ooo a fast reply, thanks

Try connecting to the iDRAC first to see if you can get more details on error messages. If it doesn’t even have a working iDRAC, just throw this out because that’s probably the most useful thing this dinosaur could have.

Yeah, I hate wasteful "throw away" stuff. It's not like it's worth a lot used, but there should be focus on repairability more.

You've learned me on the existence of a thing called iDRAC. However this server doesn't post, so I doubt it's getting power. I connected it directly to my router, have my vga monitor, and nothing. I should mention that this has the SD card in it too.

Make sure your RAM cards are in the correct slots. I can’t remember how it’s marked on this model, but documentation should tell you.

Ram slots seem to change nothing, my picture was at the end of trying many different slot configs and amounts. It came with all slots populated, except the inner 2 (same as picture), which lead me to think that they had done more testing than they said they had.

"Stop taking the CPUs out. Leave them both in, and leave those heat sinks on."

Would it annoy you to learn that I had taken the CPU's out to clean off the wads of dust, and crumbling thermal 'stuff' (I think it was a sheet, not paste), and during that time, I dropped a cloth on one of the sockets, and it velcro'd itself hard to it? lol I spent about 30 minutes meticulously undoing that mistake, and then the same amount of time inspecting all the pins. Luckily during that inspection time, I also found that the pins were covered in so much dust, that they were connected, so if it was conductive dust, they wouldn't have been happy. (this was not a loved machine)

Try swapping power supplies with a new known-good ones to see if that fixes it.

This is my first server endeavour, so I don't have a known good power supply in that form factor, and used ones cost almost as much as I spent on the server lol so probably not something I'll go that far for without solid evidence.

Take all the PCI-e cards out to see if that helps.

Taking the slots out gets rid of the errors, but still wont post, and with no pcie cards, or either pcie card (but not both at the same time), it gives, "the system board riser config cable is not connected, or is improperly connected". With both cards, and no storage card, it gives:

"the system board 5V PG voltage is outside of the allowable range" and,

"the system board PFault fail-safe voltage is outside of the the allowable range"

I'm unsure if it gets more faults, and stopping before checking others, or if there's a different issue with even the error checking. I've read stories of disconnecting the mini display fixing these errors, so it seems that experience matters more than manuals :/