New motherboard not working

Well gues what. I think it may be nearly working now.

It was suggested by the mobo seller that it may need the BIOS updating (why, you may ask, are they being sold without the latest updates?). How do you update the bios, if you can't pass POST? Well on the Asus board there is a 3rd ethernet port for server management. They suggested hooking this up to the network , finding the IP of the port, and logging in with a web browser.

The hardest bit was finding the IP address. At first I just saw my old server, but after a bit of trial and error was able to log into the management port and run iKVM, and there was the option to update the bios. With version 2204 on the local PC it was simple to flash a copy to the mobo.

With the bios updated, it's now possible to boot into the BIOS. It's not completely working, I seem to have a couple of issues:
- seems to be only recognising 128Gb RAM
- seems to be only finding 1 processor
- After POST says it can't see the NVMe device (there are 2 NVMe's, the boot one has a clone of a WIndows10 disk on it).

Hopefully these can be sorted out tomorrow...
 
ZXSpectrum said:
Nooooooo.. There is a very very special way to install Xeon CPUS. You have to use the specific intel cradle for the CPUs you are using (The motherboard will come with them and to check you have the right ones you have to go to the Intel Ark and it will show you which cradle you need, in your case its E1B, you get the correct ones from the motherboard box, fix the CPU into that cradle, then attach to the COOLER, then install into the motherboard in a very specific manor.

Here is a installation guide.
You have to be very careful with the amount of torque used and the cradle used or it will cause memory not to be recognised or damage to the socket.

Gone are the days where you plonk the CPU in the socket, stick the cooler on and tighten down and you are done.
Click to expand...
Sorry 'drop the cpus into the sockets' was a massive oversimplification. I did of course fit the cpus into the correct E1B cradles then onto the coolers making sure the cpu triangles were aligned and the cpu was held in the cradle by the clips correctly before putting them into the sockets with the triangles aligned and tightening ever so carefully.... you get the picture.

I have tried swapping the CPUs, the bios still only sees CPU0 and not CPU1, so its not a CPU issue. And yes I did clear the cmos after swapping them etc.
 
I tightened them in a cross fashion, initially till resistance was felt then 1/2 a turn same way to ensure even tightening.
The same method was used on both cpus. When I swapped them I took a pic of cpu2's socket:
As far as I can see using a magnifier all pins are OK.
I've also tried swapping the power connectors in case cpu2 was not receiving power, that all seems OK. It's a puzzle.
 
wookiee87 said:
i know what the issue is, the motherboard and ram are fine, the problem is your xeons, the 5512u is only supported in 1 socket solutions only, if you use 2 then 1 will never work as the tech isnt built inside to allow cpu to cpu communication on that skew if you look on intel ark site and find the 5512u cpu's it says (Scalability 1S Only) aka 1 cpu per board

Intel® Xeon® Gold 5512U Processor (52.5M Cache, 2.10 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel

Intel® Xeon® Gold 5512U Processor (52.5M Cache, 2.10 GHz) quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.
ark.intel.com ark.intel.com
Click to expand...
OMG. Yes I see that, I had no idea. Guess I’ll have to see if I can send them back although as I ordered them in September I guess I might be stuck with them.
 
wookiee87 said:
should have 12 month warranty and you can explian the situation, just check ark site first to see scalable cpu's, then buy a a pair and you should be set.
Click to expand...
I’ll give it a try, got them from ******** who generally are very helpful. If I can exchange them for 5520+ which I believe are similar spec but 2S does that make sense?
 
wookiee87 said:
should have 12 month warranty and you can explian the situation
Click to expand...
The company whose name begins with N 'he say no' :( Kicking myself that I did not know that the 5512U was single socket but I had no idea that some Xeons were limited. Last when I bought E5-2640's I don't recall any others of that era being limited to a single socket. You live and learn.
 
Well finally (after swapping the 5512U cpus for 6530s) the system starts the BIOS, and in that I can see both CPUs are present and all the 256Gb memory is recognised too.

Now the remaining problem is that I get a BSOD 'INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE' when Windows tries to start up. The NVMe is a Crucial T700 M2 device, which has been cloned using Macrium Reflect from my existing W10 server's C drive. I had hoped that it would just boot... but no. Any ideas what I should be checking?
 
If there's no other way I'll need to do that, alas installing all the apps takes a day or two.
What's the best way - putting a W11 install on USB? It's been a while since I did a fresh install, that was from CDROM.
 
So I created a W11 USB media, plugged it in and ppowered up the PC. It gets to POST but then it seems to hang - if you're quick pressing DEL will get you into the BIOS where I set the boot order to USB as the first device. But then it just seems to hang, showing code 92 which is something to do with PCI initialisation. Is there something that needs to be set to get it to try and boot?

