Updating the graphics cards on a Poweredge 2900 server

Good to hear the simple x8 hacksaw mod works for you.

Now it's just the hunting fan speed that need to be sorted out, maybe BMC mod time  :)

Yeah, a slightly faster spinning fan could be a simpler solution and ideal if it could be found but unfortunately you can't simply play with voltages to control PWM fans. Maybe you could mod the fan speed signal output in some way by placing more magnets around the internal hub to indicate a faster speed though i'm not sure if they even work this way. If they do, 5 magnets instead of 4 will indicate a 25% higher speed that what the fan is actually turning at. It's all small small parts though so may be too hard mechanically...

And I have had consumer board bios flashes toast my board when flashing the correct manufacturers bios so I guess when people mod a bios, they generally don't want to pass it on to people that may not be able to recover bricking their system if things go wrong.

In case of BMC mods, i remember some people did make their modded BMC available. Can't remember the posts though.

Which PCIe was it? 3.0, 2.1 1.0?  I have a GT610 PCIe X1 that I have put in slots 3 thru 6 and even though windows 7 (64bit) recognizes the card the onboard video will not disable and allow the card to work.  Is there something I am missing here?

FreeDog, over the years, i believe that PE 2900's were released as series I, II &  III machines, which presumably have some differences between them. These differences may or may not impact the version of PCIe (which is based on chipset and/or CPU or a combination of the two). And these differences may or may not have any relevance to the issues you experience that impedes you from getting your Jotac GT610 x1 PCIe graphics card to work in your server.

In your case, wanting to get your PE 2900 server working with a PCIe graphics card, you would be better asking Baf questions about what works. That is, what series server did Baf use? What PCIe card did Baf use? What version of BIOS and other firmware did he have loaded on his server? And what type of DRAC was installed (if there are different types and whether they are installable)? Was he able to remove the DRAC, how? etc, etc..

Those that have gotten a graphics card to work in their PE servers seem to have used an ATI card that automatically disabled the on-board graphics. Not all ATI cards will disable the on-board graphics and it seem to be a bit of a hit and miss proposition. Those that have used a Nvidia based card seemed to have had more difficulties. It's also worth noting some who have tried ATI or Nvidia cards that would not automatically disable the on-board graphics claim they have been able to remove the DRAC card, which in essence removes the on-board graphics allowing their PCIe graphics card to work, but again this seems like it is not a silver bullet that works for everyone....

Me, i was lucky as my T610 allowed me to disable the embedded graphics via BIOS. I simple disabled the embedded graphics, modded my x16 graphics card to fit the x8 slot within the server and everything just worked. Others haven't been so lucky...  

Other than this thread by Baf, there are few threads that categorically state graphics card X works in PE server Y (where the server BIOS does not allow the on-board video function to be disabled).

If you want a working solution with little headache, and indeed have the same series PE 2900 with the same firmware, DRAC etc, just like Baf's machine, then take the simplest route and try his solution (which he states works). Consider buying and modding an MSI Radeon HD7750 2Gb DDR3 PCI-E Direct X11 x16 PCIe card to fit x8 slot (but you may 1st want to clarify the power requirements of this card and how Baf handles the issue if it needs more than 25W)....

Baf may have the time to clarify specific details of his system and what he needed to do to get the HD7750 to work. His answers may give you some peace of mind but at the end of the day, with such unsupported configurations where the Dell BIOS does not allow disabling on-board features, your fighting an up hill battle that many have lost. It's not a simple plug and play proposition which is what i think your missing....

And here is where you came from...

Oh and here is an old 2008 post and here is another old 2008 post that claims to have working graphics card on PE 2900.

FreeDog, here are some more posts for you to read...

