another PC.

Finally got round to testing the i5 processor with an old graphics card and it all worked, very pleased, thank you for the help :-D
Basically the motherboard took a standard PCI Express card, but where the case is really small, the whole part of the card wouldn't fit without cutting a bit of the case, but i didn't want to do that unless i thought putting a GPU in would actually make a difference!