Supermicro Server not powering on (no LED or beep) when PCIE is connected

[Neido]

A few months ago I bought a Supermicro tower server. I have been using 4 (+1 boot) SATA SSD drives and running TrueNAS Scale on it.

Just now I switched out the SATA cabels that were connected directly to the motherboard to an HBA. And now the server won't turn on.

And I don't mean it wont POST or BOOT. It won't even power on.

 

When I disconnect the HBA and the PCIE riser, it POSTS fine. Even if I only connect the riser by itself with nothing at the other end of it, same issue.

I tried two different risers and same thing happens.

 

The HBA is a Broadcom 9300-16i, but since the problem happens even without it connected I don't think it's an issue.

 

Is it just some BIOS setting I am missing? Is my motherboard faulty?

 

Here are the specs:

 

Mainboard:   Supermicro X9DRW-IF
CPU:              2 x Intel Xeon 2680 V2
RAM:             16 x 16 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ECC
PSU:              500 W (Bronze)

[Alex Atkin UK]

28 minutes ago, Neido said:

A few months ago I bought a Supermicro tower server. I have been using 4 (+1 boot) SATA SSD drives and running TrueNAS Scale on it.

Just now I switched out the SATA cabels that were connected directly to the motherboard to an HBA. And now the server won't turn on.

And I don't mean it wont POST or BOOT. It won't even power on.

 

When I disconnect the HBA and the PCIE riser, it POSTS fine. Even if I only connect the riser by itself with nothing at the other end of it, same issue.

I tried two different risers and same thing happens.

 

The HBA is a Broadcom 9300-16i, but since the problem happens even without it connected I don't think it's an issue.

 

Is it just some BIOS setting I am missing? Is my motherboard faulty?

 

Here are the specs:

 

Mainboard:   Supermicro X9DRW-IF
CPU:              2 x Intel Xeon 2680 V2
RAM:             16 x 16 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ECC
PSU:              500 W (Bronze)

They use a none-standard riser:

https://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=13674

 

Quote

It doesn't work because, although it is a x16 PCIe slot, but the pin definition is different from standard PCIe slot. We defined the pin assignment for our W platforms. The riser card for this slot is RSC-R2UW-2E8R or RSC-R1UW-E8R.

 

[Neido]

35 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

They use a none-standard riser:

https://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=13674

Thanks, that explains the first problem.

 

I say the first because now, after I disconnected the HBA and replugged the SATA cables, the server won't boot... It just power cycles infinitely.

The fans spin up for half a second and instantly die down, wait for 2 seconds and repeat.

 

The only thing I changed was to replug the SSDs.

 

I cleared CMOS already but no change. Did my PSU just die on me or what?! Ah and also the PSU does a little click sound every time it cycles.

[Neido]

For anyone stumbling over this, I did manage to break the motherboard. By using a generic PCIE riser I somehow killed it and had to replace it. Now it works fine.

[Alex Atkin UK]

43 minutes ago, Neido said:

For anyone stumbling over this, I did manage to break the motherboard. By using a generic PCIE riser I somehow killed it and had to replace it. Now it works fine.

That's unfortunate, they really should have keyed it differently somehow so you can't plug in a normal one.