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/p/19334714/19705496.aspx#19705496

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/p/19291862/19543677.aspx#19543677

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/p/19269376/19467625.aspx#19467625

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/p/19454633/20130940.aspx#20130940

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/p/19472056/20210177.aspx#20210177

That should clarify the simplicity of such mods :emotion-1:

hi all , i have a pe2900 with a drac 5 , all firmware/drivers updated and have been reading all the threads deeding updating the system, well it was all so easy in fact buy following most of the advice (disabling the drac etc ) it crashed the system ...

anyways the rig

2x 3.16 gig  quad xeon e5460 12mb ea

48gb ddr2 ecc 800

PERC 6/I Integrated/ Adapter 512 and bbu ( borrowed from  6/e)

PERC 6/e external 512 and bbu (i'm soon to upgrade with a powervault md1000)

2x sas 1tb stripe for os

6x sas 2tb raid 5

1x 2tb sata on on-board controller for dead backups and log files

1x sata blueray burner

10gig fiber hba

1gig fiber hba

2x on-board nics teamed with 10gig  and 1gig

DRAC 5 with all current firmware etc  on out of band magement

NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 2gig ddr3    <-- linlk to card

and a pci sound card

it was all plug and play . literally DON'T DISABLE THE DRAC!!!!  the snd i did the system stopped booting

I'm running server 2012  and have 4x hd ptz camera's on it 24x7 record motion tracking and ptz etc    main raid is just media for all the house 3x tv's,  2x xbox one ,3x blue rays, 5x computers (more when i host lans) , 4x tablets , 5x mobiles  of all makes and models

the on-board video limitations are silly ... it routing from back to front of case on cable plug in ...  and lets fase it a 16meg card is not even gui happy  now-days (camera feeds aero etc etc) i also wanted the ability to put the camera system through hdmi > hdmi 4x splitter  (3 to close tv's  and one to a TCP/IP multicast transceiver for the other computers and smart tv's etc) and work on the local server with the rack kvm screen .   i also needed space for customer backups when i work on there computers .

tip plug the video card into the pcie 8x  slot and any other raid cards etc in the next slots  along

it was all plug and play  windows handles it all , load nvidia drivers and off you go  onboard works along side nvdia and plays nice :) , GL all , hope it is as easy for you as it was for me .

Hi All,

I just read a lot about problems and solutions for instaling an additional video card into PE2900. I was able to do it, and my solution is as follow:

hack more than 2 PCIE sockets on the motherboard and make them open ended.

I've installed a Nvidia GTX560 card into 8x slot, and Ati 1200 series into 4x slot

No matter which one I've installed internal graphic card was off, and all post was always onto external add on card.

With ati everything was easy, but 128MB of memory and weak card wasn't the goal of the project.
 You can see the post, enter bios settings etc, as with the internal card.

With only GTX560 (with extra power cables attached) You could see the post, but could not enter (see) bios setting screen, or see the Windows loading screen, Windows keep restarting and crashing etc.

With both cards ATI is the primary one, it starts the PC, windows etc. Nvidia is as an extra one, but if you attache a LCD into it it will be the primary and only displays for video games. It works great with Tomb Rider (for example).

Now i'm considering to install a GTX 570 MDT (multi display card - stereoscopic gaming) or 3gb gtx 580, it will be used for various video and audio editing software as well with CAD like (google sketch etc) for 3d printing designs.

It already have 48GB of ram so it would be the best way to utylize like that.

I have PE2900 generation III with BIOS upgraded from 2.3.1 to 2.7.0 (2 graphic cards worked with both versions of that BIOS).

There is also a plan to fit dual xeon 5470 - i'm awaiting for parcel and a fan mod (gonna swap them for somenthing like arctic cool f9- another example).

I wish you all luck with your graphic cards I recomend the ones with external power cables = no power limitation from PE2900 pcie slot.

Keep in mind also about IRQ allocation, it is also recomended to disable second NIC (check IRQ assigment with BIOS - for the one that have the same IRQ as our new card) and if need change hem a little bit.

Just to confirm, i've upgraded graphic card to Nvidia GTX 960, and it is working lika a charm now I can play GTA 5 in 1080p at ~70 fps, or minecraft with resault over 800fps (if it matters. The thing is IT IS POSSIBLE.

I still have old ATI, so during boot I have no screen (monitor is attached to nvidia card), when replugged to ati i see post messages and can set bios settings.

Good luck with your modifications.

I just got hold of a Dell 2900.  I would like to put an updated video card (MSI Radeon HD7750 2Gb DDR3 PCI-E Direct X 11) , but I did not understand what or how to cut the card to fit.

