HP dc7700 CMT BIOS Flash Procedure on Windows 10

[StephFarelle95]

I see... From what I can see the TDP on the more advanced ones is around 150 W, so I don't know if those would work, considering they recquire 6 pin connectors from the Power Supply... I'll look around and see what I can find about which GPUs can run on my board... If not, I'll wait and get money to eventually get some more modern parts... In any case, I can't thank you guys enough for the help ^_^

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

150W?  That is double the specified slot wattage.  I don't recommend it.

You would probably need a high end gaming deskop or business workstation to run one of those cards.

BTW...here is the link to the quickspecs for your PC. 

Other than the memory capacity info being outdated, the rest of the info is relevant.

You can see the low end graphics cards (page 15) that were offered as options, and the slot wattage specs (page 12).

http://images10.newegg.com/UploadFilesForNewegg/itemintelligence/HP/12543_na1403157116962.PDF

[StephFarelle95]

I apologize if I seem to be asking too many questions, but I had an idea... Would it be possible to use a GT 1030 card, which has a TDP of just 30W, with this motherboard after updating the BIOS?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Ask away.

That is what this forum is all about.

There is no way any nvidia card beyond the GT(X) 600 series will work.

That card wouldn't even work on a PC 5 or 6 years newer than the dc7700.

[StephFarelle95]

Drats... That's unfortunate... Looks like a Mobo upgrade is in need... Anyways... Thank you for taking your time to answer my questions ^_^

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

The Radeon HD 6570 has a 128 bit memory interface and I have one in my dc7800 and 8200 Elite CMT's.

It does a pretty good job, but I am not into heavy video gaming.

You have to work within the constraints of the PC.

[StephFarelle95]

So, I got the RAM today on the mail... I installed it, and I've tried all combinations possible... But the computer won't boot to BIOS... It turns on, but the power light goes off and the fans stay spinning... I get no video signal or anything at all... I swapped back to the old 1GB RAM and it boots just fine, so the Mobo and the BIOS are okay... I think that either the RAM is not working, it's incompatible somehow, or that I need to do the BIOS flash first... Help... T_T

PS: The RAM i got is a set of Kingston 8GB 4x2GB DDR2-800 MHZ PC2-6400 240PIN Desktop memory Intel & AMD RAM cards

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Interesting that it didn't work.

I would have gotten this memory...I used this in my dc7800.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231207

Here is the chipset info data for the chipset the dc7700 has.

You can see on page 17, that 8 GB is supported...

https://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/313053.pdf

System Memory Interface

⎯One or two channels (each channel consisting of 64 data

   lines)

⎯Channels are asymmetric, interleaved

⎯DDR2-800/667/533 frequencies

⎯Unbuffered DIMMs only

⎯Supports 256-Mb, 512-Mb, and 1-Gb technologies for x8

   and x16 devices

⎯ Supports four banks for all DDR2 devices up to 512-Mbit

   density. Supports eight banks for 1-Gbit DDR2 devices

⎯8 GB maximum memory

[StephFarelle95]

I messed around, and I found that the Computer works as intended using two 2GB sticks, installed on the XMM1 and XMM3 Dimm slots. I attempted to use 6GB, and it tried desperately, but it gave me Kernel Errors when trying to Boot to Windows... Something tells me it's either a problem with one of the RAM cards, one of the alternate Dimm slots (2 and 4) or a BIOS imposed limitation... Once I have been able to flash the BIOS I'll attempt to install all the sticks at once and see how it goes, bit for now I at least have 4GB of RAM instead of 1GB... Thanks for the advice though... This has been quite an adventure trying to get this old computer to work, and so far I've learned a lot, which was one of my primary intentions with this build, to learn how to build a PC from scratch... :3

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

I'm pretty sure you can run 8 GB in that PC.

I even found an old post of mine where I linked a dc7700 quickspecs document which the link no longer works.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktops-Archive-Read-Only/upgrading-memory-for-dc7700-convertible-min...

It appears you can find some of the old quickspecs in cyberspace but not the latest one that had listed support for 4 x 2 GB of memory.

I cannot find any posts where anyone reported their dc7700 was running 8 GB of memory.  Not that they don't exist.  I just can't find any.

This person was running 6 GB in his, so this proves that it can take 8.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/HP-DC7700-SFF-BIOS/m-p/5455299/...