Fixing early LGA 2011 server boards incompatibility with Ivy Bridge?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Vit K

Member
Feb 23, 2017
88
30
18
Hi,

Not sure if this problem widespread in homelab community nowdays. There are some HP and DELL early revision motherboards that refuse to boot E5 V2 CPUs. Adding microcodes does not help. I happen to have such mobo, and there are cheap 12 core V2 cpu around I want to make a quick upgrade 8c->12c without rebuilding whole server and spending extra for new revision (one time I got old revision instead of new, nobody care to check what they shipping).

I wonder if root cause of lack of support for Ivy bridge CPUs was ever found. Some topics here saying about preboot chips and programming it. If you know something about this, please share.
 

BLinux

cat lover server enthusiast
Jul 7, 2016
2,669
1,081
113
artofserver.com
I don't know much about Dell or HP systems on this topic. However, with Supermicro motherboards, there were 3 (that I know of) classes of motherboard revisions:

1) Really early LGA2011 motherboards that supported Sandy Bridge, but not Ivy Bridge Xeon, usually Rev 1.00 or something like that. These cannot be made to support Ivy Bridge at all, according to Supermicro.

2) Other early LGA2011 motherboards that supported Sandy Bridge, but not Ivy Bridge Xeons, usually Rev 1.00A or something like that. These required modifications to components on the motherboard, and a BIOS update, and could be made to support Ivy Bridge Xeons. Supermicro RMA department could do this by applying the appropriate ECO to the board.

3) later revision LGA2011 motherboards that supported Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Xeons out of the factory. These were usually rev 1.20 or 1.02 or something like that. Certain BIOS version was still required to support Ivy Bridge Xeon.

I don't know if this kind of stratification also applies in the Dell or HP world, but thought it might be somewhat relevant to this topic.
 

linuxmanbg

Member
Jun 23, 2016
54
14
8
50
Hi, for HPe like blade Bl460c Gen8 part number 641016-B21 usually not support E5 V2 tested with e5-2650L / V2 E5-2651 V2
part number 735151-B21 support E5 V2 even E5 4620 (single or dual cpu, tested).
So if you can pick 7xxx xxx-B21 item/server/blade is better

just my 2 cents
 
Last edited: