Friday 8 June 2007

System Builder Tip: Intel S3000AH Server Board Series BIOS Updates Available

The Intel S3000AH series server board has received a recent BIOS update to version 42.

Product page can be found here: Intel S3000AH Server Board.

Gotta make sure that BIOS is up to date, especially in this case as we are installing a Xeon X3210 Quad Core processor into an existing server that had a Xeon 3050 installed.

Previous BIOS versions may not be compatible with Quad Core, so the BIOS should be updated before hand if possible.

For new system builds, having a Xeon 3000 series processor around can facilitate that.

That goes for any server board BTW.

A while back, we got caught with an early revision S5000PSL board that did not support the 5100 series processors we were installing into it. It was not a known issue at that time as the 5100 series Xeons were just released and we happened to get a couple of the early ones. It took a BIOS update to get things to spec, but we did not have a 5000 series processor to install in the board to update the BIOS!

It worked out in the end, as we were fortunate our supplier had later revision boards in stock, so we were no further behind on our build time! We had the replacement board next day.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

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