Thank you for providing the info about the clips - it seems to be a very confusing product to support.
I have read the thread Allow B0 stepping on Asus W621E Sage in its entirety and found that these are the top 7 reasons for Xeon’s not posting in the C621 chipset;
- Faulty / incompatible RAM (i.e. need to test each DIMM in different slots one at a time) <— Note that this was a big issue for many people!
- Bent pins in CPU socket(s)
- Microcode missing in BIOS
- BIOS SecCore module incompatible and needs to be updated (I am unsure how to do this)
- CPU TDP too high and drawing too much power on boot (i.e. 240W vs 204W)
- Using incompatible GPU (legacy only with CSM disabled or UEFI only with CSM enabled)
- BMC firmware not updated
Note the POST error codes for the memory issues, “Supermicros show post code 53 which is a mem error, Asus showed bb after cycling of b1-7”
In regards to HPE ProLiant Gen10 Servers, I have examined many BIOS for the HPE Apollo 6500 Gen10 XL230k U37 (which supports the 8176F) and compared them to the Supermicro X11DPG-QT.
For each BIOS version of your Supermicro X11DPG-QT motherboard I can see the following;
v1.0 (X11DPG7.622)
ME FW 04.00.03.211
CPUID 50650 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50651 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000037
CPUID 50654 Microcode 20000022
v2.0 (X11DPG7.B29)
ME FW 04.00.04.288
CPUID 50650 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50651 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000037
CPUID 50654 Microcode 20000030
v2.0a (X11DPG7.C05)
ME FW 04.00.04.288
CPUID 50650 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50651 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000037
CPUID 50654 Microcode 2000003A
v2.0b (X11DPG8.2265)
ME FW 04.00.04.294
CPUID 50650 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50651 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000037
CPUID 50654 Microcode 20000043
v2.1 (X11DPG8.720)
ME FW 04.00.04.340
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000037
CPUID 50654 Microcode 2000004D
v3.0a (X11DPG8.C21)
ME FW 04.01.03.239
CPUID 50654 Microcode 20000057
CPUID 50655 Microcode 30000010
CPUID 50656 Microcode 40000013
CPUID 50657 Microcode 50000013
You can see that CPUID’s 50650 and 50651 were removed in v2.1 and that all pre-production silicon support was removed in v3.0a (e.g. 50650, 50651, 50652, 50653) when Cascade Lake support was added. In the thread I linked above many people noted that v2.x of Supermicro firmware supported QS Xeons without any modification, as such I didn’t include details for 3.0b, 3.0c, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4a, 3.4, 3.5, but can if you want.
The HP XL230k U37 BIOS does not contain Intel Management Engine Firmware (I believe it is stored on a seperate EEPROM) so I can only compare the microcodes;
v1.00 (U37_1.00_06_02_2017.signed.flash)
v1.02 (U37_1.02_06_14_2017.signed.flash)
CPUID 50651 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000034
CPUID 50654 Microcode 20000022
v1.20 (U37_1.20_08_18_2017.signed.flash)
v1.22 (U37_1.22_09_29_2017.signed.flash)
v1.26 (U37_1.26_11_14_2017.signed.flash)
CPUID 50651 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000034
CPUID 50654 Microcode 20000029
v1.32 (U37_1.32_02_01_2018.signed.flash)
v1.38 (U37_1.38_03_20_2018.signed.flash)
v1.40 (U37_1.40_06_15_2018.signed.flash)
CPUID 50651 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000034
CPUID 50654 Microcode 20000043
v1.42 (U37_1.42_06_20_2018.signed.flash)
CPUID 50651 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000034
CPUID 50654 Microcode 2000004D
v1.46 (U37_1.46_10_02_2018.signed.flash)
CPUID 50651 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000034
CPUID 50654 Microcode 20000050
v1.50 (U37_1.50_12_29_2018.signed.flash)
CPUID 50651 Microcode 8000002B
CPUID 50652 Microcode 80000034
CPUID 50654 Microcode 20000057
v2.02 (U37_2.02_03_19_2019.signed.flash)
CPUID 50654 Microcode 2000005A
CPUID 50655 Microcode 3000000F
CPUID 50656 Microcode 40000017
CPUID 50657 Microcode 50000017
Similar to Supermicro, when Cascade lake support was added all pre-production silicon support was removed in BIOS v2.02 and later.
According to the Asus W621E Sage thread B0 stepping CPUs (CPUIDs 60652 & 60653) work on these Supermicro motherboards without BIOS modification if the correct microcode is present;
X11DAC
X11DPG-Q
X11DPG-QT
X11DPH-T
X11DPH-i
X11DPI-N
X11DAi-N
Unfortunately no-one mentioned getting any Xeon’s with integrated Omni-Path Architecture (OPA) fabric to work (i.e. 6126Fd, 6130F, 6138F, 6142F, 6148F, 8160F, 8176F) which should all be H0 stepping, the same as other retail Xeons.
You might want to check which ME Firmware version is currently on the motherboard and try different versions if downgrading is possible - I would highly recommend obtaining a BIOS programmer and backing up the BIOS & ME EEPROMS before you attempt this!