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I have a Supermicro 5016T-MTFB 1U server which I am in the process of setting up, but it has a really strange problem. When the system is powered on it will not POST until I press the reset button a few times, followed by pressing the delete key on the keyboard to "wake it up".

If I power it on and do nothing, the fans spin up but nothing else happens at all. After pressing the reset button once, the red "overheat" light comes on and blinks which is supposed to indicate a fan failure - but all the fans are working. Pressing reset again usually stops the blinking, and the system starts the normal POST routine but it will not actually get to the bios screen unless I press delete. If I don't press delete, it just continues to hang.

After pressing delete it will take me into the bios setup screen, if I exit without saving changes I can boot the system normally. I was able to successfully install Linux with no trouble...but upon rebooting the same problem happened again.

This board has integrated IPMI which I thought was the problem, so I disabled it via the jumper on the board. Did not help.

Each time this system powers on, it goes on for a second, then turns off again for another second, then turns back on again. I don't know why it does that.

Here is what I put in the system:

1 x Xeon E5630 (Nehalem) 80W TDP (it's not overheating, CPU temps stay under 40 degrees C)

2 x Kingston 2GB x 3 DDR3-1066 Memory ECC, unbuffered, unregistered (kvr1066d3e7sk3/6g)

1 x Intel X25-M 160 GB

2 x Western Digital RE3 1TB

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If anyone else has this problem, the solution is to check your motherboard PCB revision. Although Supermicro's website advertises that the 5016T-MTF supports Xeon 5600 series CPUs, it will have erratic issues unless the PCB revision of the motherboard is 2.0 or greater. Mine was 1.1, which was not fully compatible with the E5630 CPU.

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