Has HP Whitelisted / Blacklisted Network Controllers on Desktops / Servers ?

[Discombobulated]

It's very possible it's not a whitelist/blacklist issue yet the behavior is confounding.

I have some super cheap Dell 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 gentleman miffed about HP whitelisting SFPs on switches as well.
https://community.hpe.com/t5/Switches-Hu...es/td-p/3909992
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??