Aurora R11, boot question

Will the R11 boot into bios without an SSD on the board? I had so many problems with the R11 I pulled the video card and SSD and built my own PC which works perfectly every time. I decided to pop another video card in and see if it will boot so I can configure it as a simple video server. When I press the start button the RGB goes through a couple color changes and all the fans start up. Then all but the start button stop and stay blue. The start button is solid red. After a bit it shuts down and tries again with no success. It has an HDD in it but not an SSD. Every pc I have had will boot into bios even if there is not hard drive. Just wondering if I should even bother?