102645 HP Z820 PCI Card Retainer Air Shroud, is there a sensor ?

[alecail]

I had this scare this morning. I was planning to make one last upgrade to my Z820 before switching to a more recent workstation, whether current like a Z8G4 or just one generation behind current, Z840.

My plan was to start using one NVidia from the Ada Lovelace generation, specifically an RTX 4060 Ti.

I'm not concerned about the architecture of the motherboard being suboptimal, being a 12 years old workstation; I just want to access the RT cores, but this is a bit irrelevant here.

My second hand workstation was initially sold with a GTX 980 Ti, which power specs are even bigger; GTX was 250W,  4060 Ti is around 150W. The 980 Ti used one 8 + one 6 (its power connector), and the ebay seller  connected two (from the Z820) of the 6 pin GPU power connectors to one 8 pin, and the 980 Ti was powered from the three GPU power connectors that way. It worked until I upgraded the 980 Ti to something that necessitates no additional power connectors (an RTX A2000)

Now.

I hope this is unrelated to the power connections (from an electric point of view)

The 4060 Ti has its power connector in the center, and it points towards the air shroud.

As is, there is not enough space left to close the card retainer. I tried to boot without the card retainer in order to at least see if the motherboard was doing ok with the 4060, but it didn't want to boot.

The power button was just turning on the HDD LED that it right below and that 's all

I also didn't manage to boot for a while after going back to the previous known working configuration. And it turns out I managed to boot by readjusting the air shroud until it positively clicks on the green side.

It also look like the AMT network interface has ceased to work. It's nowhere to be found 

So, I have 2 questions:

#1 Are there any risks to the motherboard in trying new, known good hardware on it ? The 4060 is brand new, from the manufacturer. I know this specific workstation had one bad RTX A2000 installed on it with a defective fan, and it shut down by itself and gave me the reason at the next reboot.

#2 Is there a sensor that detects that the air shroud is not properly in place, and will prevent the workstation from booting ? I suspect this is what happened here.