Hey guys I've got our home pc which is an Acer X3990 with an i5-2320 and was thinking of swapping it for an i7-3770. Has anyone tried installing an ivy bridge processor on a H61 chipset? I did try to swap the old one with a used i7-2600 (checked an online manual before doing this) and was getting just a blank screen. I installed back the i5 and it was fine. I've also heard of 'flashing the bios' in order to update it but I don't know whether I should test the cpu first or update the bios.

I know it may have been better to build a custom pc (which I had done already), but we've had it for quite some time and I thought it needed a little tlc. Already swapped the hdd for an ssd, installed an Asus GT730 graphics card (it was the only one that could fit without moving it to a bigger case) and bumped up the RAM to 8 GB.

Always best to update the bios first before installing a CPU which wasn't released at the time the motherboard was manufactured.

I have checked the Acer support page for the x3990 and found that my current bios is PO1.B1. I've also found another labelled PO1.B2 but the description only says BIOS. I'm not sure if that's an update from the current one that I have or a totally different one as they also have BIOS for Linux.

There is a cpu support list on the Acer x3990 support page. It says yes.
Andi.

Hello andicole0 thanks for the info. Would you be able to post the link? I may need it for future reference.

Update: installed the cpu earlier and got an error beep code as 3 short beeps. Still trying to find out what error code it is. Put back the old cpu and worked fine.

bump

I have a 3770 on a H61 right now.

But yes every H61 needs a BIOS update to use Ivy Bridge. And if the manufacturer doesn't provide a BIOS update then.... well you're SOL