HP Z210 upgrade

[johandt]

Hi there.

We have Z210 CMT's we want to upgrade from the i5-2400 cpu to i7-3770.

On the quickspecs, it states that the the i7-2600 is an available upgrade, but I would like to introduce a 3770 CPU.

It's a 1155 motherboard, and I can't see a reason why it won't work... The 3770 even uses less power.

Any ideas on this? Has anybody changed the chip on this system yet?

[SDH]

John,

First, HP officially does not support processor upgrades, but many of us have done that very successfully and cheaply via eBay used processors.  Here's the info.....

You get the latest HP "microcode" into your workstation via installing the latest HP BIOS.  The microcode includes a specific list of HP-certified processors that will work with your workstation (assuming there has not been a major motherboard revision such as went forward with the ZX00 and ZX20 series workstations well documented in this forum).

If the processor is not listed in the microcode it is a waste of money and time to try.  The latest HP-certified processors are in the latest QuickSpec for your workstation, attached.  Or, find that via Google, and then look at the whole processor list, and start checking costs and availability on eBay for used processors.  Read the notes regarding memory, by the way, so you don't lose your memory investment costs.

Ideally you want the latest sSpec code for a particular processor, and you can find that by doing a Google search for the processor you are interested in and finding the Intel "Ark" site in the google listings.  Go to that and to the sSpec link on the left for that processor, and if there's only one sSpec code then you can use that in your eBay search.  If more than one sSpec code get the latest one because it will have improvements from Intel built in.

I have never had a later sSpec code for a particular processor not work in a HP workstation when an earlier version would.

The take home message is that just because you think a processor should work does not mean it will.  It must be in the microcode list or the boot process will not proceed.