ASUS P5BV-M - Level 1 Passed


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ASUS P5BV-M LGA 775 Intel 3200 Micro ATX Intel Xeon Server Motherboard

 

Normally I would never buy this motherboard since it has only 4 SATA ports and it is quite expensive, but it came as a free gift with my recent purchase of a Norco 4220.  It was too good of a deal to pass up.

 

Initial impressions:

  • The mobo is compatible with the Intel Celeron 430.  This is the ideal low power CPU for unRAID.  It booted up with this CPU first time with no problems.
  • Installing the CPU heatsink and fan was new ground for me, and was a bit tricky.  I finally found the key in the mobo's manual - you have to press down two diagonally opposite pegs on the heatsink/fan until they click.  Then press down the other two pegs.
  • The manual has instructions as to which DIMM slots to use for different RAM configurations.  I'm using a single stick of 1 GB RAM, so the instructions told me to plug it into slot B2 (furthest from the CPU), not A1 (closest to the CPU) as I originally assumed.
  • The Norco 4220 includes front-side LEDs for NIC activity, in addition to the standard HDD activity, Power, etc.  The mobo doesn't seem to have any NIC activity pins, so I just left them unplugged.
  • I did have to change the boot priority so that the mobo would boot from the USB flash drive instead of the hard drives, but this is fairly standard on all motherboards.
  • I'm actually booting my server off of a 2 GB MicroSD card through a MicroSD-USB converter.  unRAID doesn't seem to notice the difference.  See here.
  • The mobo actually has 3 separate ethernet ports.  At first I was confused as to which one to use, but then I realized that the mobo's included motherboard mounting plate (I don't know what they are called) blocked all but one ethernet port by default.  I just used that one and unRAID seemed to like it.
  • Boots from unRAID just fine.  Got an IP address no problem.  I am able to access the web management page via the IP address, but not by the name (tower).  This was a problem with my other unRAID server as well, so I expect it is an issue with my network and not with this motherboard.

 

Syslog attached (captured mid-parity build).  Parity is building at about 70 MB/s with just two disks, not too shabby (1.5 TB Seagate 7200 rpm as parity, 500 GB WD 7200 rpm as data).  I'm running unRAID 4.5.1 in hopes that I don't encounter the format bug.

 

I'll work on adding a third drive and getting Level 1 Testing done soon.

Syslog_5-1-10_Norco_4220_Asus_P5BV-M.txt

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Here's another little trick I figured out with this motherboard.  Boot into BIOS, go to the Advanced page, and select USB Configuration.  Then select USB Mass Storage Device Configuration.  Change the emulation mode to 'Hard Disk'.  Now go to the Boot page and select Boot Device Priority.  Set the USB drive as the 1st boot device and disable all the others.  Now press F10 to save and exit BIOS.

 

What this does is makes the USB Flash drive persist as the primary boot device no matter what.  You can removed the flash drive for maintenance, even plug it into a different USB port.  The motherboard will always seek it out and boot from it no matter where it finds it.  If it doesn't find it, it just won't boot.

 

Attached is my second syslog.  I meant to capture it after the first successful parity check, but I forgot and restarted the server for another bit of testing.

 

I added a third drive, so now I can get this motherboard to Level 1.  I'll also throw a bunch of data on there and simulate a drive failure to make sure unRAID rebuilds it correctly.

Syslog_5-2-10_Norco_4220_Asus_P5BV-M.txt

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There are connectors on the motherboard for NIC activity, they're in AUX_PANEL1.  See page 11 of the manual.

 

Two of the NICs will be active even though the included IO shield covers one of them.  The one that doesn't work is the above the USB ports, which is for a management board.  You can use either or both of the other network ports and you should be fine.

 

I was slightly confused by how to hook up the front panel USB cable for the Norco RPC-4220 case to the USB header on the motherboard, since they were labeled differently.  Unfortunately I don't have the machine in front of me or I'd post how I hooked it up so other people wouldn't have the same problem.  Essentially I put it on the top four pins of the USB header but I don't remember which direction I put the three-pin cable.

 

When I initially installed the motherboard, I put DDR-533 memory in it.  This will not work.  The beep code that I got from the motherboard was not listed in the manual, so I had a bit of flailing around trying to figure out what I'd done wrong before I figured it out.  One long and two short beeps apparently indicates a memory problem, for anyone else trying this in the future.

 

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Thanks smeehrrr, I'll look for that AUX-PANEL1 connector.  Good to know about the third NIC too, the purpose of it confused me.

 

I agree that the USB headers and the other front panel connectors were a bit more confusing than most of the builds I've done.  Thankfully there's a good diagram in the manual.  This is my first time dealing with a server motherboard, so maybe they are all as poorly labeled as this one, I don't know.  I'll try to post a picture of my header pins for others to reference.

