Supermicro X7DCA-L + Xeon L5420 = 88c

[I4AT]

I bought a bunch of 771 hardware off Ebay recently and I'm having a weird issue with my Xeon L5420's. As soon as the X7DCA-L POST's the internal speaker lets out a constant tone, hardware monitor was reporting the CPU temperature of both L5420's at 88c, no deviations.

I pulled the heatsinks and checked the thermal paste (AS Ceramique) and there was full coverage over both the base of the HS and the heatspreader of each CPU, so I don't think contact was an issue.

I actually bought 8 Intel 2U 771 heatsinks so I tried 4 of them just to be sure it wasn't a warped base or anything. I have 4 L5420's (2.5ghz quad core) and I tested 3 of them, every single one exhibits the same 88c issue. I have 2 L5240's (3ghz dual core) and they report temperatures in the 45-50c range, no error tone.

I don't even wanna bother testing the 4th L5420 as I'm sure it'll give me the same results, but I'll probably end up doing it anyways. I have a 2nd X7DCA-L that I'll try as well, and report back with what happens. I'm pretty tired of changing heatsinks, though.

At this point I'm tempted to just boot into Windows and run Prime to see what happens and check temps with a third party program, so far I've just been shutting down within 10 seconds or so of POSTing.

I bought both motherboards from one seller, I've run 10 loops of Linpack under Ubuntu and about 8 hours of memtest86+ with the L5240's, so I'm pretty confident at least one of the boards is good.

All 4 L5420's came from a second seller, along with 12 sticks of ECC ram of which 6 have been tested good so far. It seems unlikely that I'd get 4 bad CPU's that all have the same quirk, but I guess it's possible? It almost seems like a BIOS issue, but the X7DCA-L is paired with L5420's commonly, and a search turns up no results related to my issue, so I'm at a loss...

 

[OEGInc]

I am having the same problem, with the same situation. I purchased mine from Belmont Technology, I've contacted them about the problem and they wanted me to send the servers back (which would end up costing me almost as much as I paid for them in the first place), so that's not a great option.

I too have reapplied the thermal paste (two different kinds) from scratch over 10 times now using different techniques, and I'm still having the exact same results. Immediately after POSTing I get a loud continuous beep and both CPU temperatures are 88 degrees Celsius consistently.

I have to believe that the thermal sensors are bad, or there is something wrong with this motherboard. I have the same motherboard Supermicro X7DCA-L.

Has anyone found a solution to this yet?

 

[OEGInc]

I happened to notice that the BIOS version on this motherboard was 1.0, just on a whim I tried updating it to the latest BIOS (v1.12a) and it seemed to fix all of my problems...

My CPU temperatures are now reading normal, and I can boot and run without problems (so far)...

Hope this helps!

 

[crashtech]

The newest BIOS enables more fan control options as well, it is a worthwhile endeavor.

 

[Ivan89]

So how can I update the bios via floppy?
It says "root fat kernel" on dos screen and no bios refreshing.
All components are in a working condition and switched wright.
Previously i successfully upgraded bios on a working machine, but not on these.
And the long beep continues, saying the temp is high.

 

[Burpo]

If you have the same problem & board as the Op in this 3+ yr old thread..
To my knowledge, SuperMicro doesn't have a boot disc making utility, or offer any bootable image files, so you'll have to make one yourself. Link below has several options for making a bootable floppy.
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
Once you've made a bootable floppy (test it to be sure), then you can add/unzip the files required to flash your motherboard to the floppy. I think it's the top one listed here.. Once downloaded, unzip the files to the floppy.
http://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/results.aspx

You should now be able to boot to the floppy, and run the Flash.bat by typing Flash. You'll need to know the bios file name, as it will ask you for it to procede with the flash.. As always there's a risk if you lose power during the flash procedure, but other than that you should be ok. Good luck!