Can you explain what you did & how to do it?

Thanks in advance.

John alias rookie

@JOCHARBR, reading the referenced links i posted above would have provided some usefull information on what the mod is along with an understanding of why it works (lane selection via presence detect logic and all that boaring stuff). You may have also gained an insight into related power and BIOS issues that could result in such a mod not working on some servers and then understand why it doesn't work..

But if you simply want to cut a slot into your graphics card to fit a x8 PCIe slot, then use a texts and mark the pins that are in the way of the card being pushed into the PCIe slot itself. Then use a very fine toothed hack saw to cut a slot into the card to allow it to mechanically fit into your x8 PCIe slot. Just remember not to cut the slot too deep into the card or else you may damage the card itself - how deep is too deep is impossible to say without x-raying the specific card. If you make the slot just deep enough for the card to fit reasonably well, then it likely would be OK but no garantee or warranty can be given - caveat emptor.

If you don't want to read too much but still undrstand a little, then look at the pic of my modded graphics card i posted in this thread, maybe even follow those referenced links as it's not too much reading.

But if it's a simple plug and play you want, then modding graphics cards to work within a server can be a very frustrating hack and as such buying a standard PC may yield happier days for you...

I know I'm late to the party on this, but here is a modern lower end GPU from NVidia with a PCIe x8 connector, www.newegg.com/.../Product.aspx;cm_re=geforce_730-_-14-125-775-_-Product (better than my gpu was 5 years ago though)

Where did you get the ati 1200 Video card. I know it is 2 years after the post. But i can not find any place that has this one anymore.  Would another 128mb Video card work in its place for this? I just bought my old server from work. Which was completely maxed out when i picked it up from them. The only thing it needs is a video card and fan mods that i want to do. I have everything ready to order but have been trying to find a place for this card.

thanks

Will

@will0w, nowhere have i read an accurate root cause for the types of difficulties many have had in installing a PCIe video card in their 2900 series PE servers but BIOS is likely a big part of the problem.

As such, at the end of the day it's still a '*** it and see' approach regardless of what one thinks. This is due to a lack of correlating data bringing PE BIOS version, motherboard hardware version, grahic card hardware version, graphics card firmware version, integrated grahics version, etc, that you can draw on to make an informed decision taht what worked for one person will work for you.

Because of the lack of correlating data, in one sence your working blind. You may actually find THE graphic card that has worked for others (after lots of searching) but then find that this card does not work in your system as it did for others. It's frustrating but can be fun solving such issues if that floats your boat.

However if you simply want plug and play, such endevours will lead to lots of frustration and waisted time. If you like to tinker and like a challenge, then by all means go for it - but you have a number of issues to resolve (and you seem to be aware of - like noise, packaging, heat, compatability, etc). 

Best is to read the many posts on this subject (and there are lots) so you can understand the issues amnd what may work in some instances.

As i'm sure you are aware, one of the biggest issues is why the 2900 series PE BIOS can not disable the integrated onboard ATI graphics. Maybe a solution, if you are interested in or can develope an interest in BIOS hacking, is to look at the BIOS itself. Maybe you can look at accessing/enabling that feature that allows control of integrated graphics within BIOS (as it may simply be hidden from the UI). Maybe you can bake your own updated BIOS so to speak and solve this issue for all. I'd expect it would be easy for Dell to actually do this but their interest would be 0%. It will take you lots of time to develope the skills (i've only done very simple BIOS hacking). 

Maybe you can try another graphics card or even another solution entirely like USB3 based graphics (which may sidestep some of the heat/noise issues).

The only thing for certain is that nobody can give you a 100% guarantee that somthing will work as there are some undefined variables in the equation.All they can say is it worked for me.

Good luck with it.

Thanks Sky i will have to look into reprogramming the bios. That thought never crossed my mind till reading your post. I know it wont be easy to do at all. Will let everyone know what i come across when i finally have a free time away from working on the servers and programming at work.

Tinkering with different video cards and such does not really bother me just didn't want to invest to much into old video cards to get past the issues i have read on the dell forum plus others i have been reading around.