HP Cupertino not detecting 1050ti.

[HassassinMMVI]

I bought an HP Cupertino motherboard not knowing that its PCI gen 2.0 slot does not operate using a GPU. And the only way to use the GPU is to turn the pc on and then plug in pci-e power. I've been watching youtube videos on how to fix it but they don't work. How do I use the 1050ti as my main GPU instead of onboard graphics?

[BeemerBiker · Accepted solution]

I  have Cupertino2 motherboard.  It is same as HP Pro 3400.  Possibly you can use a 1x riser in one of the x1 slots.  I was able to get an AMD S9050 and an S9100 to work in MInt 20.20 and also Win7x64.  If you also have cupertino2 pm or email me for details.  I posted some pictures of my system but they did not show up.  I messaged a moderator about the pictures.

The pictures did get posted.  Look here 

[BIG EDIT]

I was mistaken about the 2Mbit rom size. While I was sold a Pro 3400 motherboard it was actually a Cupertino2. There seems to be a difference in the bios install.

The recommended Pro 3400 bios did not install after several tries. It was named sp59262
https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp59001-59500/sp59262.exe

After it failed to install I saved a copy of bios 7.15 using the command "safuwin 7_15.ROM /O"
The file is saved was larger than 2Mbit but far less than 4Mbit and I assumed incorrectly my programable ROM was not large enough.  The actual bios, 7_16, that worked was the cupertino bios sp58264
https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp58001-58500/sp58264.exe

I did a file compare and there is no binary difference between CUP_716.ROM in either service pack but, it seems that when executing spd58264.exe different parameters are used to cause the rom to be correctly installed.

I am running now 7.16 bios and there are a few differences. The is an option to "run a UEFI application" which does not seem to do anything. I thought it might ask me where the application was at a minimum. There is also an option to enable the onboard video. I assume that would allow me to use a second monitor. No other differences: I cannot use an AMD RX560 nor an NVidia GTX1060. Only cards that work are the non UEFI cards like the S9000, S9050. I bought several of those cards 3 years ago and paid about 200 each. I just checked on eBay and the S9050 is over $1000 USD!! In addition one must figure out a way to cool those cards as they are not designed for use with onboard fans.

I also discovered that my motherboard comes with a genuine HP Windows 7 Pro bios. Not sure if that license was in the 7.15 or showed up in the 7.16 I suspect that all Pro 3400s were licensed for Windows 7 anyway. In any event, I used the standard HP serial number for Windows 7 Pro to activate the motherboard. Since windows 10 is still free I am currently updating to windows 10.

[OmenGamer79]

Is the cupertino board you have Legacy or UEFI bios? What was the model year of the motherboard?

If you have UEFI there is only a small selection of graphics cards made by HP that will recognize and communicate the bios and v-bios.

If you have a Legacy bios you should have no issue installing the graphics card as long as you can source the driver and use windows 10 to sync the bios and determine the best compatible drivers for your mother board.

I believe in mid 2012 HP made the change from legacy to UEFI in order to control the supply chain of products used on HP mother boards.

[BeemerBiker]

I had 7.15 and later 7.16.  All UEFI AMD and NVidia cards are recognized and can be used as long as they are not in the X16 slot

Cards like HD7950,  S9000, S9050 work fine as they do NOT have UEFI bios.  Not sure about any HP cards.

The AMD is in the X16 slot

what I have tried:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Some-thoughts-on-the-Pro-3400-M...

[BeemerBiker]

I found a way to get your NVIdia card to work in the x16 slot of HP Pro 3400 and boot into windows 10 no problem.

I was unable to send you a personal message as I could not find you in the contact list.  Please PM if you are still interested.