MSI P35 Neo2-FR

[mnmsmith]

I have used MSI boards for years and never had a problem with them. Seems they are not talked about much these days. I'm considering the MSI P35 Neo2-FR for a Q6600. Anyone out there have any experience with this board, likes/dislikes? My second choice is the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R, but the last time I bought a Gigabyte board (years ago), it gave me problems and was replaced by a MSI. I realize times change, so I'm looking for input.

 

[Xcom1Cheetah]

I have also short listed this board for my Q6600... It seems to be based on the same platinum design minus Firewire and Digital Sound output and MSI P35 Platinum has got pretty impressive reviews not only from tech websites but also by the average user... I find MSI Platinum and MSI Neo2 FR board both having highest rating by the users at newegg..

So i believe its a pretty good choice

 

[adiv12121]

So far I love the MSI Neo2-fr. It has everything the platinum has but without firewire. I was also considering the GA-P35-DS3R, but I picked up the MSI board for about $40 less than the Gigabyte, so that was an easy choice.

 

[chuckm]

This board has caught my attention too, it's reviewed right here;
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3169
Xtreme also has thread going about this board.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...howthread.php?t=161618

 

[Gillbot]

I love my Neo2-FR, over 500fsb right out of the box.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm pretty happy with my DS3R, I know nothing about the MSI Neo2-FR.

 

[Tullphan]

Does anyone that owns this board have it installed in a P182 w/a 520HX?
I'm curious to know if the 8 pin connector will reach behind the motherboard tray & over the top w/o an extension.

 

[EarthwormJim]

I had a bad experience with this board. I had two fail on me within hours of installing the motherboard.

I was overclocking a quad core, but not to ridiculous levels (450fsb 8x multi 1.5v nb). Maybe the 4 phase pwm couldn't handle the power requirements. I even had fans blowing on the heatsinks, so I doubt they were overheating.

I don't know, maybe I just had bad luck, but my DFI LP LT P35 and Gigabyte P35-DS4 had no problems.

 

[Jhatfie]

Love my Neo2-FR. Does up to 525 FSB. Overclocks better than the Gigabyte DS3L I was fooling with and does better with my memory as well. No complaints, only praise for the board. I seem to remember hearing that the board has some issues with the quads, not sure if that is true however. I am just running my E8400.

I am using mine in a P180 and with my coolermaster RPP 650W, the 8 pin lead was a hair to short to route through the back to the connector on the board. My OCZ PSU might have worked as the cables on that thing were long.

 

[larciel]

I have some problem with onboard Marvel IDE/SATA controller

2 DVDRW (1 IDE/1SATA) do not burn cd nor DVDs. They can read fine but whenever I try to burn something it gives out before burning.

 

[exar333]

Like the board; haven't pushed the FSB limits as I only have a 21xx series CPU. Runs cool and stable.

 

[kyussinchains]

Hi guys, I just bought a new system setup consisting of

Intel 2160 CPU
MSI Neo2-fr motherboard
2x1Gb Corsair xms2 pc6400
corsair vx 550w PSU

I plugged everything in and as expected it didnt boot, I put my XP cd in and chose repair install, yet again it did not boot.

it got to the black screen with the windows logo and progress bar then locks up.

I've reformatted, re-partitioned and done a clean install and still nothing. I've tried my hard disk controller in IDE, ACHI and RAID mode, no change with any of them (clean install each time)

I tried turning off all the integrated peripherals and it made no difference.

the crazy thing is that I can boot into safe mode

my friend managed to get it to boot into windows once on friday but he couldnt make it boot a second time.

any ideas?

I was going to buy another P35 motherboard to see if the problem happened with that, but apparently there isnt a single one in any computer store in my city at all.....

does this sound like a faulty disk controller or some kind of deep down hardware conflict?

I've had to reconnect my old board just to get online to look for answers, anyone had anything similar happen?

oh and I've tried my old ram in the system as well, and the bios is version 1.5

 

[kalrith]

I was going to start a new thread, but I'll try posting my questions here first. I just built a system with this board a few days ago. Every time I turn on the system, it goes through 3 boots before actually booting up. It will start to boot up, shut down, start to boot up, shut down, and then fully boot on the third try. Is it supposed to do this? It also makes some high-pitched beeping sounds right away. It came with BIOS 1.6, and I haven't flashed it yet.

