How To Stop Your HBA From Disabling Memory Channels

[@ChickDrummersAreHot]

Legend! I could not for the life of me work out why one of memory channels was missing. I tried everything, including re-seating the CPU, BIOS resets, different memory sticks etc. It was only after "fixing" the issue outside the chassis and then the issue coming back when I placed the board back in the chassis that I was able to pinpoint the missing channel to my X520 10Gbit NIC. This then led to a google search and the discovery of this video goodness. Taping the pins was all I needed to restore my middle memory channel back. Wow! My X58 board can now keep on rolling!

[@moelassus]

I just installed a DELL H310 into my SuperMicro X11 motherboard and experienced this. The fix was a couple of jumpers on the board that I presume disable SMBus. Worked like a champ.

[@macbombastic]

My Z68 system was restarting while bios initialization all the time, a Z77 system (both gigabyte) wasn't even showing the bios. With your fix I could get it running! Thank YOU!!!

[@dagnasty9646]

Intel i350-t4 was causing error 55 and the bios would not even boot. Knew it was going to be something silly and this video nailed it. Thanks to you kind sir!

[@johntice2007]

Wanted to say thank you for this video... purchased an older ibm x system and have upgraded about everything i could for best performance, faster quad core xeons, ram, hba card, 10gib nics, 8x2tb 2.5 sata iii drives, fans, and etc... was days from trashing everything... no matter what I did it would not recognize all 48gb ECC FBdimms and for the life of me was unable to figure it out. your video and a couple of minutes with tape and magnifying glass machine is running great w/ 48gb of ram.... Sub for life... ty again

[@chrismoore9997]

Nice illustration. I have seen photos of this being done, but I have never run into a system that had a problem with these cards. You gave a nice explanation of it. I think that it is a firmware fault because, most of the time, the systems that are affected in this way are the consumer boards. Server grade boards are usually validated with SAS controllers during the development phase. I have several models of SuperMicro system boards and a couple of models of Dell systems that work with these boards flawlessly.

[@CraigEngbrecht]

I just commented about this particular issue. If you want more details on my issue, just reply to my other comment, I have examples. :P

[@questionablecommands9423]

This sounds like a job for Kapton tape. It's that yellow tinted tape you've probably seen if you've ever opened up pretty much any electronic device. It's high temp, non-conductive, and comes in a wide variety of widths.

[@Statek63]

Wow, I just spent a whole day trying to install Intel I350-T4 and Intel X520-DA2 in my home lab server based on a desktop motherboard (X58 ASUS). I was seeing either 16GB or 32GB missing from the total installed memory of 48GB. I almost gave up but then I found your video and some magic happened ! :D Great info !! This is for my own home lab so I was not happy to waste the money on second hand server cards and still not have a working host. Now I am a happy man and just celebrating it with some beer ;-)

[@adonsig]

Damn. This happened with my Dell H310 and I thought my mobo was about to die on me. Glad I found this before I rushed out and bought a new one. Thanks!

[@mndlessdrwer]

Now I have to go to the office and check this on a couple Cisco C460 M4 that I was about to need to shelve due to memory issues. I've been trying my hardest to get those things working with a fully populated DIMM count, but I've been getting entire memory controllers worth of DIMMs showing as not populated, so this is definitely something I'm going to have to look into.

[@alexisbonnet8087]

Had the issue with an HP 331T on XPS 8700. Did this and it's working ! Thanks

[@Rick-TX]

Just trying to keep this thread current as this is an awesome fix to what is proving to be a "hidden" secret at Dell RE: card design. I had the same thing happen to an Intel 4 x 1GBe I350-T4V2 (540-BBDV in Dell part number land). Taping the 2 pins mentioned -- pins 5 & 6 from the outside of the card (SDA and SCL) -- did the trick but not till I got an RMA for this POC / POS (piece of / pile of). Dell should be ashamed when a Dell card won't work in a Dell PC -- in this case a Precision 3431 -- and no one in the tech department has a clue this problem is baked into the card design.

