MSI P6N SLI-FI / Platinum (650i) Thread

Unlinked, yes... I haven't really had the time or the inclination yet to OC my RAM.
 
dudes, take a look at this platinum version, it was done by taiwanese...
u'll need extra cooling on NB when NB fsb exceeding 450 such as hook on the bundle fan.
so for those who want high fsb go for platinum.

translate'em in case u're interested:
http://forum.coolaler.com/showthread.php?t=148262 (chinese traditional font)
http://forum.coolaler.com/showthread.php?t=147407 (chinese traditional font)
http://forum.coolaler.com/showthread.php?t=144750 (chinese traditional font)
http://forum.coolaler.com/showthread.php?t=146080 (chinese traditional font)

ms735036gpi32m14m24ssf1.png

ms735036g20609fj8.png
 
Nice! Hmm.. if he could bump the multiplier up to x8, he'd be up over 4ghz... maybe it wasn't stable there? Then again, it looks like his memory is still linked to the FSB with relatively tight timings - sheesh!
 
Spanki said:
Ahh.. that makes sense... I also saw another post that said the FI board was $114.00, so that works out about right.
Click to expand...

...interesting... it's back up at $114.99 now (was $109.99 for several days). I think they drop the price $5-$10 for a few days every now and then to trigger some e-bots out to folks who are monitoring for price-drops and then bump it back up afterwards.
 
Hey guys i bought a p5nsli board and now im finding taht they dont OC at ALL!!! ARG i cant get over 250fsb (2250 on a e4300) so im trying to figure out if i should

A: keep current board and dont oc over 250fsb
B: Get the p5n e Sli for 140ish and hopfully hit near 3ghz w/ stock fan
C: Get MSI p6n sli-fi for 109ish and hit near 3ghz w/ stock fan...

Any imput guys???
 
That's correct, p5nsli doesn't overclock for crap. Mine would hit about 320 on a 1066 fsb chip (up from 266) before it would just stop posting.

Beyond that, I'm not really sure what you're asking.
 
I finally got my case in and assembled everything in my sig yesterday. The only trouble I've had so far was with the new (unformatted) 250gb Seagate drive (more on this some other time).

I've only played around with overclocking a little so far, because I'm still in the process of trying to recover and re-install dozens of programs from my old machine that died, but I was able to bump the FSB up to 333 in linked mode with no problem (that brings the memory up to it's 'rated' DDR 667 4-4-4-12 T1 @ 1.9v). With a 6400 (8x multiplier), that took me from 2.13 to 2.66 gHz.

I haven't had a chance to try anything higher yet, but keep in mind that I only have the stock fan and relatively low (non Micron D9) memory. My plan is to shoot for somewhere around 400 FSB (3gHz), if I can do that with the stock fan. I use this machine to make a living, so getting it functional again (and keeping it stable) takes priority :).
 
you'll prolly be able to get it past 3GHz easily with the stock fan. so i wouldn't worry about that. and speakin of overclocking, i ordered my new cooling parts so hopefully i'll get em this weekend and see how overclocking goes again.
 
I may do a little more oc tonight if/when I get bored copying files around.
 
Just recently ordered this board; the FI version. Moving up from the Asrock 775 Dual-VSTA, a board that wouldn't oc past 310 stable. I plan on keeping my x1900gt for a while till I get a 8800GTX. Will I have a problem with an ATI card in an Nvidia board?
 
ScourggeFX said:
Just recently ordered this board; the FI version. Moving up from the Asrock 775 Dual-VSTA, a board that wouldn't oc past 310 stable. I plan on keeping my x1900gt for a while till I get a 8800GTX. Will I have a problem with an ATI card in an Nvidia board?
Click to expand...

i doubt it
 
I just recently purchased the p6n sli-fi board from newegg along with a p4 641 3.2 spu. i also got corsair 2(512) sticks 675's found out i orderd the wrong mem. trying to use one 512 533 stick and get nothing comming up on monitor... do i need to run at least 2 sticks of mem in this board to get it to fire up?
:mad:
 
no...list the rest of you specs including vid card and we can help you better
 
Okay the p6n SLI-FI w/
Nvidia G-force 6 Series 6600GT 128MB DDR PCI-E
Apacer 512MB DDR2 533Mhz PC2 4300 Unbuffered 1.8 Volts
Power Supply is a Xtreme LP 6100D 400W
The CPU is a P4 641 3.2mhz (Cedar Mill)
i disconnected everything such as HD, CD Rom... etc.. still get nothing on the video. I even tried swaping the video card. the system fires up as far as the fans go etc.. but nothing.. i remove the memory and get the error beep put it back and no sounds just a blank screen. :(
 
Here are somethings you can do...

Try the vid card in the other slot
Clear the BIOS and try again...you just push the little red button next to the battery
Make sure they are working vid cards...you might have static shorted one out in the process of moving them around
Make sure the aux 8 pin power connector is connected...since you prolly have a 4 pin connector make sure that is plugged in...
Make sure extra power is plugged into the vid card

hmmm kinda out of ideas. If none of that works I'm gonna suspect the board is DOA and you're gonna need to RMA it.

Also what was wrong with the Corsair sticks again? What were the specs on those?
 
I'd try a different video card if possible.

I had a lot of issues with the P5N-E SLI (same chipset) not liking specific video cards.
 
Nice thread going here. I'll be joining the P6N ranks pretty soon. Here's a quick qlimpse of what I ordered last week (the rest of the parts are in sig)...

MSI P6N SLI-FI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i
EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB GDDR3
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) F2-6400CL4D-2GBPK - Retail

I'm hoping that everything will be in tomorrow or Wednesday so I can get it up and running. It was reading this thread and some other threads that prompted me to go with the P6N. I was originally considering the Asus 650i board (P5N-E) but the MSI seemed to be a better choice overall. From what I've read the MSI is quite good for it's price which is what I was looking for. I had a decent chunk of money saved for a new computer but certainly not enough for a complete top-of-the line rig. Plus, I wasn't sure how much I wanted to overclock so at the very least I wanted a stable, cost-effective board at stock speeds. I don't have any particular need or desire to go with a $200+ 680i board when I can get close to one in performance/overclocking with a $110 board.

I hope to get everything put together this week. I don't think I'll do any overclocking just yet, I want to get some games and other programs up and running first, but I'll keep you all posted with the build.
 
That looks like a nice rig, cartman.

You know, ASUS boards seem to be most popular around a lot of these forums, but I just don't get it. They are almost always over-priced, even with fewer features. They also churn out new BOISes on a regular basis - but that's because they have to - I prefer having fewer problems to start with, myself :).

I don't have any bias towards or against any particular brand - I've mostly owned Abit boards in the past.. but it's been years since I was actively building new systems on a regular basis. I was forced to upgrade this time around by some damaged components, so I just did the best homework I could and the MSI board (a first, for me) seemed to offer what I needed at a price I could afford - and so far, I have no regrets.
 
Spanki said:
I finally got my case in and assembled everything in my sig yesterday. The only trouble I've had so far was with the new (unformatted) 250gb Seagate drive (more on this some other time).
Click to expand...

...in case anyone is wondering about that HD problem, here's the deal...

When I bought this mb, I also bought a new Seagate Barracuda 250gb 7200.10 SATA drive (my other older drives are 2x Maxtor 120gb IDE drives). This drive was going to have a boot partition, along with other partition(s) to allow me to copy all my old data across from the other drives, so they could be re-formatted and finally re-purposed for various storage duties.

So, I installed all the new hardware in my new case (psu, mb, memory, vga, HDs, etc) and booted up for the first time with the intention of doing a fresh/clean XP install on the new Seagate. First thing I did was pop into the BIOS and make sure everything was found ok (NOTE: Make sure if you are using IDE devices that they are set up explicitely as Master/Slave - you can't have them set to Cable Select). After verifying that everything looked good, I went to install XP...

Early in the process, the installer asks where you want to install it and displays a list of drives... at that point, I noticed that it was listing the 250gb Seagate drive as basically a 125gb drive (Note that the BIOS listed it correctly as a 250gb drive). After much head-scratching, I decided to just go ahead with the install and see if I could figure anything out later. I was planning to do a separate boot partition anyway, so I made a 40gb boot/system partition for XP and then made a second partitiion with whatever was left over (about 83gb or so).