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Hmm, not sure.  I believe the attached syslog meets the requirements for Level 1 testing - 3 hard drives, successfully built and checked parity.  Will someone please confirm?

 

I have bookmarked this and when i get home later tonight i will take a look... unless someone else beats me to it.

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That's actually the manual for a different motherboard.  Asus has cleverly named two different boards "P5B-VM" and "P5BV-M".  The former is an older desktop board, the latter is the server mobo we're talking about here.

cleverly ? ?

 

Don't you mean confusingly?

 

Joe L.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I am able to confirm that this motherboard is compatible with the SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 expansion card.  The mobo booted with the card in either PCIe x8 slot, and unRAID was able to read the drives from it just fine.  I only had one card to test with, so I cannot confirm that this mobo can handle running two cards (one in each PCIe x8 slot) simultaneously, but I would be pretty surprised if it couldn't.

 

By the way, I did this testing in the Norco 4220 case, so I was using SAS-SAS cables to connect to the 4220's backplanes, not SAS-SATA breakout cables.  It shouldn't matter, but I figured I would mention it.

 

prostuff, did you ever have a chance to take a look at that syslog?

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prostuff, did you ever have a chance to take a look at that syslog?

 

I have it download and it got lost with all my other files related to my moving.  I have it separated out now and will report my findings tomorrow morning when I get a chance (I don't have Internet at the new house yet and am at work right now checking everything).

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I only had one card to test with, so I cannot confirm that this mobo can handle running two cards (one in each PCIe x8 slot) simultaneously, but I would be pretty surprised if it couldn't.

 

Rajahal - I can confirm that this mobo will work with two AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards simultaneously.  I had three new drives in the box, each connected to a different backplane (one to the mobo SATA ports and one each to the MV8 cards) running preclear at the same time.

 

I couldn't, however, get your trick with the BIOS to automatically boot from the USB drive.  For some reason, it cannot find the USB stick on boot-up.

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I only had one card to test with, so I cannot confirm that this mobo can handle running two cards (one in each PCIe x8 slot) simultaneously, but I would be pretty surprised if it couldn't.

 

Rajahal - I can confirm that this mobo will work with two AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards simultaneously.  I had three new drives in the box, each connected to a different backplane (one to the mobo SATA ports and one each to the MV8 cards) running preclear at the same time.

 

Good to know, thanks reporting that!

 

I couldn't, however, get your trick with the BIOS to automatically boot from the USB drive.  For some reason, it cannot find the USB stick on boot-up.

 

That's too bad.  What exactly didn't work?  Does the USB stick not show up in the 'hard drives' list?  Also, what brand/model of USB stick do you have?

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That's odd. My USB stick booted fine after I changed the aforementioned settings in the BIOS. Maybe it's just your stick? Mine is a old Kingston Data Travelor 4gb model. Thanks for reporting that it works with the Supermicro cards. After we settle in from moving to the new house I'm going to get one and some more drives.

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I've got a new Lexar 2GB Firefly stick that I'm using.  I configured the BIOS the way you indicated and when it boots, it just can't find a device to boot from.  If I use the F8 boot menu option at startup, it sees the Firefly in the menu and I can boot from there.

 

I'll give it another try - maybe I didn't get it quite right.  I will also try another USB stick to see if that is related.

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Hmm, that flash drive should be fine.  You might need to post some screenshots (digital camera style) of your BIOS settings if you can't figure it out on your own.  Either something isn't configured right in your settings or I missed a step when posting my instructions.

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Okay, I'm back - it's been a long week at work.

 

I got a new USB stick and put unRAID on it tried to have it boot but got the same problem.  I've tried both the front and back USB ports (I've got a Norco 4220 case) with both USB sticks both don't boot automatically.  I've attached a few screen shots of the BIOS settings - maybe I missed something?  Upon boot, I get this message: "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or insert boot media in selected drive".

 

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter that much if I can't get this to work - I can get it to boot using F8 and once its running, its fine.

 

bios_1.jpg.5fd2f0c5f6e638905f0bc16c9f32ed40.jpg

bios_2.jpg.419cd5e9a18daf7d2dc767b870250152.jpg

bios_3.jpg.2c2605133b3204dfac724c90615f0368.jpg

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Ah, I think I see the issue.  Try this:

 

Reverse the steps in your 2nd and 3rd screen shots.  So...first go to the 'hard drives' list and move the USB drive to the top slot.  Second go to the 'boot device' list and choose the HDD (which should be the USB drive).  Save and quit.

 

See if that works and let us know.

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