[@eichof01]

THANK YOU! I had the same problem with a pci-e u.2 ssd card and a fujitsu w530 workstation. Support couldn't help you are a hero sir!

[@JSH-b2o]

Thanks so much for this. Helped me get a Dell Broadcom 5719 quad gigabit ethernet adapter working on a Precision 3431 and Inspiron 580.

[@dtgoodwin]

Mark, thank you for providing this info. I saw it when you released it, but forgot about it. That is, until I needed to move my M1015 from an old board to a new one. In my case, it would fail to post when DIMM0 was occupied and when the adapter was inserted. If I removed the DIMM, it would boot okay. Used your trick and all is well. Thanks again.

[@PeterLucassen]

Very interesting! I have a M1015 (LSI 9220-8i) which work perfectly fine on a MSI Board. A M1115 (LSI 9223-8i) dosn´t. But masking the pins solves the problem. Thanks a lot.

[@ats1995]

Interesting trick. You've got a lot of deeper knowledge in a wide field. I'm digging your videos! Sub gained.

[@horeseplayinc]

THANKYOU - This worked on getting some 10gb NICs installed in some Optiplex SFF's in my homelab :)

[@djmrocksoft]

Thanks for the heads up Mark. Just about to add LSI card to a UEFI system and would never have thought to check. Will now!! Of course if it doesn't boot then that will be an obvious giveaway as adding the card is the only planned change. Sellotape at the ready.

[@troj_ko4]

Man... after buying 2 NICs, a new motherboard and a new CPU because my homemade server wouldn't detect memory. After searching the forums for 1 month with no success, who would it tought a 10c electrical tape would end this nightmare. You sir have got my sincere thanks. Provide me with a BTC wallet address and I'll buy you a 6pack of beer! Thanks man, I was starting to lose my mind...

[@alextasker5221]

Thank you! Worked for a broadcom nic killing half my memory 👍

[@jackelofnar]

I would recommend Kapton tape

[@antibillotic]

Thanks man, you really saved me! Had the same issue with my Microsemi HBA1100-24i, this trick worked like a charm!

[@TableWolfMusic]

4:45 is the meat of the matter. Thumbs up.

[@psycl0ptic]

did you try running in legacy bios mode? or update motherboard and HBA firmware?

[@DmitriyBelan]

Thank you! reminds me of SAS drives not spinning up

[@3xp0r]

Thank you guy for ths awesome video! Ive the exact same problem one an Supermicro Xeon 5600 Motherbord with a HP 530SFP NIC. The PCIe Card "eats" the 3rd RAM Controller of the CPUs. Now its fixed. :)

[@TheAtariSan]

I had issue with mine disabling usb, ethernet and more on my massive dual card of those, will try it, thank

[@CoolDude-vc2fl]

Yea it was help full. My PC was not even booting. Thanks.

[@Mr.Leeroy]

Yep. done that with the same HBA to even boot on P9D-X. I think its just lazy versions of 'consumer' grade motherboards' firmwares. Because every Supermicro board will run just fine with LSI for sure. So I think its an issue of motherboard brands that do not design their products with enterprise hardware in mind

[@toddhayslett8269]

I agree. My MSI Z97 XPower AC motherboard booted properly with this same card.

[@dawn1berlitz]

i see this video after i seen another one about how to made a Dell Perc h310 work with other devices like my old dell pe t320 had a problem with the x16 slot so it was useless for what i was doing with it as it was a dual purpose server and the dell perc h310 is just a reprogrammed LSI controller after taping off b5 and b6 it worked with the server though the msi board had to adjust to the new card...this basically made the card useful

[@stonent]

I have a couple of Emulex oneconnect Dual 10G cards that I'm sure have an SMBUS issue but it's not causing any real problems. The two PCs that have the cards in them power up and make a speaker humming sound with chirping and while it does this, the POST seems to freeze for about 5 seconds, but then continues afterwards and boots up just fine.

