Help with SuperMicro Motherboard?

[G Farris]

I am running a SUPERMICRO X5DA8 board with two Pentium4 XEON processors, and
the board has developed a problem. The computer will not run any more, because
the board faults the power supply.

With the computer OFF, the power supply produces a loud clicking sound, as it
goes into protect, probably due to overload. If I remove the 5VSB connection
from the main board, the clicking stops, the power supply starts and all fans
and drives run - but the computer won't boot - apparently the board cannot run
without power on the 5VSB connection.

I can measure the resistive load from Pin 9 of the ATX power connector (on the
board) to ground. It is about 9 ohms, which is well within the loading
capacity of the 5VSB on the power supply. The power supply itself is an NMB,
model GM460WTXW01SSV. The 5VSB output is rated at 2 amps, but in tests I can
load it much higher - I have put a 1 ohm load on it, and measured 5 amps of
current for a couple of minutes, without the power supply overloading or going
into a protect mode. I believe it is safe to say that the power supply is not
the cause of the problem.

I have the jumpers for USB and JPWake both set to 5V source (not 5VSB), but I
have tried all configurations of these jumpers, with no change. I have
examined every millimeter of the board for damage, visible shorts or stray
wires, dirt etc, and I have vacuumed the board on both sides to make sure
there is nothing conductive shorting this connection.

The condition persists even if I remove everything from the board - both
processors, all memory modules, all fans, drives etc. I have checked the
battery on the board, and it measures just over 3V.

What is going on????

Thanks,
G Faris

 

[johns]

I am running a SUPERMICRO X5DA8 board with two Pentium4 XEON processors,

Sounds like you paid a bundle for that thing ( $5K or
more ? ). Is it a vendor workstation? If so, then you
need to work on your RMA skills, and quit hacking
a whopping expensive system. Call your vendor .. and /
or SuperMicro, and find out about warranty .. carefully.
Don't talk to them like you are doing here, or they
will think you were messing around and refuse to honor
your warranty with them. If the thing is out of warranty,
then ask about replacing the mobo with one compatible
with the dual Xeons you have. I don't know if there
are several versions of the Xeon cpu or not, but good
to check. Also, before you just start buying stuff,
I recommend you look at the AMD64 on an nVidia4
chipset mobo. I've benched dual Xeons against single
AMD64 3000+, and the '64 beat the ever-loving-
crap out of the 2Xeons ( precisely 2X = 12000 and
'64 = 18000 in an all-around system benchmark ).

johns

 

[G Farris]

Hello,
Well, thanks for your input - but let's not exaggerate!!
This system cost me less than $1K all together. It's all used parts from eBay
sellers. I have put together many similar, dual-xeon systems this way, and
this is the first time I've ever had a bad component. Of course, as it happens
it appears the motherboard has a problem, which was the single most expensive
component.

Supermicro have been helpful so far, and if I have to pay something to have
the board fixed, well that's the way it goes.

I've benched dual Xeons against single
AMD64 3000+, and the '64 beat the ever-loving-
crap out of the 2Xeons ( precisely 2X = 12000 and
'64 = 18000 in an all-around system benchmark )

But what kind of tests? This is a high-end CAD workstation, and I've found
that for rendering 3D drawings, the rendering time is a pure product of the
CPU clock speed. 2 3.2GHz processors will run exactly twice as fast as one,
and four times as fast as one of half that speed. So for this application, the
useful 6.4GHz is getting up there!

Greg