Pegatron M2N78-LA Violet3-GL8E CPU-support

[wildfrisco]

OK. Flash this mod before CPU swapping.
And make a screenshot of regedit with expanded key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DESCRIPTION\System\CentralProcessor\0 with new CPU.

I registered an account here on this forum just to let you guys know that this modded BIOS worked for me.

I have a HP Pavilion Elite e9120y that I found and been rehabbing for fun. It has a Pegasus M2N78-LA Violet3 motherboard with bios version 5.08. I think it's the latest according to google searches. But I'm not absolutely sure since HP's web support has been pretty lacking (live chat overwhelmed, software and driver site still "compiling" results after 24 hours, etc). Been upgrading the e9120y just to see if it can handle the role of a family room media player/mulitplayer gaming PC.

It came with an AMD Phenom II X4 910 (2.6 GHz). According to HP's spec sheet, the e9120y should support a X4 955 (3.2 GHz, 95watt version, part # HDX955WFK4DGM): https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01738802. But after the X4 955 arrived in the mail I installed it and got the "ERROR: Unsupported CPU installed. PC will automatically power down in a few seconds...".

Been awhile since I've done stuff like this but I made a MSDOS USB boot stick using RUFUS 3.9. Then found AFUDOS 4.12 and used it to flash the VL35.08 bios file. Upon the first boot there was some weird behavior in Win10 but after a reboot everything was fine. 
Thermals seem to be the same or even slightly better than the X4 910, since I had to redo the thermal paste.

Handy list of AMD processors and part numbers, in case you guys want to shop precisely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AM...processors. Screenshots hosted elsewhere: https://imgur.com/a/L7h2L97

Some other (unbalanced) specs:
HP Pavilion Elite e9120y
Corsair 650w power supply
AMD Phenom II X4 955
12GB DDR3
GeForce GTX 780
Intel 80GB ssd
Western Digital 1TB hdd