Question Swapping out CPUs on my laptop somehow broke my motherboard?

[link941]

I have an alienware m17x R4 and Ive been upgrading it for nearly a decade at this point.

I made a few posts on other sites asking what cpu to upgrade to. Decided on a i7-3840QM CPU 2.8GHz. Was told I just needed to swap out the CPUs and that was it. I did that and now the laptop won't start. It has a black screen and beeps 4 times. I looked it up and that means timer/memory failure? I swapped out the ram sticks with new ones, same result. Now when I swap back to the old cpu its giving me the 7 beeps of death. Which is supposed to be processor/motherboard failure? I find it hard to believe that my motherboard was working perfectly fine yesterday and now fails after I just so happen to swap out a cpu and swap back to the supposedly working one.
Anyone know whats going on here? I need my laptop up and running as soon as possible so this really frustrating because, to me, none of what just happened makes any sense whatsoever.

 

[EthanA]

My dad had an issue similar to that and he did some research and found out yes, the motherboard isn't fully compatible with that graphics card. We didn't have another graphics card to test to see if it would still error though, so I'm not 100% sure if it's the same error.

 

[link941]

My dad had an issue similar to that and he did some research and found out yes, the motherboard isn't fully compatible with that graphics card. We didn't have another graphics card to test to see if it would still error though, so I'm not 100% sure if it's the same error.

It isn't compatible with the graphics card or cpu? Because I didn't mention my graphics card. I upgraded to a gtx 1060M years ago. And I was told from several people that this cpu would be compatible.

 

[Mr.Spock]

could be you damaged both CPUs with ESD during the swap or the new one was faulty to begin with
also check that your bios revision supports the new CPU?

 

[link941]

could be you damaged both CPUs with ESD during the swap or the new one was faulty to begin with
also check that your bios revision supports the new CPU?

ESD would be like a static shock right? I do ground myself before touching anything and have updated my BIOS.

But I have good reason to believe that I may have an incompatible motherboard. The current laptop I have is an alienware m17x R4. But it was a replacement for a defective M17x R3 that I previously had. So they sent in a slightly newer model as a replacement. But the catch was that it contained my R3's specs. So while this cpu may have been compatible with an R4 motherboard, I think I may have an R3 motherboard inside. And that was why it didn't work.

I dont think it explains why anything was damaged though. I would think the two parts would just not work together and that would be that, no damage done. But I guess maybe there was somehow an ESD shock somewhere? Who knows at this point.

My question now is, how do I identify the motherboard physically? I'm guessing I have to look for a serial number but would I be able to see it as is or do I have to go through the arduous process of unscrewing everything? I figured I may be unscrewing it all anyways to replace the motherboard but I just wanna know where to look at least.