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The title is the TL:DR version.
Some background. I have assembled, serviced and dismantled hundreds of systems, from desktops, to workstations, to servers, over the last 20+ years. I have never seen a system behave like this before.
I bought a 7PESH3 board and 2x E5 2670 Xeons (v1). The PSU is a Cooler Master RM850. Both power connectors for the cpus are properly connected The same for the 24 PIN power connector. No hard disks, no graphics card, no other cards at all. In fact, other than the power button and the CPU coolers, nothing is else is attached (a usb mouse and keyboard, plus a network cable to the BMC port). I am using 8x4GB Vengeance DDR3 1600 non-ecc.
The board does not power up, or otherwise complain, no leds come up near the CPU 0 socket. Only the BMC leds and the led next to the SAS ports blink when power is connected. Pressing the power button (or shorting the pins) causes no other effect than causing the BMC to reset (the lan leds on the BMC lan card go out when i press the power button, then come up a few seconds later).
After reading around, some people complained about the bios version not supporting two cpus out of the box. Ok, i removed the CPUs, and the ram while at it, and inserted an I7 3820 on cpu 0 socket. Also, only added one ram dimm (tried one of the vengeance dimms, and just in case, tried a different, unrelated, 8gb kingston ddr3 1600 non ecc i had lying around). Same result. Power button = no effect other than resetting the BMC.
So performed a cmos clear. Upon restoring power to the PSU, the system came online. Went to the bios, looked around, nothing weird or out of place. Performed a shutdown to connect an ssd, and back to square one. After a cold boot, exactly the same problem. Nothing happens upon pressing the power button. I configured the BMC network settings in the bios and i can access it remotely. I see nothing special in the events section.
So after lots of attempts, here's where i'm at:
I can -always- start the system, either with 2x Xeons or 1x Xeon or 1x i7 3820 after a clear cmos.
I can -always- start the system with an appropriate number of dimms and all are correctly recognized in the bios, after a clear cmos.
I can boot correctly to (a preinstalled) operating system, everything works and is correctly detected and identified by the OS, after a clear cmos.
-but-
As soon as a shutdown happens, i can no longer bring the system up until i clear the cmos.
I have upgraded the bios to the R21 (last shown at the gigabyte site for the board). The bios programming is a two step process that requires a cold boot after writing the new bios file. Of course, the system does not come back after the first phase, so, after clearing the cmos and reentering the bios, i see the new version, but i'm pretty sure the process is not yet complete - the documentation that accompanies the R21 bios points to a second phase that i can never trigger because of the cold boot.
I'm almost pulling my hair out here. The CPUs all work on a different system, the same for the ram and psu (i tested all of them separately on other systems). The board works fine after clearing the cmos.
But something is clearly wrong, and i can't pinpoint it.
What am i doing wrong?
Help?
Thank you for your time,
Joao Correia
Some background. I have assembled, serviced and dismantled hundreds of systems, from desktops, to workstations, to servers, over the last 20+ years. I have never seen a system behave like this before.
I bought a 7PESH3 board and 2x E5 2670 Xeons (v1). The PSU is a Cooler Master RM850. Both power connectors for the cpus are properly connected The same for the 24 PIN power connector. No hard disks, no graphics card, no other cards at all. In fact, other than the power button and the CPU coolers, nothing is else is attached (a usb mouse and keyboard, plus a network cable to the BMC port). I am using 8x4GB Vengeance DDR3 1600 non-ecc.
The board does not power up, or otherwise complain, no leds come up near the CPU 0 socket. Only the BMC leds and the led next to the SAS ports blink when power is connected. Pressing the power button (or shorting the pins) causes no other effect than causing the BMC to reset (the lan leds on the BMC lan card go out when i press the power button, then come up a few seconds later).
After reading around, some people complained about the bios version not supporting two cpus out of the box. Ok, i removed the CPUs, and the ram while at it, and inserted an I7 3820 on cpu 0 socket. Also, only added one ram dimm (tried one of the vengeance dimms, and just in case, tried a different, unrelated, 8gb kingston ddr3 1600 non ecc i had lying around). Same result. Power button = no effect other than resetting the BMC.
So performed a cmos clear. Upon restoring power to the PSU, the system came online. Went to the bios, looked around, nothing weird or out of place. Performed a shutdown to connect an ssd, and back to square one. After a cold boot, exactly the same problem. Nothing happens upon pressing the power button. I configured the BMC network settings in the bios and i can access it remotely. I see nothing special in the events section.
So after lots of attempts, here's where i'm at:
I can -always- start the system, either with 2x Xeons or 1x Xeon or 1x i7 3820 after a clear cmos.
I can -always- start the system with an appropriate number of dimms and all are correctly recognized in the bios, after a clear cmos.
I can boot correctly to (a preinstalled) operating system, everything works and is correctly detected and identified by the OS, after a clear cmos.
-but-
As soon as a shutdown happens, i can no longer bring the system up until i clear the cmos.
I have upgraded the bios to the R21 (last shown at the gigabyte site for the board). The bios programming is a two step process that requires a cold boot after writing the new bios file. Of course, the system does not come back after the first phase, so, after clearing the cmos and reentering the bios, i see the new version, but i'm pretty sure the process is not yet complete - the documentation that accompanies the R21 bios points to a second phase that i can never trigger because of the cold boot.
I'm almost pulling my hair out here. The CPUs all work on a different system, the same for the ram and psu (i tested all of them separately on other systems). The board works fine after clearing the cmos.
But something is clearly wrong, and i can't pinpoint it.
What am i doing wrong?
Help?
Thank you for your time,
Joao Correia
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