MSI K8N Neo4 nForce4 Ultra

[darkeyed]

Any have a system built around this board yet? I have the new board but I dont have any of my other stuff yet. Just wondering what I will be in for. I cant wait to build mine.

 

[darkeyed]

Anyone using one?

 

[darkeyed]

bump

 

[murdmath]

Mine should be here early this next week.

Mat

 

[Vedder323]

same here...

 

[kindest]

i have been running mine for a 2 days now im just now starting to putz with occing.

im running a gig of ocz 3200 rev2 platnium.
so far im up to 2.10, 2-2-2-7

 

[SirAllen]

I'm also looking at getting this motherboard and would love to hear other's experiences with it. Especially if you have a 74GB raptor or a DiamondMax 10 running with it, I want to know if it drops the drives every now and then like the ASUS appears to. And I'd also be interested if any one is running RAID 5 off the SI chip and just the stability of the motherboard in general.

And before someone says that I don't need RAID, I do a lot of professional video editing so storage speed and reliability is very important to me

 

[jabronidan89]

Originally posted by: SirAllen
I'm also looking at getting this motherboard and would love to hear other's experiences with it. Especially if you have a 74GB raptor or a DiamondMax 10 running with it, I want to know if it drops the drives every now and then like the ASUS appears to. And I'd also be interested if any one is running RAID 5 off the SI chip and just the stability of the motherboard in general.

And before someone says that I don't need RAID, I do a lot of professional video editing so storage speed and reliability is very important to me

Yeah, I may consider buying this board as well. Its either this or the DFI board for me. Whichever is better, I buy. I won't be overclocking, everything at stock.

 

[Jim Bancroft]

I received mine yesterday and have had it up and running with XP for about a day now. I haven't overclocked but the board itself installed fine, no problems or glitches whatsoever. The manual looks nice, and there are plenty of SATA and other cables to get you started with.

I'm on the low end of the scale; A64 3000, Leadtek 6600GT, 512 MB Crucial CAS 3 Ram. As I said, no overclocking yet but also no complaints about the board. If you have any general questions I'll answer them as best I can.

 

[kindest]

well i tried to push my fsb to 250 on stock everything else and it wouldnt boot i had to reset cmos.
before that i was running 2.2ghz 2.5-3-3-7 stable.
going to try pumping voltages up now.

 

[Statzere]

Can someone with the retail Neo4 Platinum in hand tell me which picture the board actually looks like?


Newegg

--or--

ZipZoomFly


I've seen both of these picture floating around different places and I was wondering which one is real and which one is not so real.

Thx ahead of time.


---EDIT--- I guess ZipZoomFly updated their picture since I last looked at it.

 

[kindest]

newegg one is 100% accurate .
the zzf is small and looks ok now. but i know it was screwed in the past.

 

[CoolWind]

Just built my first system (yea!) using this mobo over the weekend. (The Newegg picture is accurate). Worked perfectly right out of the box. I'm still running BIOS v 1.0 although v1.1 came out the day after my board shipped :-(. Right now, I see no point in flashing BIOS, since everything works fine. Have used both the gigabit LAN adapters (nvidia and Marvell), with no issues. Using onboard audio - works better than older add-in cards I've owned. Loaded RAID drivers without incident and will test this coming weekend when I bring over dual WD 80gb's to a RAID 0.

As a n00b, I'm still working my way around to sort out making sure I've done everything right before I try overclocking. But right out of the box I was able to get a 3DMark03 score of 11594 (is that good?) on basic settings.

 

[xjoe]

I too am also almost 100% on purchasing the MSI nforce4 ultra board. My only question thus far is that if anyone using this board has been able to get NCQ working on their drives.

Edit:
Right now I'm leaning towards just buying 2 74 gig raptors. Or is it worth it (both price and performance-wise) to go with NCQ for a little less performance. I am just real worried that the drives won't even get recognized on the board after reading horror stories from the A8N threads.

