Revert UX32VD BIOS / motherboard upgrade?

I made a post in the past about this. Long story short. I bought this UX32VD secondhand that came with UX32A bios on it. I have a FHD display to prove it!

Now the weird part is that the iSSD and eGPU (620M) has been disabled and the i7 "downgraded to an i5". Forcing it to update to UX32VD bios gives me an error about mismatch (which is pretty obvious). All the chips on the motherboard are intact, so I know they just performed a BIOS mod to get by the old BIOS/iSSD issues from the past.

I have CLU on both dies so picking it apart again isn't exactly fun to show proof. If this isn't possible would it be perhaps possible upgrade to a UX32LN mobo perhaps? The ports seems to match not to mention the connections...

update #1: here are some pics as proof!

 

You have to compare the chip/connecor placement and outputs on both for a swap. Odd situation there I deed regarding the board model.

 

Perhaps, or merely a poorly executed bios update (password reset attempt?). Either way, tried force-flashing? There should be an override switch for this. Failing that, if it's a closed/non-generic flash program, you could always flash directly with a programmer.

 

How does force flashing work? If there's a model mismatch nothing can be flashed via bios.

update: I tried winflash /forced and it failed to verify even if the rest worked and then "bricked". I removed battery + RAM and hoped for the best. Still showing the old BIOS though so no go :/

 

By the way, there is no way I know of to force the CPU to an I5, it would display as an I7 at least even if the clock speeds were different.

 

Doesn't the BIOS report what hardware is on the mobo to the OS itself? i7 or not, GT620M and UEFI/CSM features are missing.

 

Yes, the bios contains Intel microcodes (id and cpu instruction sets) which are cpu-specific. However, the UX32A and UX32VD use the exact same microcodes, so it should still list ' i7'. Bit strange, but the borked bios may be to blame ... either way; still need to flash the proper bios.

Since you have an AMI Aptio bios you can also use afudos for this (from within bootable DOS):

Code:

AFUDOS.EXE backup.rom /O
AFUDOS.EXE bios.rom /X /B /P /N /L

Not sure if it'll accept this Asus bios 'as is'; the files provided by Asus are packed together with EC and ME firmware. First run ' AFUDOS.EXE bios.rom /D' in order to verify the bios file. If it doesn't like the 6MB files then compare that to the 4MB backup.rom and hex extract the actual bios section.

 

Have you checked the chip markings for the CPU under the heatsink?

 

Looks like they might had replaced your system with wrong PCB part (inferior part I am afraid). Best to contact ASUS customer support to resolve this issue properly.