I am considering buying either EliteDesk 800 G2 or G3, both coming with i5-6500. The motherboard on G2 has Q170 chipset while G3 has Q270.
The thing is that I would like to have an option to slap in Xeon later on, preferably E3-1268L v5. Are there any known limitations on those boards and/or chipsets themselves that would prevent required BIOS modification for that Xeon to work?
I’ve found this response in another thread that made me concerned:
Is it specific to Q370 chipset OR EliteDesk 800 G4 OR Q370 on EliteDesk 800 G4? Is it one of them or the combination that prevents the mod? Does the same apply to Q170/Q270? I don’t think so, as I saw some threads of folks getting ED 800 G2 flashed successfully, but I want to be sure :V
Current setup:
Celeron G3900 on ASUS H110i-plus, running TrueNAS Scale.
I have already ordered the CH341A to at least have it for my current board. So the last question could be: Will the mod work on that H110 to unlock the Xeon? (asking briefly for now)
Edit by Fernando: Thread moved into the “BIOS Modding Requests” section and thread title customized
Why did you linked that thread… as you already verified its Q170 and Q270, dont know why last user stated Q370…
The E3-1268L v5 is Sylake family supported as you know by both chipsets referred and not a Coffee Lake cpu supported in the Intel 300 series.
Check if bios files have the desired cpu mcode but even then, could exist HP locks for using Xeons…
Only a user that have already tested this can assure you if indeed the board accepts the Xeons or needs mcode or its blocked by HP.
I linked it because it was the closest related topic to my concerns. The person suggests that The ME firmware can’t be downgraded to allow injecting microcodes and I am asking “could that also be the case with Q170 and Q270 under some circumstances?”. Or maybe it’s totally not the case since I am doing Skylake-Skylake basically, so the ME doesn’t have to be downgraded? I don’t know that, hence the questions.
All I know is that there might be a possibility to unlock the support via a mod. And Coffee Lake is irrelevant here if both mods require the same approach - adding a microcode.
That’s the whole point of this thread. I may be mistaken, but from what I’ve gathered, though not by my personal inspection of BIOS files, the microcodes for Xeons are not present and require injection. Hoping to find that one person who’s going to respond “yes, it’s possible, I did it!”. Then I can dive into the rabbit hole of actually achieving it. But if someone responds “totally not possible to get Xeon working on Qx70 on HP”, then, well… I will look for something else.
given you’ve got the CH341A you should be able to dump the bios to mod then flash back so no worries about HP restrictions. Q170/270 will accept the necessary ME firmware changes to support 8th 9th gen however I’m not sure about Xeon support specifically.
The CoffeeTime v99 tool that makes this mod fairly easy does allow injecting a wide range of microcodes but the only Xeon i’ve tried it on was a BGA1440 to 1151 conversion - a E-2186M. YMMV
-quick update-
To clarify the whole Q370 chipset thing. A small number of 1151 socket chipsets won’t accept ME firmware downgrades/changes that are required to make the microcode injections work. These chipsets are Z390, H370, B360 and H310 (afaik). The rest are all worth a shot.