[@Tormentor1985]

I've had the same problem with a Dell h200 flashed to lsi it mode. I didn't had to cover the pins in order to fix the problem. The hba has a firmware and a bios. If you don't need the raid capability of the card (I don't because I use zfs as filesystem) you can just remove the bios from the card. After that the dimm slots won't be disabled anymore. I think it has something to do with the bios on the cards. Currently I'm having a problem with my Intel x550-t2 as well. The system doesn't post at all with 4 x 16gb dimms installed and the x550. It does post with 2 x 16gb and the x550 of with 4 x 16gb without the x550. Tomorrow I'm going to cover the pins to see if it will fix the problem.

[@Tormentor1985]

Trick did work on the intel x550-t2 as well :)

[@gnarlin4964]

Are there no firmware upgrades that can fix this, at least on some cards?

[@stonent]

These cards are probably using SMBUS to talk to the management board in the server they came out of, something that's not there on a desktop board.

[@chriskeirak7729]

I have a SAS/SATA card M5015. when I installed them on the Z390 motherboard. it keeps beeping very loudly. can still enter windows but get exclamation error. I don't know if it is similar to the disease you are describing?

[@fabslyrics]

Genius Bar is not where people expects :)

[@thinkoutsidethebox5134]

I have a question about HBA cards I'm going to be using freenas then I will have 12 hard drives and I would like to be able to hook up a second set of hard drives externally what do you suggest that I get as far as an HBA a lot of people telling me to get the LSI 9211 8i and I would need two of those but it doesn't give me the option of doing external on the outside of the case

[@BredihinKA]

Спасибо. Это было полезно!

[@leexgx]

If it's in it mode would this problem not go away as raid is disabled (just got the dell h200 so may end up doing the it mode thing (so I can manly copy hdds, mostly overkill but it was only £20 with sas to sata cable) I seen that there is a uefi firmware as well (first one is legacy second one is uefi) I have the cheap 2 port sata pci-e card (looks same as yours) thows crc corrections when is been stressed out to much (cant use 2 ssds as crc events go up, they should of made it a sata 2 card not 3)

[@stonent]

I think this may be happening to me. I bought a Qlogic ISCSI HBA off of ebay that I can't make work. In 2 computers there will be no video on the screen but the computer will boot to windows (I can RDP into it) and the card does not show up. Another computer will boot with video on the screen, but the card never shows up. I thought the card was defective and the seller gave me a refund and did not require me to send it back, so I still have the card.

[@TCGProductions03]

What configuration stuff does the card use the SMBus for?

[@KillaBitz]

Servers have separate management systems where you can do things like update a bios remotely. I would suspect this would interface with that. You could configure an array without an os for example

[@CraigEngbrecht]

Dude, I have an HP Xeon server that has a similar issue, though it does not affect my ram, my AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards cause the BIOS to run stupid slow on any PCI-e slot below 1a. Since its trying to use my HBA like a video card!! Totally going to try this, and see if I can get native on the drives I am running!

[@scalamasterelectros3204]

Can you just cisel away the usles pins

[@kindanyume]

The sad part is this reminds me of when "plug n pray" was new.. and idiot cards did all sorts of stupid shit.. I remember one pci vid card that tried desperately to take over irq 0 by default.. /facepalm

[@thegorn]

The best fix is to grab a hammer, and repeatedly smash that motherboard. Percussive maintenance is what that shitty cheap mobo needs.

[@FireicerCooper]

Typical LSI's oprom developers failure again. I had this problem on every single LSI card i have ever owned. When i dont need to boot from a drive connected to the LSI card i usually disable the LSI oprom initialisation in the mainboard firmware and let the OS drivers handle take over after post. Some mainboards allow the oprom to boot after the mainboard resources have been allocated but considering how bad the programing and development is in regard to a motherboard firmware you can't know which will have this feature or not. Yes it is a firmware bug and unless you use coreboot you can't fix it, only find workarounds like you have done so the LSI oprom dose not steal a resource hard coded and allocated to the masinboard.

[@DaveBoxBG]

my opinion for LSI has just been degraded

[@CraigEngbrecht]

The card he is using was not developed for that consumer board, the compatibility for it probably hasn't been updated since 2011.