CPU problem - bone headed move...So I decided to pick up a new CPU over the Christmas

Elessar Elfstone

So I decided to pick up a new CPU over the Christmas break with some of my gift money.

I have THIS motherboard, which supports these CPUs:

AMD® Socket AM2+ Phenom™ FX / Phenom X4 / Phenom X2 / Athlon™ X2 / Sempron™
AMD Socket AM2 Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 / Sempron
AMD Cool'n'Quiet™ Technology
*Support CPU up to 95W

I decided on this CPU AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition Quad Core Processor AM2+ 3.0GHZ 8MB Cache 125W 45NM Retail Box based on some good reviews, decent overclocking, good price.

Can anyone spot the problem? hehe. I guess Elessar has learned his lesson to double check compatibility before buying a piece of hardware!


However, I've been poking around on the net and it seems that some have actually used this CPU with the motherboard. A friend found this:

some Guru3D thread wrote:
Actually the M3A was originally advertised as a 125W board, it wasn't until later that Asus decided to make it one of their "Green" boards that they simply modified it's compatible CPU's list to list only 95 watt TDP and lower chips. It still has the power to support the 125 watt processors.

Other posts say that provided you're running a BIOS revision 1102 or newer for the M3A, it should work. Might just want to poke around and read some to be sure. One post for example said that you shouldn't try to overvolt a 940 on a M3A (not that you would) because the voltage selected by autoconfiguration for the 940 isn't even an available option when manually setting voltage - the autoconfigured voltage fell outside the available range for manual config. Anyway, looks like the prognosis is that it's unsupported, but ought to work.

and I found this:

Nope this isn't a thread asking if they work together.

It's one stating that they do. I'm running a Brand new PII 940 Black Edition on my old M3A with an AMD 770 / SB600 chipset using the 1102 Beta Bios and it's running just fine. Even recognizes the processor in the bios and CPU-Z. So anyone with this board that are wondering if they can upgrade to the Phenom II. Go for it, just be sure to get the 1102 Bios before you install it.

so, wondering if this would be a foolish endeavour to try and install the CPU on the motherboard? By chance has anyone done this before? I'd rather not have to buy a new MOBO due to money issues, nor return the CPU as I was quite looking forward to using it.

Chalkbot

Generally when you put a newer processor in an older board with an older BIOS, it will simply run it as if it were something else, i.e. give it less power, less clock speed, etc. and that's fine, it still works, just not at factory specs. But in this case it sounds as if the newer BIOS recognizes the new processor, so I would say you're fine. At the very worst you could drop it in and find out it runs slower than its advertised clock speed and take it out again, right? You're not going to hurt it if it can't draw enough power.

I think the question you should be asking is, are you comfortable flashing your board's BIOS if you don't already have the latest version?

Dirtmuncher

Flashing is simple with the asus update util under windows.
Download the bios.zip from the asus site.
Unzip it.
Click update in the util and your done in 3 min. tops.
Do this before you install the cpu.

Your computer wont blow up if you install this cpu.
If it wont work, just return it.