Will this dual-xeon motherboard boot with a single CPU?

May 18, 2009 5:31 AM

Will a dual-1366 (Nehalem, Xeon 5xxx) motherboard work with a single CPU?

Specifically, a SUPERMICRO MBD-X8DAL-i-O Dual LGA 1366 Intel 5500 motherboard and a single Intel Xeon E5504 CPU.

The second CPU/ram will be loaded in a few months but I need to replace a box pretty soon so I'm bootlegging it.

I know I'll have to populate only the loaded CPU's ram slots, but it ought to work anyway, right?

posted by Skorgu to computers & internet (4 comments total)

It should run fine. Here's the manufacturer website the the MB, and all indications are 1 is just fine. In the manual, they have a screenshot with only one processor installed, so I would presume it'd work on your end.
posted by jmd82 at 6:36 AM on May 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm not sure if it had the same motherboard, but I had a 1U rack server from supermicro that had only 1 cpu in it (cockup with the ordering process) and it worked just fine until the second cpu arrived.
posted by DreamerFi at 7:32 AM on May 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

Fantastic, thanks!
posted by Skorgu at 7:43 AM on May 18

Update: One round trip by UPS later due to a DOA motherboard and the described system booted fine with one CPU. It's also hilariously faster than the P4 it's replacing.
posted by Skorgu at 1:19 PM on June 17