[H] MSI K8N NEO 4 Platinum review??

S

Sparrow_69

Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2004
Messages
776
[H] gave this board a very good review. However, on the last page, this comment was added:

We at HardOCP are sorry to report that this MSI K8N Neo4 motherboard has experienced errors in the field with overclockers. There seem to be some bugs that MSI cannot fix that are specific to this board that we never experienced in our testing. That said, we are pulling our award given, and advise you to look elsewhere should you be in the market for an enthusiast motherboard.

Anyone know what the problems are? Seemed like a good board at a decent price before I saw that...
 
I believe they pulled the reward due to problems with overclocking on Winchester cores. I suppose that if you don't have one (or don't plan on overclocking with one), it would otherwise be really good.
 
Do you have any info regarding their problems Yoshiyuki Blade? I wrote Morry and email about the board, and his official response was: " believe the issues were memory related when overclocking the board."

Is it just me, or does every mobo out there have some problems? If its not system stability because of memory issues, its overclocking problems, heat-pipe inefficiencies, etc. There always seems to be something. In the end, the only board that seems to be "ok" for the most part, is the A8N, but even that has voltage issues with regards to the X2 cpus...
 
I think (please, don't quote me on this) that the problems were mainly with, A) the memory dividers, B) some Winchester cores, and C) "the 219" bug, where some boards don't appear to lock the PCI/PCI-E bus properly, and most users are unable to boot beyond a HTT of 219Mhz.
Again....I THINK...
 
OCing bugs. You can check the MSI forums and find pages and pages on it.
 
Basically the issues that existed have all been resolved.

They were generally the Winchester OC Issue, Issue with 4 sticks of ram and a requirement for a -5v rail if you have an Onboard Sound Blaster Live chipset (SLI).

The boards sold now don't suffer the issues as they've been corrected at manufacturing and the -5v rail is not required so ATX 2.0 Power Supplies are fine.

Use the newest Bios and don't mess about with budget core components (Ram, PSU, CPU Cooler, Case) and this board will make you impressed.

These K8N Platinum boards are awsome in my mind and I've used MSI boards (NF2, 3 ond now 4) for a very long time without any real issues. My cast off's are still running solid for friends or family today.

Some people have bad luck and others don't research components or think they cansave some money by buying cheap ram and fancy cases with shitty airflow and bundled PSU's and then they have problems.

It;s not very often that people can just point a finger and blame the Motherboard for issues.
 
I was looking at pairing it with a 4000+ San Diego, BFG 7800GTX, 2x1Gb OCZ Platinum EL.

MellowDude: What is the max Voltage that you can set for the ram? Do you think I would be ok with the 380 W PSU that came with the Sonata? I was considering getting a 485W Enermax Noisetaker.. Ha, I just noticed that you are using the Sonata :D
 
With a 7800GTX I'd recommend you get the bigger P/S. Really depends on what other components your running but if your going to overclock it would make sense to eliminate any potential low rail voltage issues. I personally prefer Antec PSU's but i've used Enermax alot in the past aswell and never had any issues.

With my SLI board and the 3.6 Bios I believe the Memory Max Voltage is only about 2.9v.

Further bios revisions might allow higher voltages but your going to have a fast system regardless without needing to push your ram.

Here's the spec of another system which is quite happy on the MSI platform just so you know it should be O.K for you if thats what you decide to use.

AMD64 4000+ 2.4Ghz (OC'[email protected]) 1M Cache San Diego Core + MSI K8N Nforce4 Platinum SLi PCI-e 24 bit 7.1 sound + 7800GTX 256 meg (OC'd @470/1300) + 2 x 1GB of Muskin 2-3-2 HP DC DDR400 + Leadman 500W PSU + 2 x 250gig SATA's in RAID 0 + 3D Mark 05 = 8333
 
Sparrow_69 said:
Tks for the info MellowDude. How do you like your Zalman cooler?
Click to expand...

I really like it. As per my sig I only run it off the Fanmate controller and leave it at around 1200 - 1250RPM and it's nice and quiet.

Seems to keep my system and CPU nice and cool so I'm happy. People have preferences for different coolers and I really don't care about a few degrees up or down as long as I'm generally somewhere below 40C. A quiet system is more important to me.
 
The setup in my sig is working nicely :)

EDIT: Though I'll say that the v1.6 BIOS that came on it by default was absolute crap. I had all kinds of problems getting it working. However, an update to v1.9 took care of it :)
 
Mines running sweet, I just bought it a few weeks ago. They fixed most of those problems, and yet sadly people cling to them. Running an X2 @ 2.7Ghz
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top