MSI K7N420 Owners Happy?

[thorin]

Just wondering if you guys are happy with your boards?

I'm about to setup a sys for my Mother-In-Law to be and wanted to know if I should go Asus or MSI (I'm currently leaning towards MSI).

Thorin

 

[Dreadogg]

I just built a nice PC with the MSI K7N420 for my father. I have nothing bad to say at all about the board, it has not crashed once or give me one problem! The installation was very simple the drivers for the onboard installed perfectly and all work without one problem. The sound is very good for onboard and so is the video. I even played serious-sam on it and was very impressed! This board is perfect for the average computer user. Very cheap I may add, the only thing that sucks right about now is the ram prices!

 

[thorin]

" the only thing that sucks right about now is the ram prices! "

Ya tell me about it 256MB Crucial is $139 (CDN) but since I need two sticks for twinbank'ing 2 x 128MB Crual is $158.

Thorin

 

[Athlon4all]

Both are solid boards. The A7N266-E overclocks significantly better than the K7N420 Pro (Ace's Hardware declared it the best Ocing AMD platform in a recent article), but as long as you can live with under par fsb ocing, then the K7N420 Pro is great (not a owner myself, but I have studied this greatly and am fimilar.

 

[bluemax]

I'm trying to remember who made the only microATX nForce board... there should be more. :frown:

 

[splice]

ABit makes the micoATX nForce board.

 

[Athlon4all]

Yea. There are 4 nForce boards avialable today:

Asus A7N266 (No LAN, non DD 5.1 MCP, sucks hard)
Asus A7N266-E (LAN, DD 5.1 Sound (including CNR card), Video, great ocing (fsb up to 156 at least))
MSi K7N420 Pro (LAN, 6 USB, DD 5.1 Sound, Video, weak fsb ocing, but includes multiplier and vcore. Great price as well)
Abit NV7m (LAN, DD 5.1 Sound, Video, mATX form factor. Unknown ocing)

There are more 415-D's on the way as well by Asus, MSi, Leadtek, and Abit (Abit's will have ATA/133 RAID, and USB2 and be avialable for around $130)

 

[System of a Down]

I've got my MSI nForce running here and it's really nice. After three dissapointing VIA mobos, it is nice to be able to have and AMD solution that i actually don't have to mess with constantly to keep it running. I'd have to say that the stability of the board is top notch, at least equalling my Intel D815EPEA2 mobo, which is pretty impressive cuz that thing was bullet-proof. I haven't tried the OC'ing features on the board too much, but i do have it at 1480mhz from 1400 without any problems. I can't wait to get rid of my P4 in favor of another nForce/AMD system.

 

[AGodspeed]

Here's the specs for my secondary rig:

- AMD Athlon T-bird 1.4GHz
- MSI K7N420 Pro Motherboard
- 256 MB of Crucial DDR SDRAM
- 64MB ATi DDR Radeon LE (GeForce 2 MX disabled)
- 7200RPM 20.0 GB Seagate Barracuda IV HD
- Onboard nForce Sound
- Windows XP Home Edition

It's rock solid. The sound is great. And performance is top notch of course.

That's all I really wanted.

(fsb up to 156 at least)

Actually, Johan from Aceshardware was able to get the A7N266-E board up to 165MHz FSB with "everything running without incident" in his words. Johan also said that "running games at 172 MHz FSB was not out of the question, but 3DS Max rendering froze at this speed."

This is definitely one of the best overclocking boards out on the market.

Btw, nVidia just released Linux drivers for nForce. I've been more and more interested in Linux lately, maybe I'll give it a shot.

 

[Athlon4all]

<< Actually, Johan from Aceshardware was able to get the A7N266-E board up to 165MHz FSB with "everything running without incident" in his words. Johan also said that "running games at 172 MHz FSB was not out of the question, but 3DS Max rendering froze at this speed." >>

Yah I know. Sorry