Intel Upgrade Core-i 2nd Gen to 3rd Gen

[Remo Nonaz]

I have an opportunity to upgrade my system from a Core-i5-2500K to a Core-i7-3770. I've upgraded the motherboard to BIOS 39, as noted by Intel support. After doing this, I installed the i7 CPU but the system did not boot correctly and I reverted to the 2nd generation i5.

If anyone has gone through this process, could you comment on the steps required to make this upgrade.

MB = Intel DZ68BC

[kaelaria]

"did not boot correctly"
You need to be a heck of a lot more specific than that...there are many settings you could have out of whack in the bios...what EXACTLY happens?  beeps, error codes, any bios display, diagnostic lights on the board, etc.?

[Remo Nonaz]

I really was not able to get any useful information. The displays did not come on at all. The MB buzzer beeped twice, four times and the fan surged a couple of times. This was very similar to what happened when I loaded BIOS 35 (with the i5) and then the system completely died. I thought I'd bricked my MB. As it turned out, the power supply had failed. Upon replacing the power supply, I was able to get BIOS 35 to boot and then I upgraded again to BIOS 39. Because of the issues with the BIOS upgrade, I'm a bit gun shy on the CPU upgrade. When things did not go well with the i7, I shut down and went back to the i5.

I'm not aware that there are any BIOS settings that would be different with the i7 than with the i5. Nothing in the boot order or power settings is changing. I am aware that Intel states that the "ME (managment engine) must be 8.x or later".  See http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/CS-033076.htm. However, this all that Intel has to say about ME8. My understanding is that the later BIOS have both ME7 and ME8. Intel says nothing about turning on one or the other and I could not find either one referenced anywhere in the computer's Windows 7 settings.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Do you get any kind of BIOS flash screen when you turn the computer on with the i7 CPU?  If so you should be able to go into safe mode to make necessary changes.  Are you running the display off of a graphics card or the CPU integrated graphics?  There could also be some kind of conflict with all the drivers you installed with the i5 CPU.  Normally in the case of CPU upgrades it's best to start with a clean install of Windows with no previous drivers so you don't get a conflict of this sort.

[Remo Nonaz]

I'm running off the MB graphics, which is Intel Graphics 2500. I expect I'll have to update the drivers to Graphics 4000, once I get things running. I'm hoping to not have to reinstall Windows. It's been my experience that usually you don't have to - you just have to fix a few of the drivers in the device manager.

When I put the i7 in, I did not get any video at all. Lights out other than the MB beeping.

I found a couple of posts on the Intel support site that seem to indicate that I should upgrade to BIOS 42, which is really weird because as recently as a week ago the highest listed BIOS was 39. Also, there may be settings in the BIOS for the ME8. I had not seen these, but I'll have a look again.

[Alan Goldhammer]

I'm sure that the problem is that you don't have the correct video driver for the i7 chip installed which is why it's not showing any video.  You can try to delete the older driver with the i5 chip in and it should default to basic Windows video driver which will be recognized by both CPUs.  When you put the i7 CPU in you then can install the correct video driver for that CPU.

[Remo Nonaz]

I started a dialog in Intel's support forum and I was advised that I was not following the instructions for the upgrade properly. If you don't have management engine 8 (I didn't), you have to do a recovery BIOS upgrade, which I though was only necessary if your BIOS upgrade went wrong somehow. In any event, I performed the BIOS recovery upgrade, installed the i7 CPU, crossed my fingers and powered up the system. The system booted into Windows with the video looking a bit weird, but an upgrade to a new video driver quickly resolved that issue.

The system is now running fine - no Windows 7 reload was required. I have not done much work with the new CPU yet, but PS6 opens in about three seconds and there is almost no delay when applying a surface blur, one of the functions that seems to take the most processing power. I'm interested in seeing how Lr responds with a bunch of adjustment points. That used to bog my system pretty heavily.  

[Alan Goldhammer]

Glad to hear the problem is solved.  CPU upgrades are never intuitive!

[Remo Nonaz]

Actually, my past experience has been that you just put the new CPU in and you are done. In this case I was moving from the 2nd generation to the 3rd generation of the Core-i series, so it was more complicated and required the BIOS changes, something I understand but had not performed before. Once I got 'on the page' and followed Intel's instructions - exactly - it became quite straight forward.

As noted, Windows 7 hardly hiccuped - only the video driver was freaked out. This was expected as I was moving from Intel Graphics 2500 to Graphics 4000.

BTW, throughout all of this, my 'F' drive, that has all my photos, was disconnected.