Dead system - won't power up or post

[marcevan]

Brand new (see system in signature) so doubt the Supermicro board is DOA completely. I mean I can understand if something doesn't work but this is no sign of life.

Power is on "I" not "O" and wall plug is powered (tried a small fan and that works on the power outlet)
24 pin and 8 pin plugs are snapped in and tight
CPU is on right with stock fan plugged into CPU_FAN on board
New, so CMOS battery is in and not sure it's worth taking out for 5 min
RAM is on their QVL and in first 2 DIMM slots toward CPU as advised; snapped in perfectly

I doubt my power supply suddenly died as I powered off the NAS gracefully.

I'm open to suggestions while I google around....

 

[GBillR]

I doubt my power supply suddenly died as I powered off the NAS gracefully.

Supplies fail most often upon cold boot or some random electrical transient... so the fact it turned off okay is not really relevant.

Is the BMC heartbeat light blinking?



Was this a system that was previously working? No hardware changes since it last worked? No moving it when it was off?

I would most likely suspect a Power Supply problem or a cable has been grounded to chassis somewhere, unless this is a brand new (i.e. never booted) build.

I would disconnect all unnecessary peripheral cables, leaving only the two P/S cables to the MB and see if it posts. If not, I would remove the P/S and bench test using the paper clip trick to short the correct pins on the MB connector... see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixcWCrYpw3Y

If this truly has never booted, the process is similar, except it may be anything. Remove all but the essentials, even the ram. Boot with CPU to see if it will at least throw the no ram error at POST. The manual has some basic troubleshooting... I would give it a try. Starts on page 62.

https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/motherboard/X11/MNL-2087.pdf

 

[Redcoat]

2 by 16GB modules, one in each gray slot - A2 and B2 (which are not the "first 2 DIMM slots toward CPU ")?

And no beeps?

EDIT - I've just seen your other posts - this system's been running for a month or so I guess? "Brand new" means something other than that to me as I made my first comments. So, I'd go to power supply or a short to ground as @GBillR suggested.

 

[marcevan]

Previously this was a working system on old mobo, cpu, RAM and a graphics card.

I updated my signature prematurely as some components had arrived but tonight it was swapped into the chassis.

So new components and tonight I powered down the NAS, unracked it and put it in my office. I removed everything but the drives as they are on LSI SAS/SATA card so just pulled the card nicely and reseated on new mobo.

There are no lights at all so BMC or other mobo LEDs are not on. Looks like nothing at all is getting power and the PSU makes a barely audible hum. No beeps either.

Yes, RAM is in first 2 DIMM slots (greys) A2, B2 (sorry if that wasn't explained right).

I'm guessing the PSU gave up the ghost as usually I'd expect some mobo LED or even the fans to all spin for 1-2 second and turn off if it was something else. But this is totally dead.

I ordered a SeaSonic Gold Plus 750W fully modular PSU that will arrive tomorrow night, so hopefully that does it. I'll pull the current PSU and be ready.

 

[marcevan]

PSU is not the issue. Tried it on MSI B450M mobo and LED light goes on.

Moved it back to Supermicro and just with 2 power cables on the mobo and no CPU nor RAM, BMC green light is blinking!

Added CPU and cooler and it the CPU fan and PSU fan spin up for 3-4 seconds then turns off leaving green lights on mobo

 

[Redcoat]

Oh. Did you power up the mb out of the chassis to check for grounding?

 

[marcevan]

Yes, not a grounding issue. Might be that it needs Gen 8/9 not Gen 7 (Kaby lake) CPU.

 

[marcevan]

Yes, not a grounding issue. Might be that it needs Gen 8/9 not Gen 7 (Kaby lake) CPU.

they confirmed it’s only coffee lake (impossible to find E-2100 or E-2200 so went with i5-9700k which should do fine.

 

[marcevan]

So now I got BMC blinking green, another LED all green, and LSI and 10G cards have some lights.

I plugged in the server (still has no CPU - i5 arrives tomorrow afternoon), as IMPI should be able to render BIOS to KVM using VGA/USB.

No video to KVM monitor. Hmm...I thought that IPMI would work sans CPU and I could get into BIOS and update some settings and give desired IP to both IPMI and the 10G card.

