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PowerEdge R6515 black screen with AMD EPYC 7713P CPU
Hello,
We tried to upgrade the CPU in a Dell R6515 server from the 7452 to the 7713P in two of our servers. One server the upgrade went fine, and we were prompted to "fuse" or lock the AMD 7713P into our server. The second server would load with the initialization screen, then the screen would go black and the monitor would go off. The server sounds like it is still running because the fans stay on, but we get no video. I thought we might need to reinstall the 7452 CPU, then update the BIOS before reinstalling the 7713P, but every time we update the BIOS, when the server reboots, it automatically downgrades to an older BIOS version.
We did move the 7713P from the broken server to the working server, and everything worked fine, so we know we don't have a problem with the CPU, the problem instead lies with the R6515 server.
Does anyone have any suggestions to get this R6515 working with the 7713P CPU? Or any ideas as to why the server would automatically revert to an older BIOS version? We are running the server with no backplane drives, no SD cards, and no USBs installed. Only the CPU, memory, and power supplies plugged in.
Thank you!
DELL-Joey C
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November 21st, 2023 08:39
Hi,
R6515 would not have any compatibility issue, as it is supported. Are both server having identical specifications? Are their PSU having the same power? The working server's BIOS is the same as the issue server? Let try to troubleshoot the firmware upgrading first, maybe that can resolve the issue. What way did you try to upgrade the firmware? Have you upgraded the iDRAC first? What is the current version and to which version you're trying to upgrade to. Have you tried other versions?
TheServerNinja
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November 21st, 2023 14:56
Joey,
Thank you for your response! Here are the answers to your questions:
Are both server having identical specifications? Yes.
Are their PSU having the same power? Yes, each server has 2x 550W 100-240V PSUs and we have tried different power sources on each server.
The working server's BIOS is the same as the issue server? The server that works with the 7713P CPU did allow us to update the BIOS to 2.13.3 with no issues. We tried updating the BIOS on the bad server to 2.13.3, but when we power that server on it automatically reverts the BIOS version back to 1.4.8.
What way did you try to upgrade the firmware?
We updated the Bios using an efi file. We then attempted to update everything using the firmware updates section in the Lifecycle Controller. Every time we try to download the updates using HTTPS through downloads.dell.com the downloads fail and do not install any updates.
Have you upgraded the iDRAC first? What is the current version and to which version you're trying to upgrade to. Current iDRAC version is 4.20.20.20 and we are trying to update to 7.00.30.00. We have not tried other versions.
Additional notes: Right after we update the BIOS to 2.13.3 and install the 7713P, the server would load with the initialization screen, then the screen would go black and the monitor would go off. The server sounds like it is still running because the fans stay on, but we get no video. Then when we re-install the 7452 CPU, the server will boot but it will show a message saying "Downloading file cap" and it will downgrade the BIOS from 2.13.3 to 1.4.8. There seems to be no way to bypass this BIOS downgrade.