I just wanted a cheap Epyc server...

Wow, that merch plug at the very beginning - have a downvote.

This is a great indication for me to never recommend Quanta to my clients.

HP will acknowledge a server, even give you a changelog on the drivers and BIOS... wait, you want to download them? That will be $2000 for a year of support.

Customer: Yeah so I have this Quanta server. Can I have the documentation and BIOS for it please? Quanta: I'm sorry. What server? Customer: Model QuantaX111 Quanta: I'm sorry but we don't make that. Customer: You, Quanta, don't make the QuantaX111? It came out 5 years ago. It has your logo on the front panel and your branding on the BIOS. Quanta: No we don't make that. Customer: There is a 1 year old internet archive page of your website showing a product page for the QuantaX111. The latest BIOS update was 10 months ago. Quanta: No, I think you have the wrong Quanta. We don't make that one. Customer: I got this number from the support contract that I bought from you, that is still valid for another 4 months. Quanta: I don't know what to tell you. We certainly didn't make that server. But if you are interested in Quanta servers let me transfer you to our sales team... Customer: No wait....

19:50 "... buying a product for which the original manufacturer refuses to acknowledge it ever even existed." Cisco has entered the chat.

Thanks for taking one for the team this time, hopefully next time will be the one :)

I've made a habit, after quite a number of problematic BIOS updates from much more mainstream vendors, to always dump the known working bios to a file via the flashing utility or an SPI programmer, before updating... such a bummer :(

Reach out to Rossman, Quantas lack of support may actually be illegal in some states like Cali with right 2 repair laws.

If anyone has a bricked motherboard, router or other device which stores its firmware on a standard EEPROM, there's no need to buy an expensive dedicated EEPROM programmer. A Raspberry Pi can be used to read/write EEPROM chips, and does an excellet job. Just connect the right pins up to the chip and off you go. Sorry this project didn't work out for you Jeff, it was a noble attempt. Seeing enterprise equipment being treated as disposible after only a few years use is so upsetting, especially when it still has so much performance potential. Keep up the good work.

And that's why I only use SuperMicro, ASRock Rack, Gigabyte and HPE Servers. HPE of them is also shitty with their BIOS/BMC support, allowing you only to download them if you have an active support contract, but the others just give you everything you could want. The neat part about HPE is that even if they don't support homelab use-cases their hardware usually always just works. So far I've never had an issue with an HPE system that uses HPE certified components. Much nicer to use SuperMicro, ASrock and Gigabyte stuff tho, despite the jankiness of ASR and Gigabyte.

Great video as always Jeff, As head Curator of the unofficial Bristol museum of enterprise computing in the UK (or shed full of junk as my wife calls it) I know first hand how our hobby can simply lead us to "throwing good money after bad" as they say. It's great to share these bad experiences so we can tick that idea off the list. Brilliant. I am currently sipping a UK Brewdog Triple Hazy Jane IPA at a rather cheek enpinkening 9.5 volts and will be also trying a scotch dismount in honor of your helpful video with a Talisker Skye I picked up last month when visiting the Northern parts of my island at their distillery, in my opinion the best part of the UK. Keep em coming.

The fact they have no BMC reset header is mind boggling to me. All other major brands have them for this reason. This way their techs don't have to RMA an entire server when a bios update fails and instead they can just reset the BMC, login to IPMI and then reflash the bios on site.

If companies like this are going to deliberately make their old kit unusable by withdrawing docs, bios updates, etc. then they should have to take back the equipment at their cost for proper recycling, rather than getting to dump their now useless crap in the used market.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Soon as you said investigate the BMC I was like, "Oh, oh no...". Cut to the scotch...

Thank you for posting this. We need a t-shirt for all of us who have been here. Hardware manufacturers who make stuff so proprietary that it ends up as e-waste rather than in a home lab or reused for education should be named, shamed and fined.

If I was you, I'd be beyond more frustrated than you. I've had some very harsh Epyc situations myself. I think you made it nicer because you wanted to keep your cool and share a video with us. As someone, on my other channel, who's uploaded a LOT of DIY for automotive... suck projects like this, I didn't always have the heart to post it. Bravo man! Job well done!

Sad to hear, mate. EPYC CPUs are also sometimes bundled to a specific motherboard vendor nowadays (due to a security fuse; or as I suppose, killing the secondary market on purpose). That should be indeed a crime.

I saw lots of red flags from these kinds of proprietary servers when I was looking to upgrade to Epyc. Not to mention sketchy stuff like vendor-locked CPUs which I personally believe should be illegal. In the end, I found an Epyc 7313P for just over $400 and then paired it with a new ROMED8-2T and 256GB DDR4 3200. All in it cost me just under $1,400, but the build went together without any major setbacks. Now it's in an ATX chassis and not a slick rackmount node, but that was a compromise I was happy to make.

Learning about things that don't work, is as important as learning what does. Thanks for posting your fail video anyway! And yes AC is important as it is hot in the valley this week!