Question No onboard display, no beeps after installing new CPUs in SuperMicro board.

[Justiceinacan]

Yo

I have a SuperMicro H8DGU-F motherboard and it was functional with two AMD Opteron 6172s installed. After swapping in Opteron 6274s, the onboard graphics don't work and I don't hear any beep codes telling me what's wrong.

Any ideas? I don't have much experience with server boards. According to the product specifications, it should support all Opteron 6xxx CPUs, up to 16 cores (which is what the 6724 is). I find it odd that the onboard speaker isn't giving any codes at all.

 

[Ralston18]

Take another look inside. Verify that all cables and connections are fully and firmly in place.

Some wire or component may have been bumped loose.

Any other audio ports (1/8"/3.5mm)? Try an external speaker or headphones to see if there is any audio to be heard.

 

[Justiceinacan]

Yeah everything is in the right place, no there is no connection for another BIOS speaker.

I reinstalled the old 6172s and the system works. It doesn't work with the 6274s.
(I need the 6274s because they support the AES instruction set)

 

[Justiceinacan]

So I did some digging and SuperMicro tech support got back to me.

Opteron 6100-series are part of a generation codenamed "Magny-Cours", based on the 45nm K10 architecture, the Opteron 6172 being released in March 2010. The 6274, on the other hand, is part of "Interlagos", based on the 32nm Bulldozer arch, released a year and a half later (November 2011). Totally different CPUs, the BIOS does not recognize the new CPUs, I need to update the BIOS to get things working. Hopefully. Also worth noting that the motherboard came out in 2010 so Bulldozer didn't exist yet and it would make sense, if the BIOS is from-factory, they wouldn't have known how to get it to support Bulldozer, but could add that functionality later via a bios update. I'll explain how it went after I try it.