Socket LGA775

I thought it was time to upgrade my Core 2 Duo E6300, which has a default clock of 1.86Ghz but has been running at a steady 2.8Ghz for the past few years. So, I put down £220 on a new Q9550, a Core 2 Quad 2.83Ghz 12MB Cache monster, based on the new 45nm process. My motherboard is a GA 965p DQ6, which has a LGA775 socket. This is electrically compatible with all LGA775 processors.

However, I foolishly assumed that a LGA775 motherboard will take all LGA775 processors. Wrong! The BIOS must also support them. I only found this out when placing the processor in the motherboard, reattaching the heatsink and trying to boot. One weakness of the GA 965P DQ6 motherboard is that it gets stuck into a reboot loop if something is wrong without any helpful error beeps at all. It’s only when I checked the CPU compatibility list that I found my error.

So, i’ve got a new motherboard on the way, Asus’s PQ5 SE. Lets hope it all goes to plan and recgonises my Intel RAID0 hard drive array.