Recently I purchased a Supermicro H11SSL-i mainboard and a (allegedly) new EPYC 7551P CPU via Aliexpress. I know, not the most reputable way, but at least very affordable, especially as used enterprise gear in this country isn’t easy to find, never mind affordable too!
Anyway, I got 2 new sticks of Kingston 32GB ECC RAM (KSM26ED8/32HC) delivered today and inserted them in the appropriate slots (A1 and C1, according to the manual). Adding more RAM sticks doesn’t fit in my budget for the next while, unfortunately. The CPU was installed as good as I can judge it, I don’t have a torque wrench, just a regular screwdriver with the required T20 bit. A 2U cooler, with fan, was mounted on top and tightened as per the instructions on the cooler and manual. The slide that guides the CPU into place has been removed from the mainboard prior to me purchasing it, but having build PC’s for the past 20-odd years I’d like to think I’m reasonably good at it, at least to install a CPU
Unfortunately, even after about an hour in, the system refuses to POST. At all.
No signal on the VGA output, the iKVM remains empty. I did manage to get access to the BMC, despite not knowing the user/password combo initially, by resetting them using a Supermicro Python script. In the BMC, the new CPU nor the RAM is recognised, it still has the old CPU (7302P) and RAM (8x64GB Samsung sticks) displayed.
After taking out the UDIMMs from the board and relocating them to the aforementioned 3151 SoC board, I had a closer look at the 8GB sticks that came from that board.
THEY.ARE.BL00DY.RDIMMs!
So, I now have a working Supermicro H11SSL-i board with a 7551P CPU and just 16 GB RAM, instead of 64GB. The system has updated its inventory to reflect its current config, so now I’ll try and install an OS on it.
Someone asked, so here’s an update: the system works (as was noted previously) with just 16GB RAM. Scoured the web and found a nice deal on Amazon for 4x32GB RDIMM ECC RAM. Ordered, failed to clear so it was never shipped. On advise from the seller I cancelled and reordered. Same issue: seller doesn’t ship until he’s paid by Amazon, who won’t pay him until he shipped the order So I got some suitable Samsung RAM (still 4x 32GB RDIMMs) from a local (ish) shop for considerable more then the Amazon deal. It’s chugging along nicely, when I power the system on (due to high energy prices, running 24/7 is history, for now). In fact, I purchased the exact same system again, including a new-ish 3U server case, to dip my toe in the High Availability storage world. I’m hoping I can persuade the CFO (eerrmm, that’s me ) to allocate funds for the 18U rack required for it as that’s all the space I have w/o seriously rebuilding the electrical panel space
