Cannot get new hardware to boot for the life of me

[criddell]

Hey guys,

I'm pretty new here. I've been a long time viewer of the youtube channel, but I haven't spent much time here. So here's what's going on...

 

The Specs:

• NORCO RPC-2008 2U Rackmount Server Case (Newegg)
• Intel Xeon E5-1650 v2 Hexa-core 3.50 GHz Processor - Socket R LGA-2011 (Ebay - New)
• Intel Cooling Fan/Heatsink - Socket R LGA-2011 (Newegg)
• ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16 SSI EEB Server Motherboard Dual LGA 2011 Intel C602 DDR3 1600/1333/1066 (Ebay - New)
• Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600 Server Memory w/TS Model KVR16E11K4/32 (Newegg)
• Athena Power AP-U2ATX80FEP8 20+4Pin 800W Single 2U IPC Server Power Supply - 80PLUS Bronze (Newegg)
• SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 250GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-75E250B/AM (Newegg)
• WD Gold 4TB Datacenter Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 inch - WD4002FYYZ (Newegg)

At first I didn't even get the motherboard LEDs to come up with everything put together. I then trouble shot this with another (old but working) rig. I found that the power supply was shot. I RMA'ed it and recently received the new ps. Now I have the two LEDs on the board light up. One stays solid and the lower LED on the board lights up then starts to blink. However, the damn thing doesn't boot. I get nothing. No POST. No fans. Nothing. Silence. I've tried all 4 sticks of RAM (all in the white slots then all in blue slots). I've tried 2 sticks. I've tried 1 stick. Since it is a dual CPU board, I've tried moving the CPU, heatsink, and RAM to the other socket set.

 

I actually have bought two of the CPUs (for the eventual ability to use both sockets, so I swapped out one CPU for the other to see if I had a dead one. No dice. I'm literally going crazy. This was supposed to be a quick(ish) build that has now been sitting dead for a month and half in my room. Am I missing something obvious? I read that dual CPU board can work with only one CPU in; is that not the case for this board? Oh, and the purpose of this server will be a Plex server and maybe some other random things I might play with. Sorry if this is ridiculously long, just going out of my mind.

 

[johnny5c]

The E5-1650 v2 only supports a single CPU configuration so not sure if the dual socket board has something to do with it, like the lack of QPI link support on the CPU.  If you can, exchange the CPUs for 2xxx models.

[Mark77]

As the above poster indicated, in a nutshell, you bought the wrong CPU's. 

 

*However*, the CPU compatability list indicates that the CPU you bought should be compatible, at least in a single CPU configuration.  However, you will need to flash to BIOS version P1.4 or above:

 

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EP2C602-4L/D16#CPU

 

So this might be your issue.   Fortunately there's a socketed EPROM on the board, so you might be able to flash it externally.  Alternatively, obtain a supported Sandy Bridge E5-based CPU (see the above link) and fire it up with that. 

 

 

[criddell]

On 10/8/2016 at 11:38 PM, Mark77 said:

As the above poster indicated, in a nutshell, you bought the wrong CPU's. 

 

*However*, the CPU compatability list indicates that the CPU you bought should be compatible, at least in a single CPU configuration.  However, you will need to flash to BIOS version P1.4 or above:

 

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EP2C602-4L/D16#CPU

 

So this might be your issue.   Fortunately there's a socketed EPROM on the board, so you might be able to flash it externally.  Alternatively, obtain a supported Sandy Bridge E5-based CPU (see the above link) and fire it up with that. 

 

 

Sorry for the late response. I've been a mixture of busy with work and lazy in my down time. My question is though, I'm not getting any power up at all... so I don't even have the chance to flash the BIOS. Could this be a different problem than CPU capability?

[Mark77]

6 minutes ago, criddell said:

Sorry for the late response. I've been a mixture of busy with work and lazy in my down time. My question is though, I'm not getting any power up at all... so I don't even have the chance to flash the BIOS. Could this be a different problem than CPU capability?

Sorry, I couldn't say for sure whether you'd have any success at power-up with incompatible microcode.  It might not fire up to protect against over-voltage.  But then again, it might not be that sophisticated.

[criddell]

3 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

Sorry, I couldn't say for sure whether you'd have any success at power-up with incompatible microcode.  It might not fire up to protect against over-voltage.  But then again, it might not be that sophisticated.

So in your opinion my best bet would be to try a Sandy bridge E5 processor then?

[Mark77]

Just now, criddell said:

So in your opinion my best bet would be to try a Sandy bridge E5 processor then?

If you have one handy, and you're convinced the rest of the system is properly configured.  With those sorts of boards, certain PCI-E slots might be unavailable if you only populate one CPU slot, so you need to read the instructions very carefully.  Sorry can't really offer you much more, these boards are not for novices.

[criddell]

1 minute ago, Mark77 said:

If you have one handy, and you're convinced the rest of the system is properly configured.  With those sorts of boards, certain PCI-E slots might be unavailable if you only populate one CPU slot, so you need to read the instructions very carefully.  Sorry can't really offer you much more, these boards are not for novices.

Yeah. Definitely not my first build, but it is my first server build. I probably went with the wrong board for my first server. Thanks for all the help and insight!