Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

[shadow001]

Now where do I begin the horror story....I bought a Gigabyte dual socket 2011 motherboard( the GA-7PESH3), packed it with some lovely Intel E5 2650 V2's and corsair dominator GT 2133( 32 GB of it across 8 modules), as well as 4 R9 290's and half a dozen SSD's, all enclosed in a nice XSPC cube case and fully water cooled and using a pair of corsair 1200 watt PSU's....Main reason I chose this particular motherboard is it's ability to handle 4 video cards and having a built SAS controller.


Having said the above, and having double and triple checked everything connector related, power related and jumper related, I can't get this board to boot period.....I it's like it's on this constant sequencing where it turns on and off just before we usually hear the beep and the post information is displayed on screen, the fans work, the leds that light the interior work( I had to make it look good...:P), the water pumps work( all 5 of them, and they can draw up to 20 watts each), the touch screen fan controlers work too( there's 3 of those), and all I get is a red led in the middle of the board....Power is distributed across both power supplies between the right side and left side and trying to even it out in terms of output( give or take 50 watts...:P).

There's practically no manual with this thing and some areas are extremely light on details, specifically the jumper section and it not explaning what all the jumper do except give abreviations, so so I'm down to seeing if there's perhaps bios updates, but it won't do me any good since the system doesn't boot far lt in enough to use the built in utility.



It's something the board isn't recognising and keeping from going further, but what is it?

[- wardog -]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

See post # 2 in the below thread.

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/54148-severe-bios-incompatibility-ga-7pesh3-board.html

[shadow001]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

After a couple of cycles, all I see are 2 red leds( one right beside the other), that are just ahead of the first video card( counting from the cpu sockets), flashing alternatively.....One then the other, over and over again.

[shadow001]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

Thanks for the link btw...So there is an issue with multiple cards an this board if all of them are PCI-e 3.0.....Let me see if the manual ndicates if there's a jumper to bring that down to 2.0 speeds......The performance hit is minimal since nothing uses that much bandwith yet, application wise.


worst comes to worst, I'd have to break the water loop for the video cards open and remove the cards, then install an old video card that still has it's stock air cooler.

[shadow001]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

The only PCI-e options are in the bios itself, and since I don't have access to it it's a non option, including the Gen 3 setting and I also noticed that the green led just at the very back of the board( BMC readiness LED) is shining bright green, so it seems that at least passes what ever initial test in does.






It's teasing me...:p

[- wardog -]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

worst comes to worst, I'd have to break the water loop for the video cards open and remove the cards, then install an old video card that still has it's stock air cooler.

THAT sux big time.

[shadow001]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

I'm getting so good at knowing this system, that I already pulled out the cards and installed an air cooled video card....


Now for some questions regarding jumpers and what they for, since the manual is useless in explaining any of it, even the online one.....We have:


1: Raid key which is 2 pins, so it's either on or off and not the usual 3 pins like a CMOS reset.
2: SSB_ME1(ME enable or Disable).....No clue what this is.
3: S3_mask....Stop an initial power on when BMC isn't ready or continue power on even if it isn't.....?
4: BMC_FRB1...Force to stop FRB timer jumper.
5: PMBUS_SEL connects to PCH or BMC.(?)

[shadow001]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

There's even a jumper that is undocumented called PCI_SW2( printed on the motherboard PCB)...

[shadow001]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

PCI_SWI between slots 6 and 7 is also undocumented and a whole row of pins between slots 5 and 6 that there's nothing written on the PCI or in any manual......Anyhow, I'm almost ready to start the system with a single air cooled card.

[shadow001]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

Tried with just a single air cooled video card and it's exactly the same problem....System comes on, stays on for 10 secs, shuts down and restarts over and over in this pattern.


NO post on the screen, and even the keyboard doesn't initialise.

[shadow001]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

Tried it with on board video card and hooking that up to the display, and it's exactly the same problem...No post at all, no beeps and the keyboard does not initialise at all so I can rule out issues with video cards or PCI-E compatibility.....Leaves only the CPU's or memory as issues, but the CPU's are part of the compatibility list, and the memory is identical in all 8 slots and within the limits of unregistered DDR3 in capacity(32 GB total).


Power supply wise, there's 2400 watts to play with between 2 PSU's, and up until last week, they were powering up an EVGA SR-2 with a pair of 6 core Xeon's running at 4 Ghz flawlessly, and I gotta admit I am tempted to go back to it if this keeps on completely baffling why it's doing it.

[xplode]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

If you use any ram XMP or OC disable it and try again. I had similar issues with different Gigabyte board. With some BIOS versions system act exactly as you describe when XMP is enabled. Set RAM to auto and turn off XMP or any OC profile or settings, if there are no such things in this BIOS then make ram run on 1333 MHz. Then try booting with single cpu and single graphics card, try to update your BIOS and then try to setup your system again. Also from personal experience the latest BIOS may not be the best for your build, so try different versions and decide which one suits you best.

[- wardog -]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

Frustrating, I know.

I'd PM Yann, Gigabyte's Server/B2B/NCBU goto here, and wait to see what they have to suggest.

[- wardog -]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

If you use any ram XMP or OC disable it and try again. I had similar issues with different Gigabyte board. With some BIOS versions system act exactly as you describe when XMP is enabled. Set RAM to auto and turn off XMP or any OC profile or settings, if there are no such things in this BIOS then make ram run on 1333 MHz. Then try booting with single cpu and single graphics card, try to update your BIOS and then try to setup your system again. Also from personal experience the latest BIOS may not be the best for your build, so try different versions and decide which one suits you best.

I very highly doubt, as a matter of fact I'll bet, this board doesn't support XMP Profiles.

[shadow001]

Re: Tearing what's left of my hair off with this one build....

It doesn't matter in either case, as I can't get to the point where I see the bios period....I could just unplug the memory and see if any new warning lights illuminate or the motherboard starts beeping an error of somekind.....If not, then we either have:

1: One seriously screwed up board.
2: The Bios is totally and completely corrupted to the point of not loading or displaying anything, even when using the onboard video.

I'll try erasing the Cmos as it's possible that the quad video card setup may have left something behind, but that's a shot in the dark, but what's really pissing me off is the lack of documentation since there's at least half a dozen jumpers that I have no idea what they're for....The solution could be right in front of my face and I wouldn't know it.