I recently bought my friend a GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Motherboard (which I though was compatible from the box & did not need a bios update) is the motherboard I bought for him to use with a E7200 Dual Core, I also bought him a corsair 450vx power supply now everything gets installed and as soon as he trys to start the computer up the motherboard starts beeping/blinking two lights between the memory slots, now I first think that the power supply might be dead as the fans on the power supply don't even start, but then I discover that the E7200 was not supported until bio revision F4 which came out on 04/03/2008, but since I purchased it on the 6 of this month could the motherboard be a little bit over two months old.

My question being is that wouldn't the motherboard still come on & go to the bios screen even if the cpu is not compatible with it & wouldn't it just not recongize the cpu? So is it likely that the power supply is the problem or could the cpu not compatible (yet)?

as far as my knowledge goes. it will not boot if the cpu is not supported by the bios. meaning, ull need to put another cpu, upgrade the bios, then put the newer cpu.

My friend wants to try his old P4 3.8 to see, but the problem being is that cpu might (never determined if it was) be damaged because of an Air Conditioner killing it, this was talked about in this thread:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messag [...] id=2193883

(That is my friend username)

My question being if the cpu is damaged then could the cpu damage the motherboard?