bios freezes on Hp IPISB-CH2 with new graphic card installed

[Tomas83]

I own HP Pavilion Elite HPE H8 1010cs. Motherboard is HP IPISB-CH2. I bought new graphic card GAINWARD Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 4GB together with 600W PSU Corsair CX600M. First I tried my new PSU with my old GPU nvidia 550Ti. It worked perfectly. But when I replaced old card with new GTX 970, bios freezes on the first power on window. Escape does not work. Should I return new graphic card, or is there still some hope in this?

[Dunidar · Accepted solution]

Hello @Tomas83,

I understand that you are having issues getting your HP Pavilion HPE h8-1010cs Desktop PC towork with your Gainward GeForce® GTX 970 Phantom 4GB Graphics Card. I believe the reason you are experiencing this issue is the the break in the downward compatibility on the PCIe slots was broken at around the Gen 2.1 mark and you are trying to put a Gen 3.0 card in a Gen 1.0 slot. This in essence makes your computer incompatible with the graphics card you have chosen to use.  I am providing you an article on the overclock.net website titled The final answer to the controversial PCIe x16 version compatibility., where the author explains what I described and goes into how he made the determination. I would advise you review the article if you have any questions concerning the issue you are facing.

I hope I have answered your question to your satisfaction. Thank you for posting on the HP Forums. Have a great day!

[Tomas83]

Thank you for reply, Dunidar. I returned the graphic card with reason that it is not compatible with my MB.

[ewat]

Dunidar, the IPISB-CH2 actually has PCIE x16 2.0 slot which should be forward compatible with the PCIE 3.0 standard. Please check here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/306766-30-figure-pcie-version
Also, PCIE is largely dependent on the CPU support, which the 2600 and the H67 chipset both have support for PCIE 3.0 through forwards compatibility. My X58 chipset motherboard and i7 960 1136 socket CPU support newer cards. I think HP has abandoned support for this board.

[Big_Dave]

@Dunidar

The real reason for the NVIDIA GTX 970 not working is the PC BIOS level. The newer graphics cards require a full UEFI BIOS which is a HP level 8 or higher BIOS level.  The HP version 7 BIOS level for the HPE H8 1010cs is not going to support the NVIDIA GTX 970.

[ewat]

My ASUS P6X58D-E doesn't have a UEFI bios, is older than the 1156 socket IPISB-CH2 in the HP h8-1130a and also has a PCIE 2.0 x16 slot and a brand new ASUS 1060 STRIX 6GB works perfectly. Plug and play.
What is going on there?

[Big_Dave]

@ewat

What is going here is that you don't have a HP motherboard. The comparison is apples to oranges.

[ewat]

You're incorrect. The IPISB-CH2 was the stock motherboard shipped with the HP h8-1130a. It's definitely a HP motherboard. The ASUS P6X58D-E is just both an older chipset (X58) and older socket (1136) and has the same slot which is both forwards and backwards compatible.
What's happened here is HP have not updated the BIOS in 5 years.

[Big_Dave]

@ewat

Your information is technically incorrect. HP's OEM motherboards are built to different specifications compared to retail motherboards and have been for years. Again, apples and oranges on your comparison. For the most part, HP is not going to update the BIOS in HP motherboards that were manufactured beyond 1-2 years from the initial release date.