Bad Box

I had to swap out a motherboard today at work. It was not a big deal to do the work. I was able to do everything except the CPUs. I have bad luck with CPUs. I needed help making sure the heat syncs were properly mounted and that goop was properly used.

This task had me by the short hairs for some reason. I've done this kin of thing before, but this one just wore on me. It might be due to the long time It has taken to get the parts from HP and the fact that we first got a new power supply. who knows.

• Unplug all the exterior stuff.
  
• Open the box
• Start pulling things off that are in the way. This box had tons of air flow stuff that came off easily.
  
• Mark everything plugged in to the board. This box had a dozen fans all plugged in sequence.
  
• Pull the memory and any other modular crap like that. Note where everything went.
  
• Unplug everything.
• Figure out which screws need to come out. Some of those screws are probably holding a heat sync on the back of the board for the CPUs.
• Pull the heat syncs off and make sure nothing is hiding behind them.
• Mark the board as bad with a big sticker.
• Swap the CPUs. You probably want to wait for the motherboard to be screwed down before putting the heat syncs on.

Then repeat in reverse order.

There is a tone of details. It is great where I work. People are willing to help me out when I come across something that I do not feel comfortable with. That is basically putting the heat syncs back on. This is because the goop you have to use takes a bit of artistry to get it right. It needs to be thin, but consistent. I'm not good at either. Fortunately, we have folks who do that and much more complex tasks for a living.

This case is a 1 U blade server. That means it is nearly two dimensional. Fitting one thing on top of another or running wires over or under something is a real pain. This made sliding the new motherboard in to place a challenge because every loose wire wanted to scoot under the board as I was trying to herd all the rest of the wires out of the way.

It worked. Left it running the afternoon. Left it running over night. Generally, it fails in the first five minutes if it is getting hot. Wish me luck.