I've put a screenshot at https://www.peardrop.co.uk/IMG_6006.jpeg. It seems its finding the 2 cpus and all the memory and the NVMe, also 5 SATA devices. No idea why it says 2 mice and 2 keyboards, there is only one of each connected.

Appreciate any help as to what to try next...
 
So after a bit of experimentation in the BIOS I found the boot option was set to network first, which is probably why it was hanging. Instead selected the USB media as boot device. And lo and behold, the W11 installation popup appeared. Set the language options and a product key and it went away checking and came back and said 'this PC is not ready for Windows11' or similar.

Not sure what to do next... why would a brand new motherboard and Xeons be 'not suitable'? Is there a way of fixing it or is it really the case that W11 is a waste of time?
 
Yes its probably complaining about TPM, oh well W10 will do. It's a bit illogical of MS to end of life W10 if its required by new PCs...

But I have another problem. Although the BIOS sees the NVMe devices, the WIndows installer does not. If I open a cmd window and use diskpart, there is no sign of the NVMe's - so I can't install an OS. Well, I can on one of the old SATA drives that are present, but they are old, smaller drives. Why would the windows installer not see the NVMe's???
 
No this is with the W10 installer... I'm wondering if the vanilla W10 install has drivers for the NVMe devices? I've a Crucial T700 and a Samsung 990 NVMe drives.
 
Hmm finding what's needed isn't easy. There are drivers on Crucial's site but they don't appear to be suitable. ANd on Intel's download page I see stuff for Optane but not vanilla SSDs.

I installed Windows 10 on my current server a few years ago (Asus motherboard and twin E5-2640's) on a NVMe drive without a hitch. Which is why I'm puzzled there is an issue now...
 
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Some progress!

Firstly I used 'rufus' to prepare a Windows11 bootable USB which will allow booting without the TPM etc. requirements.
That alone did not work, needed to make the NVMe's visible, the solution was a well hidden option 'AUTOVMD' in the BIOS. Disabling this option allowed Windows installer to see the NVMe disks. No idea what this option is but it needs to be disabled!

With one of the two 2Tb disks as install target, the install could proceed... it got through the first pass, rebooted and then (after a worrisome pause) presented a screen with 3 boot options - W10 and two W11 choices. Where did it get that from? Selected one of the W11 options and another reboot, and then a different (black and white) installing screen.

And finally... the Windows11 screen! Still not seeing the wired network or indeed the 2 ethernet adapters, need to figure that one out.
 
Well the saga doesn't stop... despite being able to install Windows 11 and starting the restore of backed up data, I'm running into BSOD problems.

Symptoms are:
- the PC gets slower and slower, expecially windows GUI related stuff having severe lags e.g. to redraw a file explorer window.
- copying or unzipping large numbers of files gets progressively slower and slower until the GUI pretty much freezes and then a BSOD with an error 'a critical process has died' occurs.
- during this time the cpus are lightly loaded - no more than 5% - and the CPU temperatures are less than 50C.
- the event viewer shows nothing much apart from warnings along the lines of "a corrected hardware error has occurred", something to do with a PCI express device.

I've tried running memtest86 which hasn't spotted anything, run sfc etc. Could it be the C drive - yet chkdsk finds nothing?
 
I actually got a TPM module for Asus on Amazon, fitted it and PC Health Check says its W11 ready now - all boxes ticked.
I'm going to try a fresh install on an unused NVMe. Will check the drivers for everything too - think there are a couple of PCIe cards that came with driver CDROMs.

But yes, I'm beginning to wonder if I should just install Linux and be done with it. I've also a feeling I'm going to have to water cool the two Xeons which will be another fun job, not.
 
I'm getting very close to have a workable W11 installation. In fact, its mostly working now. Having downloaded all the Asus drivers for the Z13PE-D16 motherboard, initially I tried running them from the setup programs in W11. This did not work as the installers said windows server only... However, by going into Device Manager and manually installing drivers wherever one appeared missing, it was possible to install them. For some reason all 128 cores needed their own driver install, ugh.

I was left with just warnings about drivers for a USB hub (not very important at this stage) and the MS display adapter. Will drivers there, the dreaded BSOD for a critical process dying has gone away.

I'm left with a couple of issues:
- Anything to do with the GUI is a bit slow. I suspect this is due to graphics using the MS display adapter.
- Trying to install the NVidia driver for the GTX1080 GPU seems to work until it tries to use it, then I just get a black screen. I'm a bit lost as to what may be the cause, CPUZ does nto see the GPU which is odd.

Anyway I hope I'm not boring people with this saga, ny advice if you're thinking of building a Xeon PC is... don't!
 
hellarda said:
Sorry to hijack this - @octafish how are you getting on with this board now? I'm possibly looking at doing a build based around it.
Click to expand...

I would say unless you're planning to run Windows Server or Linux, which are the only two platforms Asus says it supports for this mobo, then forget it. Windows 10/11 do not appear to work correctly and Asus are of no use at all with technical support.
 
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