I have just upgraded my EX490 with a E7400 cpu. On boot up, it is not starting. The power light and network light burn blue, while there is no health light on at all.

I have obtained a debug cable GEN 3, hoping it may have been a BIOS issue, which i could get into via a monitor. There is no display appearing on the monitor. Which means the unit does not even appear to be POSTing. There is some initial disk activity, then it seems to stop. I also noticed that the fan speed seem to be running flat out

What i have tried.

1. Swapped back in the original CPU - no difference.
2. Re-set all cables numerous times - no difference
3. Took the memory out - power light burns red. Read somewhere that if this occurs, this means the mother board is OK. ??
4. Hooked up debug cable but can not see anything.

If anyone has any ideas on what else to try, or has seen this before, then i am very keen to hear what the clever people here have to say.

Thanks in advance.

So when you put the original CPU back in, your server still does not come back to life? That's rather concerning, like something more serious may have happened, like damage to the CPU socket.

Some things to consider:

1. When you installed the new CPU, did you clean all old thermal compound off the heatsink and the clamp that holds the CPU in place? Excessive thermal compound can pose a problem, for instance if some fell onto the CPU socket itself.

2. When you installed the new CPU, did you have it inserted in the correct orientation? (I know, silly question but should still be asked.)

3. When you close the CPU bracket and lock the clamp, does it lock smoothly or does/did it feel like you had to "force it" to get it to lock? This could be an indication of wrong CPU orientation and/or debris in the socket that prevents the CPU from sitting flush.

4. There are several capacitors around the CPU socket, and I think they're pretty easy to bump with the heatsink or a screwdriver when installing or removing the heatsink. Can you check to make sure one of these didn't get bent over, damaged or broken off?

In my experience, if the system cannot detect a CPU, it won't POST at all, which may explain why you're not seeing anything on the screen. In some computers, I've seen a bad or missing CPU cause the message "no timer tick interrupt" to be displayed, but that doesn't appear to be the case here.

Matt

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Matt Sawyer
Owner, Dojo North Software, LLC

HP EX490, 4GB, E5300, 15TB - Server 2012 - Sharing and Streaming
HP EX487, 4GB, E5300, 13TB - Server 2012 Essentials - Backups