Bought myself a brand new v3 server.. now it won't boot

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av00va

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Dec 10, 2015
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I got myself two E5-2666v3 from icomputer_parts_international on eBay. I bought myself a brand new SM X10-DRi. I have 4x 16GB ECC Samsung chips (which seem to be listed as compatable on SM's page). I'm even using a SM 4U 1200 Watt chassis. If I put one CPU in the board, it will boot. Either one will boot. If both are in there, it will not. I've updated BIOS/IPMI. Not sure what to do..
 

av00va

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Dec 10, 2015
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as StevenDTX said, you need to arrange your RAM properly.
first use the manual to identify the mandatory RAM slots for each CPU.
than put the dims in the appropriate slots per CPU and put your CPU in.
if all is correct is should boot just fine.
Just to make sure here...
There are 8 slots per CPU, and it looks like 4 channels per CPU. I tried 1 RAM stick in CPU1's bank, 1 in each channel of CPU1, Two in the first two channels of each CPU. I even tried some really backwards configurations. It looks like I would need 1 stick per channel here. I have 2Rx4 16GB PC4-2133 modules. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it looks like I'd need 8 modules for this board to be happy. Shouldn't it boot anyway?

Someone on another site said it's possible these 2666s were hosed and do not allow multiprocessor config. Does anyone have 2666 v3s running on their X10? With stepping QFSC
 

av00va

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Dec 10, 2015
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Yea.. I went ahead and tried it all again... 1 dimm, all dims on CPU1 populated.. 2 on each CPU. I even busted out some unused non-ecc DDR4 and the single CPU booted, but not both. I can't believe this :(
 

av00va

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Dec 10, 2015
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Found this depressing statement on SC's memory guide for my motherboard:
"Do I have to populate all CPU memory channels? What if I only put one or two DIMMs per
processor?
Answer: It’s ok to run with as little as one RDIMM/LRDIMM per system or per CPU (unbalanced configurations) but it will impact CPU performance."

So now I have a few options guys. I can return these CPUs to Japan, risk never getting my money back (I don't think that would happen but they're not domestic so you never know), and buy a new set from someone else if they refund me. Or, I can return this SM board and go with an Asrock. This idea here is for some reason the Asrock will be less finicky and boot. I avoided them because I <3 SM. I might buy a set of retail 8 core 2218Lv3s for $450 locally (to test this board). I'm sure it would boot up and I will have wasted $450.
 

cafcwest

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Feb 15, 2013
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Swap CPUs. It is rare, but I was chasing something similar a few weeks ago....until I swapped the CPUs around and tried CPU2 in the CPU1 slot and it failed to boot, and I realized that I had a bad CPU.
 

av00va

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Dec 10, 2015
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Swap CPUs. It is rare, but I was chasing something similar a few weeks ago....until I swapped the CPUs around and tried CPU2 in the CPU1 slot and it failed to boot, and I realized that I had a bad CPU.
I think I've got a case of the bad CPUs. Reason being, when I put one of the two CPUs in slot 1, it will boot. When I put the other in there (I'm not sure which), sometimes it won't boot. And I mean sometimes I get no video (rarely), then other times the BIOS won't initialize and it won't get past a certain POST code during bootup. Yeaaa I think I've got a bad CPU. It could just as easily be bad RAM, but I don't think so since I've been booting the host up with 1 stick most of the time.

But in all seriousness, does anyone have a dual E5-2666v3 setup running? If it were QFSC stepping I'd be even more delighted. These procs are really great performance to price
 

av00va

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Dec 10, 2015
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I went ahead and bought 2x 2618L v3s... and they don't boot together either. Do I return the SM motherboard, or is it a RAM config mismatch?
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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Have you tried cleaning the pads on the cpus? Dirty pads can cause any number of issues.
 

av00va

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Dec 10, 2015
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Have you tried cleaning the pads on the cpus? Dirty pads can cause any number of issues.
Yup twice. I just issued an RMA from Newegg. If the new board does it too then I either have 2 sets of bad procs or something else is screwed
 

John Titor

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Jul 20, 2016
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Sorry if I'm reviving a dead thread...

From what I read online, the E5-2666 v3 as you should know, is an ES processor and never released an official version from what I could find (not on ARK).

Also while searching I found a post mentioning that this ES chip DOES NOT support hyper-threading, so if you had that activated it possibly could have caused your problem.

Probably won't be any help now, but it may help someone else in the future!
 

av00va

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Dec 10, 2015
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Turns out I had a standoff grounding out the memory banks on my board. I RMAed it only to find out the new one did it. I saw someone mention this as a solution to their problem in a very remote thread. In a last ditch effort, I scanned my setup and noticed there was one standoff out of place. Pulled it out and boom, it worked.
 
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ranopile

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Nov 18, 2016
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@John Titor

I have E5 2666 V3 ES (got it a month ago). Tested it with Asus X99-E WS and now I am using it with Asrock X99 Taichi. Excellent processor but no HT (perfect for Matlab). Cinebench R15 score is 1200.
 
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