TIA

 

[Jeraden]

Well, I hope they work with NCQ drives. Because I got a Maxtor NCQ 300gb on its way to go with the neo4 (as the main/only drive in it). If it doesn't work, I'll be quite upset.

 

[willyg43]

Hey all got my setup put together last night

K8N Neo4
3200 90nm
2x512 Patriot 2x2x2x5 3200ram
200GB Seagate NCQ drive
x700 Pro
netgear 54g

I am waiting on a new copy of winxp to do full check,
but it posted fine and recognized all my drives and cards.

I will let you guys know mid-week how install and OCing goes

 

[jose]

Can the last pci slot(orange) be used by any pci card ? ie. scsi or sound ?

Or is it reserved for the wireless adapter card ??

Regards,
Jose

 

[kindest]

im up to 2.25 ghz (over 3500+ speeds) with my 3200+ 90nm with
2.5-3-3-6-T1 memory. still trying to optimize both memory and cpu.

 

[CoolWind]

On NCQ - while I see nothing about it in the manual, the mobo recognized my Seagate 200GB SATA drive with NCQ without any issues. I'm at work now but will check tonight to see if there is something listed in device manager that indicates NCQ is enabled and functioning.

On the Orange PCI slot, the manual says, "The orange PCI slot (PCI4) also works as a communcation slot, which allows
you to insert the communcation card." This implies that the slot can be used for comms OR other purposes.

So far, my only issue with this board is that the space between the PCI-Ex16 slot and the first regular PCI slot is very narrow, so if you wanted to insert another PCI card in, you'd need to use PCI 2, 3 or even 4 in order to leave enough space to allow adequate airflow to a cooling-hungry vid card like my BFG 6800GT . I just wouldn't want to cram something right up against it. For now, the system stays nice and cool, but I think that would change if I stuck an Audigy 2ZS card right next the the BFG.

Has anybody else using this mobo got a couple or more PCI slots filled? What's your experience with cooling the vidcard in that situation?

On a positive note, the Zalman 7000 HSF fits just fine, leaving just enough space even for ram with heat spreaders.

 

[SirAllen]

My understanding is that the NV4 chipset and thus of course motherboard support NCQ, but that the NVIDIA drivers do not yet. You can turn NCQ on from device manager, but nobody seems to have had success in doing so (results in large scale data corruption). So until NVIDIA releases new drivers supporting it (their latest versions were released well before the NV4 chipset was ever announced) looks like you'll have to settle for leaving NCQ/TCQ off.

 

[Jim Bancroft]

So far, my only issue with this board is that the space between the PCI-Ex16 slot and the first regular PCI slot is very narrow, so if you wanted to insert another PCI card in, you'd need to use PCI 2, 3 or even 4 in order to leave enough space to allow adequate airflow to a cooling-hungry vid card like my BFG 6800GT

Agreed-- the space between PCIe 16 and PCI 1 is very narrow. Paper-thin even with my 6600GT, much less a BFG 6800. I suspect that's the case with some (most?) of the NF4 boards, but I wouldn't risk another card in PCI 1 for the reasons CoolWind stated.

 

[Parimal]

Do we need ATX 2.0 standard PSU for this board??

 

[juysocal]

coolwind, do you have to take out that metal bracket
behind the board when you installed the zalman 7000 or
the mobo doesn't come with it installed?

To all: which psu are you using with this mobo?

Thanks

joey

 

[kindest]

Originally posted by: juysocal
coolwind, do you have to take out that metal bracket
behind the board when you installed the zalman 7000 or
the mobo doesn't come with it installed?

To all: which psu are you using with this mobo?

Thanks

joey

you have to take the bracket off. it comes off with some pressure no problems.
i have the zalman 7000b all copper on my msi neo4 and its a perfect fit with
my ocz platnium ram in the first 2 slots.

 

[juysocal]

Thanks kindest

Do i need an ATX 2.01 / 2.0 psu for this mobo?

I'm planning on getting an ocz modstream