HP Pavilion will not post if a new graphics card is not installed?
HP Pavilion will not post if a new graphics card is not installed?
Hi, I have an external setup, mainly an HP Pavilion P7-1017c with an i3 2100 and 6GB DDR3 RAM.
I purchased a Radeon R5 340X GPU, but it won’t display anything even when connected.
Removing the graphics card works fine in BIOS.
It also functioned properly with an i5 2500k but then shut down.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
It's not a whitelist problem like the CPU, but a compatibility one.
You have BIOS version v7.16
which is not UEFI.
Many modern cards technically do have a hybrid vBIOS which is
supposed
to work on both Legacy BIOS like yours, or UEFI but got increasingly hit-or-miss by Pascal or GCN. R5 340x is only 1st gen GCN and does seem to work in some Legacy BIOS boards though there's no rhyme or reason why it seems not to in others. I got the 4th gen GCN RX580 to work in one Legacy BIOS board ( it doesn't work in many others), but if you want it to just work I suggest Maxwell such as GTX 750Ti
I'm not really aiming for a GTX 750 Ti, as my budget constraints are tight. The 340x was mainly due to its low cost. Can I find a way to make it function with an older BIOS?
No, HP never released an 8.x UEFI BIOS for that machine. Usually you could boot from the IGP and keep using the card as a secondary display, but HP turns off the IGP when a GPU is installed. If you don’t mind skipping driver support and don’t require high performance, nVidia Kepler (such as GT710) or AMD TeraScale cards (like HD6450-R5 235X) should function well and have been around for about five years at around $5 used. It’s interesting that some of these are still available new for ten times the price.
BTW, why is there a GPU? The HD6450 seems slower than the GT2 IGP in the 95w 2500k, yet quicker than the GT1 in your 2100. If VGA and DVI work, you might just upgrade to a faster CPU. Your motherboard supports 65w Sandy Bridge, and the only quadcore with GT2 is the i5-2405S. HP doesn't support unlocked K processors, while the 65w 2500S and 2600S share the same GT1 as your current model but could be considered if you add a GPU.
Well I'm operating it as a server with Arch Linux installed. I'm trying to add a GPU to improve the signal since my monitor's DVI port is damaged and loses signal every 10 seconds.
Edit
I have a Xeon CPU for this socket, but I'm not sure if it would work and it would require a graphics card if I wanted to use it.