Sure, looks like you know your parts better than you think: On the official supermicro website for this part, just click on "detailed specifications". Straight from the source, you nailed the 180W. It's good to know it's not the end of the world, though.
Yes, sure, happy to tell my story. It is an a-X2 from MediaWorkstations dot net. The rig you see here is actually their "rebuild"! Prepare for a fun rant... (This turned into a huge missive but it felt soooo good to write! Yay catharsis).
TL;DR: MediaWorkstations is incompetent, and NEMIX is conniving. And I am out much of a life's savings and most of my love of computers.
Introduction.
I wanted an upgrade from my dual Xeon Platinum 8180 system from HP which is awesome and I love it to death. I bought it in 2018 with 1.5TB RAM, crazy Quadro graphics, SSDs in RAID. Part gift, part subsidized, part self-funded, this computer made me fall in love with high-end computers (along with my Colfax Intl Knights Landing machine in 2016 which I upgraded to 400GB RAM and the 68-core CPU with help from a friend; BTW RAM was 384GB main + 16 HBM). Come late 2019, I decide it's time for my 2020 rig, which would be an AMD (since it was outperforming Intel at the time). But the only people building it were third-party companies. I picked the most expensive one with the nicest looking case, MediaWorkstations. What sealed the deal was they offered to install custom RAM, with the caveat that if it didn't work, I had to buy RAM from them (apparently 1TB). But others online had gotten 2TB working and the motherboard site claimed it was fine (mentions up to 4TB at 3200MHz with Rev 2+) so I didn't suspect a thing...
Play-by-play
0. RAM ordering fiasco.
I initially wanted 4TB of RAM -- so I ordered 16x256GB modules on NewEgg (engineering samples, apparently, but the listing didn't say that!). It cost me so much money. But I get a call from Nemix the next day claiming they were sold out. They asked what to do and I said invoice me for 2TB RAM and we can go from there if it looks good.
They did not invoice me, but instead suddenly shipped 2TB of RAM at an unknown price to MediaWorkstations. Eventually the NewEgg balance is adjusted, after I demanded they refund the difference. But they did not refund enough -- they had overcharged me thousands of dollars. I call them out on it. They give me most of the overcharged money back, but not all of it -- they have a resident BS guy who kept feeding me conflicting information that was later proven false. First offense, he claimed prices rose since I bought it (but they didn't -- I showed him the NewEgg URL of the exact RAM module sent, up to date. Price had not budged. Second offense, he claimed it should work fine with the motherboard, then backtracked and said it was my fault because it won't work with the motherboard, then backtracked again and said only 2933MHz worked with the motherboard. (Later he will spew more BS, but stay tuned).
1. Build fiasco (part 1)
Paid Nov 25 for a build according to the invoice instructions (claiming Wire or ACH; I chose wire for speed). The next day they claimed wire
wasn't supported so had to pay again (scary). Nemix had shipped the mystery 2TB of RAM to them around the same time. They start building around Dec 13 but then claimed the chassis was damaged. (Red flag?). They told me they could build it into some other case they had lying around or reorder this one, so I said reorder if you can promise it's sturdy (they swore by it). Dec 27 (over a month after the order) they claim the RAM doesn't work (they seriously couldn't have tested it earlier? They knew I got it from another vendor, Nemix, with a limited return window!). They then charged $5300 for 1TB of RAM and sent the Nemix RAM back to them. Meanwhile, Nemix without anyone's knowledge or consent decides they don't want to refund it but replace it instead with bargain-bin 2666MHz modules, so they suddenly ship a slower replacement to MediaWorkstations
a week after MediaWorkstations shipped me the completed computer with 1TB of RAM. The Nemix BS-guy then claimed that "they can't print return labels" (even though they did before) and "they can only ship to the first address on NewEgg" which was the MediaWorkstations build site (you'll soon see this is also false, as they can ship wherever they want).
By this point, the return window had closed on NewEgg for returning the NEMIX RAM (and NEMIX can just claim ignorance or incompetence but get away with keeping my money). NEMIX absolutely refused returns at this point.