I ran it through Prime for about 4 hours last night, and there were no errors. The max CPU temp was 47. The only thing I can think is that my power supply only has a 4-pin connector instead of an 8-pin connector. It does have a 24-pin main connector, and I connected the extra molex connector to the motherboard. I don't have any fans connected to the motherboard. I have two 6-pin PCIe connectors on the video card (even though it wants one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector). I haven't done any overclocking. One strange thing is that it defaulted my CPU to the 7x multiplier, and I had to change it to 9x. Anyways, here's my setup (everything's new except the power supply):

• MSI Neo2-FR
  Q6600
  4x1GB HP DDR2-667
  ATI 2900Pro 512-bit 512MB
  Antec TrueControl II-550

Edit: One more thing, which I hope isn't too terribly bad. I wanted to try having all of my system fans connected to the motherboard instead of molex connectors. I connected the power supply fan, one 120mm fan, and 5 80mm fans to the motherboard connections. On one of the connections, I had a splitter with two 80mm fans connected. I also removed the 8-pin adapter/extender and connected my 4-pin cable directly to the connection. The system tried to boot up but shut down somewhere during the process, and it smelled like something was burning. I'm going to hook up my multimeter to the power supply and see if it's OK. The smell seemed to be coming from the video card, but it was really hard to tell. I removed all of the fan connections and reinserted the 8-pin adapter/extender so that it would be exactly as it was before. It booted up just fine. I ran the Prime test after this occurred.

 

[Tullphan]

I just got me a P35 Neo2-FR yesterday & will be hooking it up tomorrow.
While glancing over the manual, a couple of things caught my eye. One was the jumper setting for FSB. Do you guys that have this motherboard use this or do you leave it @ 266 & up it in the bios? Also, in Appendix B, it discussed the "Dual Core Center". It sounded interesting, but don't know if it's all that or not. Any of you guys use it?
This motherboard will be going in a P182B w/a Corsair 520HX PSU & 2 GB of Corsair XMS CL4 memory. I've got a choice of an E2180 w/MO stepping or an E6300. I'm leaning towards the 2180 for more flexibility with overclocking. I also have a choice of a Big Typhoon or a Tuniq Tower for cooling. I've mounted a fan in the upper hard drive cage to assist w/cooling the GPU & possibly the motherboard.
Comments? Suggestions?
Thanks.

 

[chuckm]

Here's something that may help you guys out.


http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...howthread.php?t=161618

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: kalrith
I was going to start a new thread, but I'll try posting my questions here first. I just built a system with this board a few days ago. Every time I turn on the system, it goes through 3 boots before actually booting up. It will start to boot up, shut down, start to boot up, shut down, and then fully boot on the third try. Is it supposed to do this? It also makes some high-pitched beeping sounds right away. It came with BIOS 1.6, and I haven't flashed it yet.

I ran it through Prime for about 4 hours last night, and there were no errors. The max CPU temp was 47. The only thing I can think is that my power supply only has a 4-pin connector instead of an 8-pin connector. It does have a 24-pin main connector, and I connected the extra molex connector to the motherboard. I don't have any fans connected to the motherboard. I have two 6-pin PCIe connectors on the video card (even though it wants one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector). I haven't done any overclocking. One strange thing is that it defaulted my CPU to the 7x multiplier, and I had to change it to 9x. Anyways, here's my setup (everything's new except the power supply):

• MSI Neo2-FR
  Q6600
  4x1GB HP DDR2-667
  ATI 2900Pro 512-bit 512MB
  Antec TrueControl II-550

Are you sure the multiplier was set wrong? By default when the cpu is not under any serious loud, the multiplier gets set down to the lowest value (7), and during times of load it gets set back to the highest value (9). You can verify this by having cpuz open while running prime, and watching the multiplier change.