Incompatible parts, Dead board or a Dead CPU?

[skyripper]

Was looking to replace my microserver with something with a bit more oomph and I saw a post about getting a cheap xeon and board and building something from that. So I did.

One badly thought thru ebay basket later and I'd ordered;

1. Xeon E5-2620 (here)
2. X79 board (here)
3. Samsung 2x8GB DDR3 unregistered ECC ram

I then forgot about it, because the motherboard took almost 2 weeks to arrive by boat, camel and bicycle from Taiwan.

So I had a crack at getting this lot running this weekend on my workbench.

CPU into the board
heatsink fitted
ram into the slots 1+2
gfx card into top PCI-E slot
PSU into the ATX 24pin and the 8pin CPU power
Button on the power pins, LED on the Power indicator
CPU fan to the fan headers
Speaker attached to the relevant headers

Board powers up (light comes on).
Push button. CPU fan spins then stops.
Can be repeated a 2nd time, but thats it.
Nothing else unless power is cycled off/on at the PSU.
Nothing on the GFX output. No signal at the monitor.
No beeps or noises from the speaker.

Tried the following;

• checked the CPU is seated properly
• Moving gfx to PCI-E slot 3 (one nearest the CPU). Theres a sticker over slot 2, but I can't read chinese so no idea what it says
• Moving Ram to slots 1+3 or 2+4, or 3+4
• Using 1 stick of Ram. In each slot 1,2,3,4
• Swapping to a known working 6950 gfx card (and plugging in the 2x4pin PCIE power on it)
• Swapping to regular (non-ECC) DDR3 ram. Repeating same tests as for other ram
• Removing the CMOS battery and leaving the board unpowered for half hour
• Using a screwdriver to jump the power pins in case the button was duff (it wasnt)

No change no matter what I do.

• Ram is known working - it runs fine in an Asus board with a i5 2500K cpu. Thats both the samsung ECC and the spare non-ECC ram
• PSU is known working (500W OCZ happily powering a x5650 and asus rampage board in a previous life)
• GFX card is known working (its back in my media centre right now - AMD passive card)
• Monitor is known working.

So I figure I've either got a dead board, a dead CPU - or they're not compatible.

Doesn't help that the motherboard has no manual, no markings on the box apart from Motherboard in big white letters, and the board has a sticker saying X79A1. Theres nothing to indicate who made the thing, but its pretty close to a ECS X79R in layout and description.

Any ideas?

 

[EsaT]

[*]PSU is known working (500W OCZ happily powering a x5650 and asus rampage board in a previous life)

Did you measure it with (oscillo)scope?
Hardly any OCZs have had quality capacitors and failed caps could have kept working just enough when powered...
But when you shut down server for upgrade those bad caps can fail completely when cooling down.

Looking for that motherboard's product number found some "Huanan" brand:
https://xeon-e5450.ru/socket-2011/motherboards/huanan-x79-deluxe-gaming-series/
https://xeon-e5450.ru/socket-2011/huanan-x79/
Looking any similar?

 

[skyripper]

Doesnt look like the two Huanans above - they have the front panel jumper connecters along the left hand edge. Mine are at the front, and the SATA ports are in a different place. Plus mine is all in black and looks like a ninja

Having zoomed in on the sticker seems to be a X79A1, JHY1709300015 and the only reference I can find to that is on overclockers.ru which is a post about normal Ram and ECC ram.

If its a case of the Xeon chip isnt compatible (seems the chip I bought is a V3 ?), I'm not too fussed - it was less than £20. I can source another one without too much remorse. If the board is a paperweight, thats a bit more annoying.

I'll check the PSU (or nick the working one from my media centre) and see if it works, I hadnt considered it dying a death sat on the shelf. It was only pulled from the x58 build as I needed some 8pin PCI-E connectors after changing the GFX in that rig. Once I pulled it, (and having bought a new one) I found out it actually did have the 8pin connectors.