Ok, so I finish installing XP, update it to Service Pack 2 and then install the nVidia IDE and other drivers from the MSI install disk. At this point, I use the XP administration tools (control panel) to look at the HDs and sure enough, only half of the Seagate drive is partitioned and formated...

At this point, it was easy enough to just delete the ~83gb partition that the installer made (I left the 40gb system partition alone, of course :) ) and then re-partition and format the remaining ~210gb how I wanted it.

So in the end, I got all 250gb of the drive formatted and working, but I did want to explain this, in case anyone else runs into this problem.

Now for my speculation:

- The new chipset comes with an 'enhanced' IDE/SATA/RAID driver... and reading the manual and such, leaves some question as to whether or not you need to install it in all cases. I'm thinking that you DO want to install it, whether or not you're using a RAID setup on your SATA drives. Note that the BIOS seemed to understand that this was in fact a 250gb drive - it was the XP install program (using some XP default IDE drivers) that was confused.

- Note that once the full drive had been formatted, I'm pretty sure that I re-installed XP and that it saw all 250gb (my memory is a little fuzzy on the exact sequence of events now, because at one point I also did an XP install on an IDE drive while trying to figure this out). Anyway, I *think* if the drive has at some point in time been partitioned/formatted, then you won't run into this problem - I think you might only see it if you are doing a clean XP install on a new, un-formatted drive.

- If my theory about the root of the problem is right (the chipset needing the enhanced nVidia IDE drivers installed), this issue may also happen on other 650-based boards, and in fact may also happen on 680-based boards.

....I hadn't actually heard of this issue in any of the forums yet (though I hadn't really looked specifically either), so I don't know for sure if this was an isolated incident with the drive I had (Seagate actually has a utility to test/fix drives with - sometimes they need to have thier size reset to the maximum - and that tool can do that), or, as I speculate above, some issue with the chipset and default XP IDE/SATA driver. If you DO run in to this problem, here's 3 potential fixes/work-arounds:

1. I don't have the link handy, but look around Seagate's site for that utility mentioned above - your drive may need to be reset.

2. If possible, partition/format the drive, prior to installing XP on it, using some other system (or before you tear your old one apart :) ).

3. Do what I did... make a boot/system partition and install on that, then fix the rest of the drive up once you get into Windows.

Cheers.
 
So i got my cooling stuff in. As far as the chipset cooler, it makes it soooo much better. Current overclock is 1700 fsb, RAM at 850 so its 1:1. Before installing the cooler it wouldn't even make it thru ORTHOS for 15 min. After installing the cooler, it passed 4 hours just fine. I even toned down the voltage a bit. So I'm leaving the overclock where its at. Might up the voltage on the RAM and make sure it can run at 5-5-5-15 still.

So yes I recommend getting a fan for your chipset.

Here is the fan I picked up for it...

http://www.svc.com/rr-ncw-l4e1-gp.html

I almost got one for the SB but it doesn't really need it and I doubt it would fit correctly haha. Would have been overkill but you can never have too much cooling.
 
Good to hear about your chipset cooling... I'm still thinking about installing this extra HR-05 I have lying around.
 
markt435 said:
Here are somethings you can do...
Also what was wrong with the Corsair sticks again? What were the specs on those?
Click to expand...

The Corsair was 675mhz 1.9v 1GB (2x512s) was reading the manual and saw where it said 1.8v and it listed the 533,677,800 for mem... thought i wouldnt bealbe to use them in this board.
I just recieved another video card indentical to the one i have for sli if i wanted to. I plugged that card into the board and still nothing. Cleared the CMOS and tried again.. as far as extra power to the vid card.. nothing on the card to plug in.. the fans on them are plugged into them selfs sort of speak on the vid card board. i did try the other slot and still nothing. have 2 more stix of mem showing up tommorow hopefully and will try them also. if not guess i'll have to RMA the board as DOA :( this just sux! waited a AWHILE for this stuff so i could start gaming and paying again. Just happen to notice omething else in the manual. recemends a 450W PSU.. would that make a big diff 50w?
 
