Help with SC846 chassis and not booting

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gagefox

New Member
Jan 6, 2019
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First off my first post on this fourms but I found this place and found it to have some of the most insightful responses that Ive seen around.

So I recently got a supermicro sc846 it came with a x8dth-if, that I was able to boot to bios. Since I had a more powerful system available I wanted to swap in my old Z97-AR motherboard into this chassis. For the life of me I cant get the system to boot and the asus mb will just sit there with the cpu led on. (it does trigger the on state of the psu). I took a multimeter to one of the extra cpu power rails and I was reading 12v.

I switched it back to the sm mb and did not connect the smbus and one of the cpu power rails and was able to get into bios.

Is there something different about consumer boards than enterprise? I am able to run the asus mb off a consumer psu. The only thing I havent tried is using the consumer psu on the supermirco mb for testing purposes. Anyone might know what could be happening?
 

gagefox

New Member
Jan 6, 2019
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Thats what I thought at first, however I took the whole motherboard out of the case and had it resting on a box
 

Aestr

Well-Known Member
Oct 22, 2014
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Seattle
There's no reason why the SM power supply shouldn't work. Since you've verified there are no shorts have you made sure the EPS12V cable is plugged in? A picture of the board installed might help as well.
 

vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
634
76
28
Make sure you have agp power plugged in. It is a 4 wire or 6 wire cable somewhere around the edge of mb. On most mb. I had a motherboard that would not boot if additional power was not pluged in for agp and cpu bus.
 

kapone

Well-Known Member
May 23, 2015
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Connect the Z97 motherboard to the Supermicro PSU with:

- 24 pin ATX connector
- 8 pin EPS connector.
- Do NOT connect any front panel cables, audio cables etc.

Install only the very basic things on the motherboard for it to boot. You don't need disks or audio or nice etc etc to boot. All you need is graphics, onboard or add-in. If you're using an add-in card, make sure you have the right power connectors/adapters. The Supermicro PSU does not have GPU power connectors.

Short the power switch pins on your motherboard with a flat metallized object. Test.

What you're doing is the process of elimination.
 

gagefox

New Member
Jan 6, 2019
4
0
1
Connect the Z97 motherboard to the Supermicro PSU with:

- 24 pin ATX connector
- 8 pin EPS connector.
- Do NOT connect any front panel cables, audio cables etc.

Install only the very basic things on the motherboard for it to boot. You don't need disks or audio or nice etc etc to boot. All you need is graphics, onboard or add-in. If you're using an add-in card, make sure you have the right power connectors/adapters. The Supermicro PSU does not have GPU power connectors.

Short the power switch pins on your motherboard with a flat metallized object. Test.

What you're doing is the process of elimination.
I was reading through the SM chassis manual and it was talking about the need to have both 8 pin EPS connectors connected otherwise your warranty is voided, Ill have a look to see if they are on the same rail or not to see why they state that. I did however, was able to get the SM mb to boot to bios with only one of the EPS connectors plugged in (and of course the ATX but nothing else connected).

With the asus board no luck. I was thinking about stopping by frys and getting two EPS extension cables, splicing them together so I would have both rails going into one and test with that.

I do have another older MB that I was going to go pick up a super cheap gpu as it doesnt have onboard and an 8 to 4pin EPS adapter and test with that. If all else fails I have put in an offer for a SM motherboard that I can put my i7 in.

Make sure you have agp power plugged in. It is a 4 wire or 6 wire cable somewhere around the edge of mb. On most mb. I had a motherboard that would not boot if additional power was not pluged in for agp and cpu bus.
Are you talking about the 12v cpu power?
 

kapone

Well-Known Member
May 23, 2015
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There must be something you're not doing right. I have used/tried literally hundreds of "consumer" motherboards in Supermicro chassis' and none of them have failed to boot.
 

gagefox

New Member
Jan 6, 2019
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There must be something you're not doing right. I have used/tried literally hundreds of "consumer" motherboards in Supermicro chassis' and none of them have failed to boot.
so I tried the Y-splitter and a new pcie powered video card but it still didnt work. Finally I took apart my current gaming PC (Asrock AB350M Pro4 with 1700x) and fired up first try. Im thinking there might be a compatibility issue with the motherboard which is very strange.

On to the next step. I cant fully verify if my 4790k will work in one of the motherboards below

X10SAT | Motherboards | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.
X10SAE | Motherboards | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.

I have found a couple of ebay links with those motherboards, one with just the board and the other with an included xeon for an extra $100. Do you think it would be worth the risk to just buy the motherboard or should I get the set, test and if it works try to sell the cpu?
 

kapone

Well-Known Member
May 23, 2015
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642
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I'm not sure why you're trying to do all this.

Your Z97 board has a simple EPS 8 pin power connector and a standard 24 pin ATX connector. The Supermicro PSU in the chassis has these. The Supermicro PSU is a single rail PSU, so there's no concern about which 12v goes where.

It should work, unless something is shorting out. Power supplies usually don't have compatibility issues, unless they are of the proprietary kind and the Supermicro is not.
 

pablocool

Member
Mar 13, 2012
31
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Poland
Hi I think OP was doing everything fine. I have found this post because I am currently struggling with my Asus P8B WS motherboard to work in SC846 chassis. Still failing, only CPU LED is on. Tried another Biostar board, same issue. Both consumer boards work fine with consumer PSU. And vice versa SM motherboard work fine inside chassis. There is some kind on incompatibility I cannot point. There are tons of similar topics over the internet e.g.:


Has somebody met similar problem and figured out fix? I have tried unplug -5V cable (consumer PSU does not have it in 24 pin connector, only in old 20 pin) did not help. I tried unplug PWR_OK pin, still no success. I have only once succeeded to boot Biostar motherboard with SM stuff plain with shorting green power on pin in the ATX to ground and then immediately short PWRON switch on motherboard. Really really strange issue.