SOLVED Dead ASRock C2750D4I and poor customer service?

Redcoat

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Ericloewe

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I contacted ASRock support to see what they could do about an advanced RMA. They said that wasn't necessary and instead send me a new BMC chip. Got it quickly and it was easy to put out the old one and put in the new one.
I'd say "cool", but it's going to die anyway because of the C2000 SoC, so they just wasted their own time.
 

nojohnny101

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I'd say "cool", but it's going to die anyway because of the C2000 SoC, so they just wasted their own time.
Hmmm. I thought a faulty BMC chip was at the heart of this, that this crapped out and this prevented the system from booting. Isn't that what watchdog did? Prematurely wore out the BMC?
 

Ericloewe

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Hmmm. I thought a faulty BMC chip was at the heart of this, that this crapped out and this prevented the system from booting. Isn't that what watchdog did? Prematurely wore out the BMC?
Yes. That is, however, a completely unrelated issue to the one that affects every single C2000 chip produced before 2017, possibly after that, too.
 

Redcoat

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EyeKey

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So my motherboard died too.
When I bought this motherboard I knew about this issue so I followed the steps to disable the watchdog (and to verify that it is disabled). But still, the motherboard died after ~16 months.
So one day the server was suddenly non-responsive, and on the screen there were two error lines that repeated. The first one was "ipmi0: KSC: Failed to start write.", and the second one was something about bmc parameter, I didn't keep that line. After restart the server didn't boot anymore. (and in the log there was that error about CPU temperature as other people here reported, the time of that event was after the restart).

I RMA'd it (and had to pay for international shipping both ways and import tax again which sucks). Hopefully the new motherboard won't die the same way. (The supposedly fixed that issue, but if the issue wasn't the watchdog, I am not sure if it is really fixed..)
 
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Did anyone try to replace the Winbond W25X40CLSIG 512KB SPI flash? It should be fairly easy the only hassle is to get a replacement part which I have to get from the US.
 

Ericloewe

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That's actually a good question, I don't remember any reports of anyone going through with it.

I'm not absolutely clear on what would be needed to program the new one. Some sort of recovery mode may exist, as it does for the system firmware on most boards, but I wonder about programming serial numbers and such. A backup of the old one's contents might be valuable.
 

Ericloewe

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Definitely if it's only 512 KB. It's been a while since I looked at this in detail.
 

DaveY

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@DaveY, I guess this is your second failed board? The other thread you started back in 2016 https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-long-your-asrock-c2550d4i-or-c2750d4i-lasted.45445/#post-307647 has a lot more information in it on this Intel Avoton problem and the remedies by Asrock and iXsystems, both of who stepped up with 4 year warranty coverage.
Yup, I have owned 3 of these boards in the past and all 3 have died with the common problems this forum has reported. One was the power rails, other was the watchdog(bmc) bug (easily remedied by turning it off), and the last one was with the glue separation of the avoton die causing the chip to overheat and burn out. I'm down to 1 working board now. just too unreliable and a waste of time to RMA, swap, and replace.
 

DaveY

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Did anyone try to replace the Winbond W25X40CLSIG 512KB SPI flash? It should be fairly easy the only hassle is to get a replacement part which I have to get from the US.
If you're talking about the 8 pin chip that sits in a DIP socket, then I've replaced before. ASROCK shipped me a new one when my board died. Easy swap out
 
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If you're talking about the 8 pin chip that sits in a DIP socket, then I've replaced before. ASROCK shipped me a new one when my board died. Easy swap out

No that is another one. This is eight legged SMD IC that supposedly is the EEPROM that wears out.

Here is the component on mouser.com: W25X40CLSSIG
 

Gottria

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So is this board even worth it? Found a working used one and a good price of $50 and thought it would be a fun NAS project. Assuming it works flash it to the latest firmware which is 2.50.
 
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