Potential Deal: 2 x Dual 2011 nodes @$199, Quanta Openrack
- Thread starter abstractalgebra
- Start date
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I bought generic PCIE x16 risers from Hong Kong. They arrived surprisingly quickly and work without issue but are only 1 slot and do not align with the mounting bracket exactly. Look back at page 16 post #315 for pics and description to see if it matches your needs.
thanks, grfxlab. mine is actually the same as the one pictured on page 16. i will try to see if my video card is the bottle neck. my graphic card is hd6450. i also have gt620 and gt720.
i just found out that the riser card is the problem. without any video card on, when i plug in the riser card, the blue light turned off and the 1gbe green light off also. both nodes show the exact same pattern. scratching my head. seems my specific quanta's bios does not recognize the riser card.
The pci riser i have is slightly taller than the lower slot but lower than the top. I screwed the graphics card into the lower position even though it is at an angle. Trying to fasten it to the upper position put to much strain on the riser. You can see it is not level in the pic i posted. For what i need, it ix good enough.
Do the graphics cards work without the riser?
Do the graphics cards work without the riser?
Try your riser card in the other node? I have the Quanta risers and on one node the bottom PCIe slot doesn't work but on the other node both slots work. I've swapped cards (HBA, GPU, etc), riser cards, tried different PCIe lane jumpers on the risers, checked BIOS settings, etc... seems there's something physically different on the one server that I haven't narrowed down. Still trying a few more things...
thanks for the help, grfxlab and tbkdan.
i thought of buying another quanta machine with the riser card to see if the original riser card will work.
then i decided to take off the back steel panel of the video card and plug it directly on the 16x pcie slot. with my gt620 card, it works perfectly. i can see the bios booting process. with my gt720, black screen.
i thought of buying another quanta machine with the riser card to see if the original riser card will work.
then i decided to take off the back steel panel of the video card and plug it directly on the 16x pcie slot. with my gt620 card, it works perfectly. i can see the bios booting process. with my gt720, black screen.
tbkdan: you are right. the two nodes behave differently now (previously with generic riser card both were not starting up). i plug in gt620 to left node and can see the bios booting, but with gt620 on the right node, it is black screen. interesting.
just did a quick experiment. i swapped the nodes, left to right, right to left. now the right one works with gt620, the left one black screen. so it is node causing the problem, not the backplane. the backplane differentiates the booting sequence, the right one slower, the left one faster. but the video card issue is from the node itself. will see if the pcie slot is bad or other potential shortcut, but both nodes seem in working order, may be bios has difference even with the nodes in the same chassis?
I had the same problem with a couple of my nodes not going into bios. The issue was ram. I had a couple sticks they did not like. I also had one node that worked but i had to swap the hard drive because my image didnt take. When booting again it would not post. I removed the node and then removed the bios battery for 20 seconds. When i put it back together it worked correctly. Try swapping the ram with the node that works. Remember that you are supposed to add ram in pairs. Start with the white ram slot farthest from each cpu. I would also only add two to make sure it posts before adding more if you intend to. I have also tried 1.35v ecc reg, 1.5v ecc reg, 1.5v desktop ddr3. All work. I hope that helps.
thanks for your excellent suggestions, grfxlab. enlightens me. will definately try ram and bios battery.
My riser Slot0 issue turned out to be related to the PCIe mode jumpers on the motherboard. The risers have their own jumpers to select 1x x8 or 2x x4 for each slot - I already had these both to 1x x8 but that had no impact. The F03C manual mentions a jumper on the motherboard with the same functionality. On a whim, I decided to give it a shot and used another set of jumpers to set both slots to 1x x8 - it worked! I removed the jumpers from the riser and it still worked. I have two cards functional on the riser on the motherboard that previously didn't work. See attached - the jumper numbers and modes are already printed on the motherboard next to the jumpers.
Attachments
i swapped the ram and coin battery. still the same. the good node is working, the bad node is not starting. now the good node has new problem: after about 5 minutes of post, the fans turn into high mode, very very loud, like jet taking off. no clue.
Try different RAM, did the trick for me. See below. I'm now running Kingston sticks from Natex with zero issues.
thanks, tbkdan. i actually have claimed samsung for both of my nodes each for 128gb. i will try to disable ME in bios first, then try some non ecc desktop ram later.
donjon: i did press the red button on the node and both nodes powered on.
donjon: i did press the red button on the node and both nodes powered on.
Try using only two sticks of ram. Once i had a node working with two, i swapped out 1 of the working one with 1 from a group of unknown working condition. When the node booted i turned it off and tried again. I endrd up with 4 bad sticks. When 1 bad stick is installed the node powers on and the blue light stays on but it does not post or enter bios. Also disconnect your lan cable and hard drive. Just have graphics card, 2 stick mem and cpus. The fewer things connected the easier it is to test. Add things back after you get the node to post.