HP DL580 G5 Not Booting with Four CPUs Installed

[ZackB]

Hi, everybody!

I've been struggling with this since I picked up this otherwise quite nice machine a few months ago.  When I got it, it had two quad-core 2.4GHz Intel Xeon CPUs.  I got ahold of four quad-core 2.93GHz X7350 Xeons for a good price, but when I installed all four, the System Insight Display flashes red LEDs for all four CPU sockets.  I've shuffleled them around enough to confidently say that none of the CPUs are bad, but that it will only successfully boot with CPU1 and CPU2 installed.  Installing CPU 3 and/or CPU4 always fails with the same condition.

Between my CPU shuffling, trying another pair I picked up—just to be sure—and running lscpu from a linux live boot, I can tell that they are all sufficiently similar (Family 6, Model 15, Stepping 11,) and that they are all individually functional and that any given pair of them will work.  I've likewise shuffled the VRM/PPMs to verify that they are all good.

I found an article that warned running four-cpu installations on this machine with 120-Volt power can throw an error if there aren't enough PSUs installed, so even though I wasn't getting that kind of error, I threw another PSU in, just to be safe—for a total of four PSUs.

I'm super-frustrated with this, and I'm about to track down a used system board, but since it seems fine in every other respect, I'm hoping theres some other solution to this.  I'm already out a lot more than I intended to be on this.

Any help would be most appreciated!

Thanks!

[Mark Matthews]

Hi Zack,

Are you running the latest version of the BIOS Firmware?
It is available here and can fix problems like this...

https://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/psi/swdDetails/?sp4ts.oid=3562405&spf_p.tpst=swdMain&spf_p.prp_swdMain=wsrp-navigationalState%3Didx%253D%257CswItem%253DMTX_7b271a9347384bc1af7c848a83%257CswEnvOID%253D54%257CitemLocale%253D%257CswLang%253D%257Cmode%253D5%257Caction%253DdriverDocument&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vig...

Thanks,
Mark...

[ZackB]

Hi Mark,

I am running the latest version of the BIOS FIrmware, released on 05/02/2011.

I was hoping it would be something simple like a firmware update or a configuration change, but the way things are going, I'm out of ideas that don't involve hardware replacement.

If it does come down to hardware, I'm not sure if I should start with the Processor Memory Module Board or the System Board.  It seems like the PMMB would be the easiest to swap out, and would resolve any issues that might be caused by bad CPU sockets, but I also don't know where the problem is, so who knows...