New X11SSM-F build

[moelassus]

FreeNAS noob here. I've been reading the contents in the forum for about a month and based on my research I landed on the following configuration.

SuperMicro X11SSM-F Motherboard w/ Intel Xeon E3-1240V6 CPU
64GB (4 x 16GB sticks) of Micron DDR4 2400 Unbuffered ECC RAM (from the SuperMicro tested RAM list)
Seasonic Prime Ultra Gold 650W Power Supply
(5) Five 4TB WD Red Hard Drives (RAIDZ2)
(2) Two 8TB Drives Mirrored for Time Machine and other PC/Mac backups.
(2) 32GB SandDisk Fit USB Flash Drives for boot (the 32GB SSD I wanted was back ordered)

Being impatient, I immediately lept into installing FreeNAS on the device. It worked well initially, but then proceeded to lock hard after about 10 min. My mind immediately lept to a memory problem so I ran memtest86 and it would get about 5 min in and just hang solid. I called SuperMicro and they suggested to upgrade the firmware. I told him I wasn't even going to try that while the system was freezing as I was sure to brick the board. His second suggestion was to dial back the speed of the RAM. This caused an immediate improvement in system stability and it has not locked up since. Memtest was able to complete 20 iterations with no errors.

This board is supposed to support 2400 speed RAM. I've since gotten the confidence to upgrade the BIOS. It remains stable but I have not tried to increase the RAM speed.

At boot up however, the board generates a series of beeps that concern me. The first set of 3 beeps occurs at the point of USB initialization. The manual undicated that it beeps a number of times equal to the # of USB devices connected. There are three USB devices connected so that makes sense. There is a fourth single beep that sounds more like the normal start up beep. Can any other X11SSM owners confirm that they get beeps at USB initialization?

 

[Ericloewe]

You're the second person complaining about 2400MHz DIMMs in a week. I don't like the sound of that, to be honest.

Can any other X11SSM owners confirm that they get beeps at USB initialization?

Supermicro boards beep like crazy on boot.

 

[moelassus]

Thanks, Eric. Good to know the beeping is normal. I haven't looked in the BIOS to see if there is a way to disable USB Init beeps.

I will switch my RAM back to 2400 tonight and test it again since the BIOS update.

 

[Stux]

You should be able to check the system event log via IPMI to see what the ECC errors were if it was rebooting.

Could be one dodgy stick. Etc.

 

[DrKK]

I've been using Supermicro boards now exclusively for like 7 years.

They all beep, and throw a dozen POST codes, whenever they boot. I don't even pay attention to it at this point.

 

[moelassus]

I've become so accustomed to the silent, instant boot of most PCs these days that the SuperMicro boot experience is decidedly 1990s style and alarming to the uninitiated. :)

 

[Chris Moore]

Beeping used to be the only way to find out what the heck the system is doing.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[moelassus]

I switched the RAM speed back to 2400 and retested after the BIOS update. The lockups returned at both Auto and hard coding it to 2400. I tried one stick at a time to see if any of them would operate at 2400. No luck. This is odd since the latest BIOS claims to add support for even faster RAM. I called Micron and managed to get someone to verify for me that the chips I have are both authentic and indeed 2400. Based on the part numbers on the chips they're authentic. Micron still offered to exchange them for a different set. I accepted. We'll see how those work.

 

[Ericloewe]

It's good to see Micron standing behind their product. Unfortunately, I think it's the motherboard that's out of spec. I expect the CPU to be fine, since the equivalent desktop parts run fine at 2400MHz and far beyond.

 

[alwu]

to provide a datapoint, i recently ran memtest86 v7.5 on my x11ssm-f based system with 2400mhz ram and it worked fine and passed. my cpu is an intel core i3-7320 and the memory is Crucial 16GB DDR4 2400MHz ECC (CT16G4WFD824A). my bios revision is 2.0c and the memory speed was set to auto in the bios.

@moelassus, i hope you figure get everything figured out.

 

[moelassus]

to provide a datapoint, i recently ran memtest86 v7.5 on my x11ssm-f based system with 2400mhz ram and it worked fine and passed. my cpu is an intel core i3-7320 and the memory is Crucial 16GB DDR4 2400MHz ECC (CT16G4WFD824A). the memory speed was set to auto in the bios.

@moelassus, i hope you figure get everything figured out.

Thanks for the comment. I had forgotten to follow up on this thread.

Micron sent me four new sticks of RAM and they worked just fine. Very odd but I'm very happy that its working.

 

[Ericloewe]

That's good to hear. I was fearing that 2400MHz would be a no-go for most people.