A cluster of issues

All I wanted was to install Ubuntu on a server. Really. Just bare metal Ubuntu. So, I got a second hand R720. This thing has been a nightmare of issues. Let's start from the top. I got the server and booted it up. I couldn't get the server to read the flash drive, fix that. Then it wouldn't install Ubuntu. No drives detected. Then I buy a SAS drive tester. The drives were rented null in transit. Okay fine. I buy Dell genuine SAS drives. Those show up on my tester, great! I install them in the chassis, then when trying to configure RAID, S110 PERC utility couldn't see them okay fine. I'll do software RAID, I live boot into Ubuntu installer until it fails and drop myself into a shell and do a lshw and a ls /dev/ | grep sda and then run a fdisk -l on all the sda drives and what do you know, Ubuntu can't see the new 600 GB drives or the 300 GB drives. Then we determine its likely that the RAID controller is bad. Fine, I buy a brand new PERC H710 RAID controller that is compatible with my R720 and I physically install and but now I can't even get the option to load into the Configuration Utility for the PERC Utility BIOS. I've spent so many hours and a good chunk of change on this and honestly it's almost worth just going to AWS to not have to deal with this anymore. Please help.