 

[Redcoat]

Yes, I would have expected to have VGA output in that situation, also.

 

[marcevan]

Thanks. I at least can power it off from long press on power switch. I'd need to get into BIOS to set power to be from switch, not PSU auto.

Really weird that IPMI is not rendering video thru VGA nor giving an IP address, but I would guess it might be that I need to get into BIOS once the CPU arrives, and setup IPMI to some extent. Not sure so added this to the Supermicro support case I have opened.

 

[marcevan]

I described this behavior to Supermicro and they confirmed it is as it should be:

1. IPMI must be setup first, then it would work with no CPU
2. For BIOS to come up after POST, on board video is required by a CPU with video (e.g., the i5 I'm getting)
3. My i5 & Noctua CPU fan arrive tomorrow mid-day so will update them and this post afterward.

Hoping this goes smoothly after that.

 

[GBillR]

3. My i5 & Noctua CPU fan arrive tomorrow mid-day so will update them and this post afterward.

That i5 is not compatible with your ECC ram. Not sure if that configuration of CPU and ram will boot or not.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...-9600k-processor-9m-cache-up-to-4-60-ghz.html

 

[marcevan]

Ugh... I wish Xeon's were available but cannot get from ebay, Newegg, nor Amazon. Only newer ones not supported by motherboard.

Ordered non ECC 288 pin DDR4 2666 from Amazon. 64GB this time.

 

[GBillR]

Ugh... I wish Xeon's were available but cannot get from ebay, Newegg, nor Amazon. Only newer ones not supported by motherboard.

Ordered non ECC 288 pin DDR4 2666 from Amazon. 64GB this time.

Pretty sure the i3 supports ECC... if you wanted another option.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u.../8th-generation-intel-core-i3-processors.html

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u.../9th-generation-intel-core-i3-processors.html

EDIT: Added ARK links.

 

[marcevan]

Already ordered the i5 and it's a squeak better than the i3. RAM arrives Saturday so only one more day to wait.

Heck, I'll see if it posts with the ECC RAM in there as the board takes it, so the i5 while not supporting it, might get me into at least BIOS.

 

[marcevan]

Some success.

Went back to the SuperMicro board (never give up!) and moved the JPG1 jumper from 1-2 to 2-3 to stop. VGA and enable HDMI. Rebooted.

Got display and into BIOS!

First thing: IPMI: set it to and IP one less than my usual TrueNAS IP and give it subnet and gateway. Check

Then proceeded to move over the LSI, Intel 10GB card and port all drives to it including SSD on SATA0

It boots up again and starts TrueNAS! Yeah!

On SuperMicro there's a red ethernet port and a normal ethernet port. So going to reboot and see if I can take IPMI off shared and on it's dedicated then turn off the mobo LAN1 port to hopefully make TrueNAS use the 10G card.

 

[marcevan]

Racked it, and it won't come up on my default IP for it but IPMI seems to work on the shared port with a different IP. It had shut it down to rack it when I saw it was on the default IP and I could reach it through the browser. Racked it only gets IMPI to work.

I put in an Intel X550-V2 10GB card and though it can list ix0, ix1 if I tell TrueNAS ix1 is my default IP for it, then it won't be addressable. Only the 1gb port can have the default IP for now. I even went to the BIOS and disabled LAN1. But ix0 and ix1 show as 1000T not 10,000T.

The SSD is readable now but errors so have to sort that out later too before mirroring the boot USB.

I'm seriously considering junking Supermicro for a non-Server board that can take my i5 and RAM and be less finicky. TrueNAS for the home should really not have to conform to server-grade hardware if we backup to the cloud and use ZFS with RAID supporting a failed disk or two.

 

[marcevan]

Now the issue:

SuperMicro said this board needs shared, not dedicated IPMI on igb0 (mobo 1GB).
Also the VGA won't render thru KVM making the board not boot fully
Also needs USB keyboard and Mouse, not single USB for KVM

In short, I bought a workstation mobo, not a server mobo.

I'll have to bring keyboard and mouse to rack so it boots and figure out VGA.

Also, no idea why, but if I take the IP (.42) off igb0 and give that to ix0 or ix1 I cannot get web to work. Ruins the rationale for 10GB card.