After much begging and complaining they finally let me exchange it for the happy medium -- 2TB of 2933MHz RAM (obviously no more refund would be issued, so I'm still out thousands of dollars). But their RMA guy shipped it straight to me (invalidating the BS guy's statement earlier about not being able to ship anywhere but the first NewEgg address). MediaWorkstations then decided to charge me
$250 to ship the bargain-bin RAM back to NEMIX so NEMIX could ship me the "final" replacement. So I end up getting gouged again for RAM I don't want.
Finally, to get the computer delivered, apparently I had to call a bunch of people and talk to a bunch of folks at MW and FedEx in realtime to "coordinate shipping the unit" (seriously? At that time I was out of town and could not take calls). MediaWorkstations blamed me with passive aggressive emails about not answering my phone (I have
never needed a phone to buy a machine before, OR to "coordinate shipping"). The computer finally arrived with its 1TB of MediaWorkstations RAM, and I still have the 2TB of RAM sitting here. It does work fine in the system actually, but I decided to use the 1TB of MediaWorkstations in case of problems. (Both have identical thermal profiles BTW, so I may go with the 2TB and sell the 1TB).
2. RAID Fiasco
So the machine arrives on a FedEx Freight wooden pallet, shrink-wrapped with a bunch of Chinese-labeled empty boxes flanking it (I guess for insulation? No idea). At first (roaring loud) boot, it beeps like it's the end of the world. Turns out
the RAID card was throwing a fit. Tech support told me to open up the chassis and check the hard drives. Turns out they were sliding all over the place because they hadn't been screwed in like literally every hard drive on every computer I've ever owned has been to date. So I got my first crash-course in server hardware -- "re-seat" the drives. I had to read the Avago manual and learn how to to navigate the obtuse AVAGO MegaRAID control panel in the BIOS to rebuild my drives. But still didn't work -- the alarm would go off after every couple hours. Probably overheating.
Solution? Take out the RAID card (something or other MegaRAID) and MediaWorkstations would be happy to ship a bunch of individual cables for me to connect each hard drive without the RAID. Funny enough, this sort of worked.
3. OS inconveniences
- The computer came with a Windows (unactivated!) partition. Having not built my own computers before, every system I owned had come with factory pre-activated Windows via key in the BIOS (Microsoft tech support actually explained this is called "SLIC OEM product key insertion into the BIOS/UEFI").
Solution? They sent me the activation key upon request. So not a big deal, and just my own inexperience talking. But stay tuned, Windows activation trouble will be making a grand re-appearance!
- A CentOS partition was there, but setup with broken graphics drivers (no display was shown whatsoever), and upon trying to remotely login, it required a login password I was never provided until asking for it. Yes, a system was installed I literally could not have accessed even if the graphics had worked.
Solution? I figured out how to install Fedora myself using a hybrid signed kernel and both GPT and MBR partition-table aware OS profiling schemes in order to co-exist with Windows and the BIOS. That was an OS journey, but I got it working fine.
4. Stuck in debug mode
The system came with "debug settings" active that were "accidentally" left on in the BIOS. Fans were at 100% full blast and it sounded like a rocket ship at all times, sending my ears ringing. I did not know it was possible for a computer to be so loud, and I own a dual Xeon platinum workstation and Knights Landing Xeon phi system! But wait,
what were they debugging? Ah, apparently they'd run into some trouble with the RAID controller too! Which they couldn't fix! And shipped an obviously incomplete (
roaring!!) system anyway.
Solution? I had to plug an ethernet cable into a specific debug port, then remotely connect to an active IPMI server at a DNS address I had to set up in the BIOS to access a hidden control panel console via browser to fix fan speed and other debugging settings.
5. Overheating RAM
Once the system could finally boot to Linux, I tried running some simple bioinformatics software (in my case, megahit to assemble some public metagenomes). Some strange clicking sounds came from the box, and the system ground to a halt very quickly. Thanks to my earlier adventures with IPMI, I figured out how to dump the sensors and see what was happening. Turns out both processors were at 400MHz and RAM was at 84C (a hair away from "critical"). I felt very angry, but would give them a chance to explain. They could not. They told me I needed to buy, at my own expense, either RAM fins or dedicated RAM fans. I tried the fins. What took nearly 5 minutes to overheat before now took 10 seconds -- the cheap, LED-boasting aluminum RAM "cooling" fins they had suggested (Easy-DIY) had insulated the RAM and made it much hotter. And cost $400. The fans didn't all fit into the chassis (literally, that humongous chassis). And it overheated anyway.
