Dual processor Supermicro board support for 1600 series chips

[coolrunnings82]

I recently picked up a pair of E5-1620v2 chips to run single-chip per board in my 2x 2U servers. I bought this model due to the high clock speed and the fact that most of my workload benefits more from higher clock speed than it does from more cores. This chip worked fine on my X9DR7-LN4F board. I got a pair of X9DR7-TF+ boards though and sure enough, they came with a V1.0 BIOS. Updated to the latest version using a V1 CPU (thanks to T_Minus!) and tried putting in the V2 chip. Won't POST. Put back in the V1 chip. All good. I know that the 1600 series chips are not officially supported but I'm super bummed as I can't afford high clock speed 2600 chips without going into ES territory which I'm a bit loathe to do... I did try clearing the CMOS but to no avail. Anyone know if there is a way to see the list of processors the board is truly capable of running in case there's some whack setting I missed?

 

[fagiano]

The E5-16xx series only support 1 CPUs configurations. The 26xx supports 2 CPUs configurations.
See "Max CPU Configuration" in the ARK page: ARK | Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1620 v2 (10M Cache, 3.70 GHz)

ciao
Alberto

 

[coolrunnings82]

Right. I was trying to just run a single chip in the board.

 

[fagiano]

Ops. I seem to have missed the "single-chip per board" part. Sorry, brain fart.

 

[neo]

Supermicro probably just did not included the CPU microcode for the 1600 V2 series in their new bios.

 

[coolrunnings82]

This is v2. Oh BTW I edited the post for clarity. That was my bad not yours @fagiano. @neo do you know if there are any tools we can run to see what CPUs are supported in microcode?

 

[Peanuthead]

The only way I know of is to call SM support. I am willing to bet that the BIOS microcode only supports E5-26XX variants.

 

[acmcool]

Anybody tried this with V3? I am planning on doing the same..

 

[Peanuthead]

CPUs that are intended to be mounted into LGA 2011-0, LGA 2011-1 orLGA 2011-v3 sockets are all mechanically compatible regarding their dimensions and ball pattern pitches, but the designations of contacts are different between generations of the LGA 2011 socket and CPUs, thus making them electrically and logically incompatible.
* Pulled from Wikipedia.

If it does work well then very interesting. Curious to see the results.

 

[acmcool]

So if board is 2011-v3 then technically 1600 2011-V3 should work?

 

[Peanuthead]

So if board is 2011-v3 then technically 1600 2011-V3 should work?

Yes. Since they are both FCLGA2011-3 sockets. If the motherboard supports that processor is a different story.

 

[acmcool]

I did this with 1620 V2 it worked on X9DRi-LN4F

 

[T_Minus]

You can inject your own microcode into bios there are tools --- way above my head but I've heard of people doing it for ES CHIP support. Since these are retail chips SuperMicro may simply update it and release a new BIOS, or may tell you to F-Off and run the right chip I guess ????