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Sucess finally with the socket 771 CPU to socket 775 motherboard mod

Associate
Joined
7 Apr 2020
Posts
1
I am not sure if this has been discussed here, but I would like to detail my experience with modding a socket 771 Xeon X5450 cpu to go in a Gigabyte socket 775 P45 chipset Motherboard. I have two Gigabyte P45 boards and I have finished the mod for the first one. The CPU was quite cheap £8.60p from a well known auction site. The CPU has to be turned through 90 degrees in the socket so that the triangle mark on the CPU is adjacent to the lever arm pivot , thus the original location notches do not line up with the pegs in the socket so I decided to file new notches. I had the choice of cutting away the plastic location pegs in the Socket but these are very close to the CPU pins, one slip with the craft knife could have bent or broken some of the pins. I took care to get the notches exactly positioned, by resting the CPU in place and marking it where the notches needed to be. I used a thin needle file (Swiss file) to make the notches. Be careful not breath in any of the fibreglass dust. This is relatively easy to do, just work carefully and check frequently by resting the CPU in the socket to see that the notches are in the right position. I cut my notches as small as possible but while this is fine for the first board it will not fit the second board as one peg is in a slightly different position. Next is the sticker that effectively repositions two of the brass contact pads on the underside of the CPU. I had a picture of the sticker in place on the CPU on my phone and then used that as a guide to copy. It is fiddly to do but a bit of time a care does it. All straightforward so far. The bios has to be updated with a modified bios flash file. This is where things went sideways big time. I had fairly clear instructions on how to update the Intel microcode in the bios file but I struggled for most of my free time for three days! trying to get this to work. Everything that could go wrong went wrong, Windows 7 did its level best to stop things. Apparently trying to work with a bin file is not allowed as windows internet security will kill stone dead any attempt to do this. If anyone can tell me what modding a bios file has to do with web page security I would love to know. Also windows trashed my dual boot menu (I was running Win 7 and Linux mint) so no operating system was bootable. As an aside I do not run Windows normally but Linux MInt to avoid this and other stupidity and irritations. I could write a piece on Linux if there is interest, For 99% of the time I do not miss Windows in any shape or form. However to get back to the story, I ended up admitting defeat. Doing this process is needed so that the bios recognises the non standard (for that motherboard) CPU. I paid £4 for a Guy in Canada to make the modded bios and email it to me (through a well known auction site). This worked perfectly and it was a matter of moments to be up and running with the new CPU. My conclusions are this, yes it works, It is not worth buying a motherboard and CPU to try it but if you have a motherboard already then go ahead. Costs totalled £15.50p (CPU, modded bios and 3 of the stickers). I now have a somewhat faster CPU which has a reputation for good overclockability. I really wish I could have got my head around the bios modding process properly but I am only a beginner with the command line. I think there was something simple stopping it working that a more experienced person would have spotted. I did learn some things though. Hope this is of some interest.
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Jul 2005
Posts
19,361
Location
Midlands
excellent mod. that xeon is the same as a q9650. still has plenty of grunt for day to day use. did you manage to overclock it? i had my q9650 at 3.6ghz on 400mhz bus. my q9550 sits at 3.4ghz on 400mhz bus.
 
Associate
Joined
20 Jul 2004
Posts
371
Yep, those Xeons are fun!

I did the mod Socket 775 to Socket 771 modification a few years back after hearing about the possibility.

With a view to getting the maximum overclocking fun I could out of it, I spent a fair while looking through the generations of Xeons and supporting chipsets on Wikipedia before settling on an X5460, some cheap second-hand 800MHz Samsung DDR and an Asus P5Q Pro mainboard.

I too went a slightly different route to most, in that instead of cutting out the socket tabs from the mainboard, I carefully filed locating notches in the processor at the appropriate places using a round profile needle file.
The board was over twice the price of the processor, hence the preference for modifying the processor instead.

Had to do the BIOS modifications to add S771 Xeon microcode, and fitting the pad-shorting sticker was slightly nerve-wracking but fun.

Ended up with a very overclockable quad core to replace my old Core 2 Duo, which made a substantial difference in games and even in general day to day use.

Was reasonably stable at 4.3GHz at something like 1.33volts from memory, but keeping temperatures under control at that speed if all cores were worked hard over a long period wasn't possible using the 90mm air cooler carried over from the core-2 Duo build.
4.2GHz was more realistic since the voltage could be dropped a bit and hence temps dropped too.

Has since been replaced with Ryzen 6 core, but still have the Xeon as it makes a very capable standby/second machine.
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Jan 2010
Posts
6,354
Location
Manchester
Still using a Q9650 as the PC in the front room for Netflix, YouTube and MKV stuff..... still holds up except for 4k YouTube that is

Wouldn't a TV box thing be a better option now?

Always wanted a q9650 bit it was out of budget for me back in the day. I had the q9550 which overclocked like a beast when I put it under water
 
Soldato
Joined
14 Apr 2014
Posts
2,585
Location
East Sussex
Interesting stuff! Great work OP - do you have any pics of the CPU notches and how they turned out.

I have an old asus socket 775 board in the cupboard - might have to see if it's a candidate for this!
 
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