Can I run a dual-socket 820Z motherboard (E5-2687W ) with one processor populated?

[SEAS89]

My workhorse 820Z, liquid cooled, dual processor E5-2687W  machine started overheating CPU0 (or at least indicating it was overheating - not sure if not a temperature sensor issue) - but I'd like to get it up and running ASAP and would be OK with just having one processor.  Can these be configured to boot with only one processor? 

Already tried moving CPU1 to CPU0 socket, leaving CPU1 blank and removed all the memory associated with CPU1.  The machine just fans on for a split second then stops. 

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

yes the z820 runs on a single cpu, reading the quickspecs/maintenance manual, or sales literature would have answered your question

cpu 0 is the socket closest to the front of the case, note the location of pin one is different than the cpu 2 socket you can match the pin layout of the socket to the pads on the cpu to confirm proper orientation 

you should have first tried to replace the thermal paste on cpu 0, then swapped the cooling pump/radiator from cpu 1 to 0

to see if the issue was with the water cooling solution.

note that the 2687w is a 150 watt part so it requires the water cooling option as the high performance air cooling option is only rated for 130 watt cpu's and the stock cooling is rated for 95 watt cpu's as i recall

the last step would be removing a cpu and doing a cpu swap

see the side cover for ram/cpu information

[SEAS89]

Thanks-DGroves for the reply.   I omitted in the original post that we did re-Paste the CPUs as a first step.  I believe the original problem was the cooler on CPU0.  I had used thermal imaging to see if the coolers we getting hot and they both appeared to be but the CPU0 one was fluctuating more than CPU1 so perhaps the pump is intermittent or the sensor controlling it is intermittent? 

In any case the lack of booting was due to the CPU after swap being in backwards.  Kudos to HP for having some kind of protection in there for such mistakes - as the CPU still worked after correcting that. 

As far as the manuals, I did check them but they seemed mute as to whether a single CPU was supported.  Either the maintenance or quickspec manual said that the E5-2687W only shipped in dual-processor configuration which added to the belief that perhaps it wouldn't support a single CPU. 

But, we are up and running now. Thanks!