Hello. I purchased a Dual Opteron workstation board last summer because I want to have a decent machine to do my graphic art and 3-D animation on. I purchased it used because I didn't have alot of money at the time. But so far I've dumped so much money into it that I could have bought a new one. I'm determined to get it to work. The problem I'm having is that I can't get the thing to work. Here's what I've got:

-MSI K8T Master FAR7 Board
-Two AMD Opteron 240 1.4GHz CPU's
-Kingston 512MB Registered ECC PC2700 memory
-Nvidia Quadro FX3000 AGP8x video card
-The HDD is just a 30GB(Testing purposes)
-A case large enought to accomodate everything
-Silver Stone "Zeus" 560w Continuous power supply

Out of all the components I have, the power supply is the only on that's not on their(MSI's) compatability list. But it does meet the requirements to power this board(according to the specs). It has the connectors the board requires and the proper amps to power it. The guy I purchased it from claims he used the same power supply on the board when he had it. The board powers on with this supply and remains on but that's about it. Nothing appears on the monitor. No posting beep or anything. The sequence of lights on the D-bracket included with the board says that it's stuck "Initializing the chipset"(according to the manual). I've already sent it in to MSI once but their techs haven't been very helpful. Can anybody help me? I would REALLY appreciate any help I can get.

p.s. Is it the power supply?

quote:

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Originally posted by: skepone
Hello. I purchased a Dual Opteron workstation board last summer because I want to have a decent machine to do my graphic art and 3-D animation on. I purchased it used because I didn't have alot of money at the time. But so far I've dumped so much money into it that I could have bought a new one. I'm determined to get it to work. The problem I'm having is that I can't get the thing to work. Here's what I've got:

-MSI K8T Master FAR7 Board
-Two AMD Opteron 240 1.4GHz CPU's
-Kingston 512MB Registered ECC PC2700 memory
-Nvidia Quadro FX3000 AGP8x video card
-The HDD is just a 30GB(Testing purposes)
-A case large enought to accomodate everything
-Silver Stone "Zeus" 560w Continuous power supply

Out of all the components I have, the power supply is the only on that's not on their(MSI's) compatability list. But it does meet the requirements to power this board(according to the specs). It has the connectors the board requires and the proper amps to power it. The guy I purchased it from claims he used the same power supply on the board when he had it. The board powers on with this supply and remains on but that's about it. Nothing appears on the monitor. No posting beep or anything. The sequence of lights on the D-bracket included with the board says that it's stuck "Initializing the chipset"(according to the manual). I've already sent it in to MSI once but their techs haven't been very helpful. Can anybody help me? I would REALLY appreciate any help I can get.

p.s. Is it the power supply?

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What has changed since it was working? Did you add in hardware? What are the specs on the power supply? Did it every POST and run properly at any time? Do you have a multi-meter? You could test the 12V voltage levels, yellow and black on a molex. The 240s need 164W. Remove the second CPU and try it. Try a different video card. Maybe the FX3000 is not supported on that board.

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Tyan Thunder K8WE
Dual AMD 280 Opterons
8GB NUMA enabled DDR333 2.5-3-3-7 RAM
PCI-X SCSI RAID
http://69.14.190.80

quote:

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Originally posted by: mckennma
What has changed since it was working? Did you add in hardware? What are the specs on the power supply? Did it every POST and run properly at any time? Do you have a multi-meter? You could test the 12V voltage levels, yellow and black on a molex. The 240s need 164W. Remove the second CPU and try it. Try a different video card. Maybe the FX3000 is not supported on that board.

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It never worked for me. The guy I bough it from said he'd test it for me and if it didn't work he'd send it to MSI. I had some co-workers look at it, two being a former IT techs, and they couldn't figure it out. That board powered on ut got stuck in another start-up phase. At that point I decided to send it in to MSI. They sent another one back and this one comes up stuck at the "Initializing chipset" phase. I haven't added new hardware. I did change the video card. The first one I tried both boards with was an nVidia Quadro 900XL. The current one I'm using is in the list of compatible video cards. Both cards work. I tried them on my current PC. I don't have a multi meter. I'll have to try the removing one CPU thing. Here are the specs of the Power Supply:

combined+3.3 , +5V 250W
combined +3.3V, +5V, +12V
540W

Input Voltage 90V ~ 264V (Auto Range)
Input Frequency Range 47Hz ~ 63Hz
PFC Active PFC (PF>0.95 at full load)
Efficiency 78% Typical
MTBF 100,000 hours at 25°C, full load
Operating temperature 0 ~ 50°C
Protection Over current protection, Over voltage protection, Short circuit, No load operation

Connectors 1 x 24pin motherboard connector (550mm)
1 x 8-pin ATX12V connector (550mm)
1 x 8-pin to 4-pin ATX12V connector (550mm)
2 x 6-pin PCI-E connector (550mm)
2 x dual SATA power connectors (500mm + 250mm)
1 x dual 4-pin IDE connectors (500mm + 250mm)
2 x dual 4-pin IDE & single floppy power connectors
(500mm + 250mm + 150mm)