What follows is a very much long story that involves compatibility, misdiagnosis, and the smallest problem causing hours upon hours of stress.
One day, I decided that I wanted to assemble a computer using the following parts:
A Rosewell Case w/ a 500 watt power supply
An Intel DP67BG motherboard
An Intel i7 3770
A GEForce 650Ti Graphics card
two sticks of 4GB Corsair RAM
It feels like I am missing something, but I'm sure it's not important.
Anyway, this is the first time I had ever assembled a computer. I read up for hours on all of the necessary precautions that one needed to take before putting together a computer and when the parts finally came, I was incredibly excited. I put everything together, double and triple checking to make sure that I had absolutely everything where it was supposed to go. Then came the moment of truth. I plugged it in and turned it on. I heard the many fans whir to life, saw a message on the 2-digit 7-segment display saying "1E", and then it turned off. Then it turned on. Then it turned off.
I let it go for about a minute until I figured that there was definitely something wrong. I checked the manual for the motherboard, but alas, there was nothing under 1E for error messages. I looked online and saw many people with the same problem as I. For hours I looked to and fro, gradually eliminating possibilities such as lack of power and short-circuiting. In my struggle for enlightenment, I even went all the way to the desolate fifth page of Google! Finally, I came upon the answer I was looking for. My board's default BIOS was not able to use a 3rd generation processor with "Ivy Bridge" construction. It needed a BIOS update. I found that I needed a 2nd generation processor to use solely for the purpose of updating my motherboard. While I was slightly annoyed that I had to do this, I figured that the only alternative was the purchase of a completely new motherboard or processor, which came up at a far greater cost than a cheap Pentium. I, of course, still wanted to be certain that this was the case and that I wasn't about to waste money on a Pentium when motherboard replacement was the only option. When I was looking around the internet to make sure that this was true, and stubled upon a flowchart about installing a "3rd Generation" Processor. This flowchart seemed to say that my "Hardware Revision" is not in any way compatible with that chip. So, used the "Live Chat" feature in an attempt to ask. As I talked to this Intel employee, he was very friendly in saying that everything was just fine and that, regardless of my AA#, everything would be perfectly fine. According to him, I needed a cheap processor to do the update, after which everything would be perfect. So, I ordered one and got it in the mail. I plugged it in and, for the first time, got something to show up on the screen. The update commenced and I was absolutely ecstatic. I put the jumper pin back in and replaced the silly little pentium with my beautiful i7. I heard the computer whir to life, but my heart sank to the ground when I saw that dreaded 1E. What now? Am I entitled to anything like a replacement, or am I just forced to buy myself a better motherboard?
