HP Z230 Will Not POST with HP NC552SFP 10Gb 2-port Controller Installed

[Humdudgeon]

I have some super cheap Optiplex PC that have HP NC552SFP controllers in them that work great.

HP’s z230 offering looked great for SFF units with 32GB of ECC so I purchased 3 units and 3 HP NC552SFP controllers to go with them.

The HP z230 units have the latest BIOS (L51 v01.61). None of the PCIe slots are populated in any of the z230 units.  When I install the NC552SFP in either x16 slot the units will not POST.

The power LED is solid blue and the unit gives 5 beep tones for "PnP/PCI initialization problem."

When I install an Intel 4 gigabit ports controller in the z230s it works fine.

NC552SFP are 11 watts max so they're well within z230 power constraints.  I've also tried BIOS defaults and any reasonably related BIOS settings.

I knew HP used to whitelist laptop WiFi controllers and ceased doing that in 2014.  I'd never heard of HP whitelisting non-laptop units before. Yet, I see a thread on community.hpe with folks miffed about HP whitelisting SFPs on switches as well.

https://community.hpe.com/t5/Switches-Hubs-and-Modems/Blocking-quot-non-genuine-quot-SFPs-in-newer-f...

These z230 units are 2013 if whitelisting/blacklisting winds up mattering. I see all the z X40 units are even marketed with 10G SFP cards.

Thoughts??

[DGroves]

the  NC552SFP  is a Server based nic and is not targeted for home or workstation usage it requires a pci-e 8x (or 4x limited use) slot so if it does not work in a non certified system, then you will need to replace the card with a equivlent spec card that states it will work in home/workstation systems

https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docLocale=en_US&docId=emr_na-c02891935

[Humdudgeon · Accepted solution]

I wound up discovering the solution here:

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/desktop-pc-wont-boot-with-hp-nc552sfp-emulex-oce11...

@DGroves  Yes, this SFP is most commonly found in server units.  Yet, bear in mind 10G SFP controllers are also marketed with HP and Dell workstations as is the case with z X40.  The reason it wasn't working as actually an Intel smBus issue folks are sometimes having to work around as is described in the other threads. 

@Skylarking  explains it well here:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Anyone-have-Intel-...

Have an awesome weekend all!