Is the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum right for me or us?

[imported_DEET]

Let me begin by saying that I have not posted here in quite some time but the time for a new build is long over do.
I see bits and pieces of the type of information that I'm seeking but alot of it is contradictory.
Let me begin with what I'm trying to do. I consider my self and average user in that I'm going to be using this computer for gaming, internet, photo's as well as there manipulation, music, tv and research. I rarely buy the fastest of anything as the price to value doesn't make sence for me.

Number 1 I'm looking for a stable relatively glich free Nforce 4 motherboard. Nforce 4 because I think that it is the best chip set out there for 939 socket.

Number 2 I'm looking for dual channel 1024 Mb memory modules giving me 2Gb of memory.

Let me flesh out this new system
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum or other board maybe DFI Landparty UT NF4 ULTRA-D
OCZ dual channel 2x1024 DDR PC 3200 CAS 3 W/ Copper heat speaders 3-3-3-7
Artic Cooling Freezer 64
Anetec P160 Aluminum Case
OCZ Powerstream 520 Watt Power Supply
NEC ND-3205A Dual Layer DVD writer
Connect 3D Radeon X850 XT Platinum edition 256Mb DVI VIVO
Western Digital SE 200Gb SATA 7200 rpm 8 Mb cache
MS XP Professional

I'm not against overclocking but I won't sacrafice stability or reasonable heat and noise.

So with all that said is the MSI board for me ? Is it highly stable? Does it have any particular problems ? I will not be using raid and there are a few other consideratrion such as the compatibility of the ram I've picked with this board. I would prefer 2Gb of memory but will go down to one if there is a good reason such as compatibility and performance. I've read that I would take up to a 15% performance hit if I use the onboard sound. I had been holding off on sound because I want one of the new sound cards that will be released later in the year that will give me a digital out to my home heater system which I want to use for my sound system but if the hit is that great I will have to take an interm measure to avoid this. The reason for the high end card is the possibility that I will pair this up with Dells up and coming ULTRASharp 2405FPW which is a 24' wide screen LCD with a resolution of 1920x1200 so I would need a powerful card. I can't seem to find up to date compatibility information on memory for this board but I've been reading that there seems to be a lot of memory problems with the nforce 4 chip set. Oh I'm going with the selected hard drive till WD brings out there new Cool and Quite drives at which time I will use it as my primary drive and reduce the original to an archive drive. I realize that this CPU may be a little under powered for this Video Card but the CPU I will update at the end of the year when prices are a little more reasonable. I have selected XP pro because MS says it will offer a free upgrade to the 64 bit OS. I have no interest in SLI.
This system without the LCD is about $2600 dollars canadian without shipping and taxes.

A little long winded but I thought to much detail would be better than to little.

I think that there are a lot of users that fall into my category and would appreciate your comments as well.

Thank you for your assistance. I hope that I'm posting this in the right place I realized that this covers more than just motherboards but so many decisions are related to its selection.

 

[darkeyed]

If you have no interest in SLI look at the MSI K8N Ultra. At stock speeds mine has been rock solid and a very nice board. I have a few overclock issues right now but so do the DFI side of things. Overall it is a good running machine and is so far cool even with mild overclocks.

 

[friedrice]

I have the Neo4 Ultra as well, and I've been pretty happy with it. I'm not a big overclocking, but MSI comes with a little auto-overclocking program, which is nice. My only thought on your specs is, why are you getting the expensive ram? Anandtech(or another like page) is a little review of RAM's and how much does the timing help. The findings were like 1% increase in FPS for the expensive OCZ over Kingston Value ram (or something like that).

There is one thing to point out though with what you have spec'ed out. It's better to get a couple of hard drives and put them on RAID. It's easy to do, and I've found that hard drives that are no bigger then 120GB tend to last a little longer and more stable. I'd recommand getting some hard drive coolers if your hard drives are going to be smack inbetween other drives.

And, last but not least, your processor is no where near slow for the processor. the fastest right now is I beleive 4000+ and you will not really notice much of a difference between 3500 and 4000. Plus, are the 90 cores for the 4000+ even out yet?

 

[imported_DEET]

Darkeyed, isn't that motherboard agp in which case it wouldn't work with my vidio card.

 

[imported_DEET]

Friedrice, looking at the Kingston site they do have one chip set the KVR400X64C3AK2/2g which is 2Gb of 3-3-3 for $484 vs. the OCZ for $550. Now the place were I'm looking to order the system from Nicx.com in B.C. doesn't have that particular part listed but they do sell Kingston Ram so I imagine that they would be willing to order the part although I don't know at what price. I would save $66 if they matched the price on the Kingston site. Is it me or the OCZ site doesn't seem to have very current motherboard compatibility info?

As for a Raid set up my thinking is that unless you have some applications that would benifit from it then is it not just hard on hard drives.

I think you are right on the CPU and I will be fine. It might be nice when AMD comes out with chips that have the SSE3 instruction sets and I'm thinking that when the price comes down and the speed has peeked on 939 that I would replace my CPU which would be 12 to 18 months from now and use it until I bought a completely new system.

Just on the side I have been keeping up on things as far as computers go for at least the last 2 years with extensive reading for fun and investment reasons. I also have to admit that I had intended to replace my current P3 450 which was state of the art when purchaced over a year ago and then was bitten by the problems and slipped time tables for what I'm purchasing now. If I had known how long I was going to eventually wait I would have purchased 18 months ago my current system has been hell to use. I will be ordering something this week.

 

[imported_DEET]

Can, anyone tell me if low latency ram would make much of a real world performance difference here, ie >4% ? It just seems with the additional cost of this type of ram one could get more bang for the buck by doing a cpu upgrade.

 

[MTSteel]

Zebo's tests with different RAM

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1475190&enterthread=y

 

[darkeyed]

Nope the motherboard is pci-e I am running a X800 XL and I am very happy with it.

 

[MTSteel]

darkeyed why doesnt that board you have in your sig show up on MSI's website

According to their website they only have 3 PCIe boards

RS480M2-IL
K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI
K8N Neo4 Platinum


I have a funny feeling you two are talking about the same board??

 

[HannibalTheCannibal]

Chaintech VFN4 is a very stable board with good overclockability I am hearing. Very stable with no issues arising yet.

There is also an ECS board 939 that has hit the streets for $80. It is an Nforce4 Ultra

 

[imported_DEET]

MTSteel, following the link for Zebo can either of these memory modules do 1T (I don't see it listed anywhere) OCZ dual channel 2x1024 DDR PC 3200 CAS 3 W/ Copper heat speaders 3-3-3-7 or Kingston KVR400X64C3AK2/2g which is 2Gb of 3-3-3 ?

 

[theblackbox]

i have the msi nf4 platinum sli and i love it, originally i got the dfi, but had chipset issues with it. The msi has been stable, runs really cool, and overall i've been very happy with it, and the sound from the onboard creative sound.
I have 2x 6600gt's in it for now, and it does everything well, and i have yet to have a crash

 

[Waylay00]

The MSI Neo4 Nforce 4 is just another way of saying MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum. It's the same board.

 

[zamarra33]

theblackbox, does your 2nd 6600gt comes close to the chipset fan on the msi nf4 platinum sli. I have the bfg 6800 gt and plan to SLI later. Doing some research on which mobo to get.