Well after rounding up (nearly) all the hardware i need I can finally contribute toward this thread
System is as follows:-
Asrock C226ws running firmware 2.30
Intel Xeon E3 1280v3
32gb DDR3 1333 Ram
Gigabyte R7 25x Graphics Card
Corsair c600 - 600w psu
Fractal Design R2 XL define case
2x Sandisk Extreme Pro 256gb SSD in raid 0
12x Hitachi Ultrastar 2tb 7k3000 drives
Attempting to install the following:-
1x HP P822 with 2gb FBWC and supercap firmware 3.22
1x HP P420 with 2gb FBWC and supercap firmware 3.22
1x HP P420 with 2gb FBWC and supercap firmware 3.22
While i'm at it i'm also checking (on the above system and in a N40L microserver):-
HP NC328T 2port gigabit NIC
HP NC328T 4port gigabit NIC
Things will be a bit random and over a few posts, so apologies in advance.
HP822 (fw 3.22) - connected to 8x drives on internal ports only
installed into PCIE 1 on the motherboard (I read the manual wrong and this is a 4x slot of 16x size and is PCIE2.0 - I'll post PCI 3.0 results in a while) - Turned PC on - entered bios and went to boot > CSM (compatibility support module) > changed options to legacy - rebooted - Card posted its initialisation - finished initialisation - then blank screen no system bios screen.
Entered Bios and changed CSM back to uefi only restarted and system booted into windows 8.1 (new fresh install - no additional drivers added yet) , with no HP initialisation pre system bios screen. Windows installed drivers straight away with no internet connection.
Installed HP SMART Storage Administrator (server 2012 version) and it saw the card no problem. Created a Raid 6 array - no issues there.
Updated the Bios to 6.34 (how easy have HP made this to do!) rebooted > changed system bios CSM to legacy again. Rebooted - Card Initialised - then proceeded to boot into windows.. no blank screen this time.
Rebooted to try and get into ORCA but no prompt to enter, tried the usual F8 etc but nothing worked. Returned system bios back to uefi to reduce boot times.
Conclusion - With newer bios the HP P822 can boot on the c226ws board with no bios tweaks - but ORCA cant be entered (that i have found). Windows 8.1 has default drivers built in and Array creation was no trouble in HP SMART Storage Administrator - Bios updates from older 3.22 works perfectly
HP420 2gb FBWC (fw 3.22) - connected to 4x drives on internal ports only
installed into PCIE 1 on the motherboard (I read the manual wrong and this is a 4x slot of 16x size and is PCIE2.0 - I'll post PCI 3.0 results in a while) - Turned PC on - entered bios and went to boot > CSM (compatibility support module) > changed options to legacy - rebooted - Card posted its initialisation - finished initialisation - then blank screen no system bios screen.
Entered Bios and changed CSM back to uefi only restarted and system booted into windows 8.1 (new fresh install - no additional drivers added yet) , with no HP initialisation pre system bios screen. Windows installed drivers straight away with no internet connection.
Installed HP SMART Storage Administrator (server 2012 version) and it saw the card no problem. Created a Raid 6 array - no issues there.
Updated the Bios to 6.34 (how easy have HP made this to do!) rebooted > changed system bios CSM to legacy again. Rebooted - Card Initialised - then proceeded to boot into windows.. no blank screen this time.
Rebooted to try and get into ORCA but no prompt to enter, tried the usual F8 etc but nothing worked. Returned system bios back to uefi to reduce boot times.
Conclusion - With newer bios the HP P420 can boot on the c226ws board with no bios tweaks - but ORCA cant be entered (that i have found). Windows 8.1 has default drivers built in and Array creation was no trouble in HP SMART Storage Administrator - Bios updates from older 3.22 works perfectly
HP420 1gb FBWC (fw 3.42)
Same as the 2gb version - firmware update again was no issue to 6.34
With both cards no temps are reported in HP SMART Storage Administrator using HP Drivers
Performance is next...