Will have to wait till tommorow but i was just looking at the MB book and i see where the have "8" connectors for the cpu and my PSU has just the "4" pin connector.. thats what he was saying in the post reply to my other post. will see tommorow night after changing that.:D
 
yeah...but supposedly it works with the 4 pin only. i'm using an adapter i got from newegg...just converts 4 to 8. i guess you could try that and hope it powers on completely. otherwise i'd RMA it.
 
Think the PSU may not be enough? 400w max .... just riping my hair out cuz i want to get going on this d#$$#$ thing!:mad:

OH and should this run with just 1 stick of mem in slot 1?
 
mpdonovan@designsbya said:
Think the PSU may not be enough? 400w max .... just riping my hair out cuz i want to get going on this d#$$#$ thing!:mad:

OH and should this run with just 1 stick of mem in slot 1?
Click to expand...

yes it should run...and i doubt its the PSU. 400W is plenty since you're not running SLI.
 
mpdonovan@designsbya said:
Think the PSU may not be enough? 400w max .... just riping my hair out cuz i want to get going on this d#$$#$ thing!:mad:

OH and should this run with just 1 stick of mem in slot 1?
Click to expand...

I hadn't tried one stick, but yeah, it's supposed to work with just one. I'd also think that there wouldn't be any problem with that video card, or that memory, or that power supply... If the psu just has a 4-pin connector, that should be plugged in to the 8-pin slot, using the 4 pins closest to the center of the board.

Do you have any way to confirm that the memory is in fact (still) functional? I guess I'd be surprised it if was all bad though. When you cleared the CMOS, was the power unplugged from the psu? or just 'switched off'' ? You should unplug the cord to the psu when resetting.

Hmm... I'm pretty low on ideas as well. This is the first I've heard of this board not working at all like this. If you hadn't tried already, you might ask over in the MSI forums... they don't have any 'official' MSI people there, but the guys who run the forums do have access to the engineers, if there's some issue they can't address.
 
400 watts can be enough if it's a decent PSU, if it's some unknown brand with poor amperage on the 12 volt rails then better upgrade

Also to the users claiming the P5N-E SLI doesn' t overclock it does 400mhz easily , just like all Nvidia chipsets replace the thermal goo on the NB with AS ceramique and put a fan on it .... Mighth be a bad board or bad setup ...
 
Spanki said:
You know, ASUS boards seem to be most popular around a lot of these forums, but I just don't get it. They are almost always over-priced, even with fewer features. They also churn out new BOISes on a regular basis - but that's because they have to - I prefer having fewer problems to start with, myself :).
Click to expand...



I agree...that's some of the main thinking I used when deciding to go with MSI. Asus came out with the P5N-E much earlier than other manufacturers but it seems that having such an early release is more of a hassle than waiting to get the kinks out. I saw that all the Asus owners kept waiting for a good bios release and I didn't really want a part of that. Granted, Asus seems to finally be getting around to having a new bios out...but I'd prefer to work with something that I can just setup and start tweaking without worrying about getting a good bios for it.
 
leeghoofd said:
Also to the users claiming the P5N-E SLI doesn' t overclock it does 400mhz easily , just like all Nvidia chipsets replace the thermal goo on the NB with AS ceramique and put a fan on it .... Mighth be a bad board or bad setup ...
Click to expand...

Note that they were referring to the P5N-SLI, not the P5N-E SLI--totally different chipset.
 
My bad , just saw it yeah but that was common knowledge the first Nvidia chipset for Intel was pure crap in the overclocking department, don't see why they bring up a dinosaur in this topic to compare to a brand new chipset with an older generation...plus if the guy did some digging he would have known this board is no clocker at all, not even with older pentiums...

