It never fails …

Its always the last thing you check that is causing the problem. On previous builds I had defective hardware cause undue delays and learned to always check the RAM first as he can be a disruptive player if defective. So nowadays, my troubleshooting precedence model is usually mobo, RAM, CPU, disk, …. I don’t usually include the PSU in that equation as I haven’t had personal experience with brand new, 7 year warrantied parts being DOA!!! WTF Corsair?!?! I order the top-of-the-line and get hosed!

Thanks to Milton@Supermicro we ruled out the mobo early. I ordered identical RAM to what he used only to discover my 4x16GB sticks were just fine. My expensive E5-1650 was hopefully not the culprit but I was getting prepared to RMA it to Intel. But before I did that I had a niggling suspicion about the power supply: there were some hints that maybe it was too new and didn’t properly support the ATX v2.01 EPS standard. I new my equipment combo should work thanks to Chris Snell’s post; but he used a slightly different PSU with explicit support for ATX12V 2.01.

So before any further RMAs I went and bought the HX850 for another $169 CAD @ MemoryExpress and voila, my X9SRH-7F posts!! Fuck! Unreal! Since when is motherboard/power supply compatibility a problem?