I wouldnt know what to do with a scope if I had one. I do have a multimeter, but really am not qualified to start poking test leads anywhere - so if it doesnt power a different board, I'll leave it at that.

 

[ZXSpectrum]

Ah if its a V3 that will be the problem. ITs the same footprint so it will fit but it is X99/C610 chipset to support that cpu as it require DDR4. You can normally purchase Xeon E5-2670v1 for about £40 delivered from the US on the bay.

 

[EsaT]

V3 Xeon is Haswell based, V2 Ivy Bridge based and "non-V"/original is Ivy Bridge based.
So if motherboard is older model than V3 Xeon it would likely need new BIOS.
Which is likely something newer done for such China brand motherboards.


If that multimeter doesn't cost way more than new top quality PSU it's likely not capable to even starting to measure ripple.
(Google Brymen BM869 for starting price level of actually good meters... also actually conforming with safety standards)

 

[ZXSpectrum]

V3 Xeon is Haswell based, V2 Ivy Bridge based and "non-V"/original is Ivy Bridge based.
So if motherboard is older model than V3 Xeon it would likely need new BIOS.
Which is likely something newer done for such China brand motherboards.


If that multimeter doesn't cost way more than new top quality PSU it's likely not capable to even starting to measure ripple.
(Google Brymen BM869 for starting price level of actually good meters... also actually conforming with safety standards)

You cannot use a Xeon E5 26xx v3/v4 in X79 as it requires DDR4 which is only available on X99/C610 updating the BIOS will not make it support those chips.

 

[skyripper]

(Google Brymen BM869 for starting price level of actually good meters... also actually conforming with safety standards)

Yaaaaa.. no. At £200+ I'd just buy a second hand server

Ah if its a V3 that will be the problem. ITs the same footprint so it will fit but it is X99/C610 chipset to support that cpu as it require DDR4. You can normally purchase Xeon E5-2670v1 for about £40 delivered from the US on the bay.

I'll see if I can source a different chip on the bay for pizza money and see how far that gets me.


Thanks to you both for your help.

 

[EsaT]

You cannot use a Xeon E5 26xx v3/v4 in X79 as it requires DDR4 which is only available on X99/C610 updating the BIOS will not make it support those chips.

Oh yeah, there was also that difference in different Xeons.
Xeon E3 V3s were basically Haswell CPUs without iGPU and used DDR3.
(with price good amount lower than i7 Haswell and used by many in supporting desktop motherboards)

Yaaaaa.. no. At £200+ I'd just buy a second hand server

You better not check what Fluke charges for that level meters...

 

[ZXSpectrum]

Just checked and WOW the price on the 2670s have gone stupidly high. I bought mine for £40 plus 7 quid postage from the US now it looks as if they are double that price. The 20s are silly cheap though. Still a good cpu especially for a media server.

 

[skyripper]

Having looked at the ebay order details, I'm not convinced I bought a V3.
Which means it should be DDR3 compatible.
I'll have a look at the chip tonight when I get home and check.

 

[EsaT]

Full model information reads on top of heatspreader.

 

[skyripper]

Board has designation on the side of
D-X79PLUSV2.0

Chip has
Intel Xeon E5-2620
SR0KW 2.00GHZ
Costa Rica
3331B852

 

[ZXSpectrum]

Yeah that's a Vanilla 2620 so that should work. Not having used that board (Or ever heard of it) i couldn't really tell you what is the issue. You may want to try with just 1 stick of the memory. Check pins in the socket etc, normal things. You might want to check the support and bios of that board if available.

 

[skyripper]

Yeah, I'm thinking I may have bought a pig in a poke.
I'll see about swapping to a different PSU before I give it up as a bad buy.

 

[GiTsu]

I have the same motherboard. Originally it worked but after flashing new bios from seller it started to restart repeatedly. I think the problem is in MOBO. It's on h61 chipset and full of bugs... for example it worked on desktop but immediately restarted after 3d workload on gfx. That's why I tried to change bios and killed her accidentally.