I won't claim the current Nvidia lineup for Intel is excellent but it's good once you get the hang of all it's settings. My Striker is behaving very well, only thing I have is the sometimes erratic Internet Explorer but my windows XP with SP2 has never been updated with a patch... might do that one day when they release SP3
 
Well Got my new memory this afternoon. Came home and dropped it into the system and what ya know.. its up and running nicely now. thanks all that tried to help me out with this system issue. So now that i have it up and running guess i'll have to read abit here and there about over-clocking sometime in the future. as for now i'll play with this system abit as-is. :)

[MSI P6N SLI-FI, P4 3.20GHZ, 1.00 GB DDR2 800mhz, GeForce 6600 GT 128MB Dual 160 GB SATA ]
I know just a little system :p
 
cartman, i read your posts and I'm in just about the same spot as you in what I want in a motherboard

right now this (the P6N Platinum) is my number one choice, but I am willing to change. I decided to put this board at my #1 instead of the P965 Platinum based on some reviews, but I'm still not exactly sure which mobo I want.

I want something really reliable, dependable, good performance (duh), a decent overclock, and some sort of good available resource if I ever have any trouble, I guess what everyone wants - but I'm looking for the best cost/benefit ratio in something that's straight forward that I can depend on. overclocking isn't my number 1 priority.

right now I'm thinking about getting 2 1g Patriot DDR2-800 ram (75 each, so a total of 150). I've seen a few people with G.Skill RAM and I have no experience with them, would you recommend that over the Patriot RAM (if there's a great difference I'll pay the extra 30 bucks for that 2gig pack they have, which I've seen linked to twice in this thread)

any help is appreciated, I'm afraid to buy an Asus because of customer support and all the cases of questionable quality, but I always have Gigabyte in the back of my head as well - I think MSI may have done it this time though, thoughts?

thanks a lot everyone
 
mpdonovan@designsbya said:
Well Got my new memory this afternoon. Came home and dropped it into the system and what ya know.. its up and running nicely now. thanks all that tried to help me out with this system issue. So now that i have it up and running guess i'll have to read abit here and there about over-clocking sometime in the future. as for now i'll play with this system abit as-is. :)

[MSI P6N SLI-FI, P4 3.20GHZ, 1.00 GB DDR2 800mhz, GeForce 6600 GT 128MB Dual 160 GB SATA ]
I know just a little system :p
Click to expand...

interesting to hear it was a mem problem. cuz if you look at my sig, i'm mixing sticks AND overclocking with them lol. least you got it running though. you'll have fun with overclocking it. i know i did. lol
 
I think that right now the MSI is the board to beat.

1. Best price so far. (Except for ECS with the rebate)
2. Has a parallel port (both the ECS and the Abit ditch this feature)
3. Has 3 PCI slots, two of which are available if using SLI (the Abit and the Asus have only 2, one with SLI)
4. Has good clearance between the ends of the memory slots and the back of a long video card (a weakness of the ECS)
5. Good layout of the IDE and floppy drive connectors--only the ECS is better here.
6. Decent cooling solutions on the chipset (Asus totally dropped the ball on this; ECS has a fan on the Northbridge which I like)
7. Stable stock BIOS (Asus is infamous on this point)

Looking at the overhead shot of the board, it looks like the ECS has the solder points for a parallel port, not sure why they didn't include one. If they had (or offer a version with it later) I think the ECS would be a strong contender, except for the memory slot placement.

But as it stands, I think the MSI is the clear winner.

The Abit is the least "650i"-like, I think, since the major selling point for me with this chipset is that it brings strong legacy support to a totally up-to-date platform. No parallel and short on PCI kind of misses the point for me.

The Asus has good overclockability once you get it stable and has things like EPP and linkboost, but I don't like the PCI shortage, the price, or the chipset cooling issues.

That's the view from here. Keep in mind that my preferences are based on needing at least two PCI slots and having a parallel laser printer that I don't want to replace.
 
eh....i got 2 usb printers, one being daily use and the other is a photo one. problem is, its an ecs...not good for overclocking at all, even if it was a high end board.
 
I just ordered the Fi version of the MSI board today but still haven't decided on which CPU to get, I'll more than likely order that this weekend. I already have a 2 gig set of Corsair Dominator PC6400 C4D, will this memory work well with this board?? If not, what would be a good set to get?
This is my first venture into Intel CPU's in about 10 years and basicly my first time OC'ing a Intel based system, so any and all constructive will be extremely helpful.
I'm not worried about cooling right now as my dual loop water cooling will transfer right over to this system no problem, just might have to do something about the NB like most folks here already mentioned.
 
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