Solution? They would rebuild.
6. The Great Rebuild
I demanded a refund, outlining the overheating problems, what I did to mitigate them to limited success. They refused, claiming that orders over $8k were ineligible. They did agree to rebuild the unit to avoid overheating, but decided to completely ignore everything I told them and requested: I requested water-cooling. I requested good RAM fins/heatspreaders (as found in my Knights Landing system). I requested RAM fans (as found in my HP Z8 system as part of the specialized cooling setup). They laughed me off and said the new case would magically solve everything. I offered to help them run real HPC software, or benchmark it, and work with them to check temps/throttling (I learned all of this while trying to fix it the first time myself). They again
completely ignored me and brushed me off.
After shipping my old unit back, they sat on it for nearly
4 months waiting for a "response from SuperMicro" about something to do with the motherboard (why they didn't just order a new motherboard which was readily available is beyond me...). They were content to let the damn thing I ordered in Nov 2019 sit even longer until June 2020 collecting dust in their hands. That's 7 months since I ordered it. But in 7 months time, they must have learned from my detailed and frequent communications, right? Nope. They didn't do much better this time around, as you immediately could see.
7. (Re-)Build fiasco (part 2)
RAM on the "rebuild" overheated within seconds (any benchmark showed the throttling; real HPC applications and any RAM-intensive benchmarks over 5 minutes throttled the CPU to 400MHz and the RAM shoots up over 80C anyway, the near critical temp!). So I installed my own RAM fans, learning how to move pins around in a motherboard in the process. I had to move the graphics card further down to make the RAM fans fit, which jeopardized the ability of the PCI blower to do anything (although it may have done nothing to begin with). They were keen to suggest which RAM fans and fins to use at my own cost and time expense, despite not installing it themselves knowing full-well the heating problems I described. By the way, there is still RAM throttling even with 4 fans flowing at max speed on them constantly, but it's tolerable until the RAM VRMs reach 100C in an hour or two of RAM-intensive work and then it's throttle-heaven. For compute-intensive work, it's 60 seconds then alarm and 400MHz until I physically disconnect the power supply and reboot (CPU VRMs in this case).
The rebuild also came with an "invalidated" Windows 10. I asked for an updated key and they did not provide one, only told me to call Microsoft at a phone number (and no other instructions). I did and MS told me about new computers having OEM keys in the Bios if it came with Windows 10, and I should clear the BIOS and reset the OS to "rule out tampering". This caused the HDMI output to stop working, and the only way to fix it was to reset jumpers on the BIOS, and I had to purchase a VGA monitor for the first time in over a decade to see the BIOS screen. And the sales guy/CEO (probably the same dude) started yelling at me and criticizing me for doing something I wasn't supposed to (even though, on the contrary, I did exactly what was said, as insufficient as the instructions were).
Solution: The rebuild changed the motherboard which invalidated the Windows activation. Terminal "slui.exe 4". But when you call them, you MUST indicate that you DO NOT HAVE a key in the menu in order for you to be able to use your phone to enter a reset code -- I had pressed "I have a key" before and that led me to live customer support which caused the bios reset rabbit-hole.
Concluding remarks.
I've spent so much money -- my savings! -- on this piece of garbage, so much that it would make you sick, and now my lifelong passion for computers is almost completely dead, beaten into the ground by these companies' shenanigans, and yet they make out like bandits as I sit here with a huge hole in my account, shattered ambitions, and without a working computer (Nov will mark my 1yr anniversary of non-working computer). Oh, and 2TB of RAM sitting in a box next to me.
And yet it's funny -- I would have paid alex_stief twice the amount I paid for labor in a heartbeat. Why are MediaWorkstations, a company, so much less knowledgeable?
Whew. Rant over. May this missive rest in peace in the serene graveyard of the internet.
