HP Pro 3300 & 3400 (H61): Upgrade to Ivy Bridge

[miant]

This is a production machine so I can't afford to make mistakes that will render it unoperable.

If so, the easiest way is to buy a second used motherboard on ebay. Then you will be able to find an bios/cpu option that suits you without any rush. The Foxconn H61MXE bios, for example, allows you to upgrade to an Intel i7-3770 processor and supports a maximum of 16GB of memory.

[itsik]

This is a production machine so I can't afford to make mistakes that will render it unoperable.

If so, the easiest way is to buy a second used motherboard on ebay. Then you will be able to find an bios/cpu option that suits you without any rush. The Foxconn H61MXE bios, for example, allows you to upgrade to an Intel i7-3770 processor and supports a maximum of 16GB of memory.

Thank you for your reply.
It is an option indeed, but not sure it is suitable for me. Is there any bios the is guaranteed to give me the ability to upgrade to a core i7/XEON cpu with 16 gigs of ram? I believe it can be an i7 2XXX or an equivalent XEON cpu as this is basically a file server with a bit of media duties (not too much). 
My other option is to go with a new ITX build based on an aliexpress X99 mobo...
if

[miant]

 Is there any bios the is guaranteed to give me the ability to upgrade to a core i7/XEON cpu with 16 gigs of ram?

did you read this?

 The Foxconn H61MXE bios, for example, allows you to upgrade to an Intel i7-3770 processor and supports a maximum of 16GB of memory.

[itsik]

 Is there any bios the is guaranteed to give me the ability to upgrade to a core i7/XEON cpu with 16 gigs of ram?

did you read this?

 The Foxconn H61MXE bios, for example, allows you to upgrade to an Intel i7-3770 processor and supports a maximum of 16GB of memory.

Yes I did. Can you please point to Where I can download those bios?
Also how do I flash it?

Thank you
Itsik

[miant]

Check out the previous page of this thread.

[wayachi]

Tried to flash with Afudos, not working doesn't accept. Anyway you can modify to make it accept without error.

[miant]

Tried to flash with Afudos, not working doesn't accept. Anyway you can modify to make it accept without error.

As i said before, i used external programmer.
Afudos require another bios file - BB3F1P13.ROM (it is present in the afudos folder, its size is 2560k). 
For afudos v3, the command line might look like this
afudos.exe BB3F1P13.ROM /X  ( /X - Don't Check ROM ID )

You can try to flash .bin file booting to freedos with intel fpt utility v8.1 from MEBIOS folder something like this
fpt.exe -f bb3f1p13nvme.bin
This is a guess only - sorry, I don't have a way to test it.
(All of the bios/utility files and folders are in the bios archive ).