DELL JM42W Intel X520-T2 Does Anyone Have Any Experience Of?...

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MikhailCompo

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Feb 14, 2017
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So in bed with an awful hangover, I decided that retail therapy was the answer and have bought 2x DELL JM42W Dual Port 10 GBe (copper) NICs that I believe are basically intel X520-T2.

Can anyone tell me if I can simply use the std Intel Drivers for these or if they are Dell specific (like the way OEM's rebadge LSI controllers for example).

I had thought that all the X520's were fibre and all X540's were copper and that was the difference between them, but this defo seems to be an RJ45 copper NIC.

I have also bought a single port x540 for a workstation and bought a new Netgear XS708Ev2 to plug them in to.

2x £100 for the x520
1x £80 for the x540
1x £505 for the XS708Ev2
2x Alca Seltzer
1x that sinking feeling when you spend a load of money you shouldnt, right after a month of spending a load of money that you shouldn't.................

o_O
 

Mark

Member
Nov 6, 2014
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I just recently got 2 of the dell cards and they use the standard drivers, you can even flash the latest intel firmware. The one odd ball thing and you can google this is that there is a memory issue with intel consumer chipsets where basically your system won’t post if it has a lot of ram. I have a z170 system with 64gb of ram and I had to pull 2 chips to get the card to work.
 

MikhailCompo

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Feb 14, 2017
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The one odd ball thing and you can google this is that there is a memory issue with intel consumer chipsets where basically your system won’t post if it has a lot of ram. I have a z170 system with 64gb of ram and I had to pull 2 chips to get the card to work.
You have to be kidding!?!

One of my boxes is an HP Z820 workstation with 256GB for VMs. I seriously hope it works with that.

Are there workarounds with removing RAM?

Is it related to driver version or fw flashing?

Does it occur with both the X520 and X540?
 

Mark

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Nov 6, 2014
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Z170 is an intel chipset very consumer board... Your Z820 is a workstation and is likely running a Cxxx chipset which will likely not have an issue. Here is the thread I was talking about: DELL X540-T2 10 GbE NIC want allow M/B to boot

There is also another post on dell's forums about it couldn't find it quickly this morning.
 

MikhailCompo

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Feb 14, 2017
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Z170 is an intel chipset very consumer board... Your Z820 is a workstation and is likely running a Cxxx chipset which will likely not have an issue. Here is the thread I was talking about: DELL X540-T2 10 GbE NIC want allow M/B to boot
Ironic that the thread you reference refers to a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H.

I have one of the two Dell x520 NICs running on a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H being used as a server at the moment (same Z77 chipset as the ). I have no boot issues at all, works fine.

The other NIC is on my main workstation which is a Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 7: I have just upgraded my main machine from a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H to a Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 so the Z77 motherboard/cpu/ram are on a shelf until I find a use/new owner.

I am running Server 2012 R2 on the UD5H if it makes a difference?
 

Mark

Member
Nov 6, 2014
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Not sure I've only installed one of x540-t2 cards into my Z170 desktop system. I'm running mellanox connectx-3's in all my servers. I've got a X99 system that I plan to put the other one into. I'll see where I land with that. Might end up getting different cards if it doesn't work with all my ram.
 

MikhailCompo

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Feb 14, 2017
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Not sure I've only installed one of x540-t2 cards into my Z170 desktop system. I'm running mellanox connectx-3's in all my servers. I've got a X99 system that I plan to put the other one into. I'll see where I land with that. Might end up getting different cards if it doesn't work with all my ram.
Perhaps it's not the quantity but the configuration of the RAM. I had have issues in the past with mixtures of different sized sticks that did not produce any memory errors when testing the RAM, but that the system/BIOS did not function correctly.

Anyway, I can confirm that the Dell x520 does not have any functionality that limits or prevents it from working on consumer Z77 chipset.