*** Official MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (nForce4 Ultra chipset) Thread ***

[kilovolt3]

Originally posted by: tretneo
I am sure someone has posted temps before but I just switched from an A8N-SLI Deluxe to the MSI K8N Neo4 Plat and I am experiencing some high temps on the top Ultra even with Zalman VF700-CU coolers.

75f Room, 10 minutes rthdribl load, 71.84 WHQL Drivers

Idle GPU 1 = 68c
Idle GPU 2 = 56c

Load GPU 1 = 99c GPU / 61c Ambient
Load GPU 2 = 75c GPU / 55c Ambient

I like this board much better than the Asus board but the temps on the top card are pretty high, with the asus board I could run rthdribl for an hour and the top card temps barely got into the low 80c range. Is this a typical range for Ultra Cards on this board. I have switched the cards to make sure one doesn't run hotter than the other and I get similar results.

tret

What is the maximum safe operating temperature on the 6800 Ultra? 99C seems pretty high. Do you mean 99 degrees F?

 

[tretneo]

99c , max temp is supposedly 135c but 99c is pretty damn hot. I have installed the latest beta forceware drivers as there is suppsed to be some kind of temp bug with the current official drivers. temps on top card in 79f room now hover around 93c which is better but I would really like to stay out of the 90s. May not be possible with air cooling and the cards so close together

Pic 1
Pic 2

tret

 

[instant]

Removed the Nvididium IDE driver and my Bluescreens have disappeared.

 

[billwinkle]

I too have read for quite a while now about the temp bug. People in other forums have said that if you have a 6800 card with temps problems, just overclock you video card by just 1 or 2 mhz. If I were you I would give it a try. It wont hurt youre card and you just may see youre temps drop down.

BTW. thank you tretneo for posting your pics. NIce setup. I have been trying without success to find out if I could to the same coolers in my setup with dual 6600gts. I am now going to find the best price and get these puppies. From everything I have read, they are about the best you can get. I do love zalman heatsinks.

p.s. please wish me a speedy recovery. I am sitting here with a 101.8 fever from the flu

 

[kilovolt3]

Originally posted by: tretneo
99c , max temp is supposedly 135c but 99c is pretty damn hot. I have installed the latest beta forceware drivers as there is suppsed to be some kind of temp bug with the current official drivers. temps on top card in 79f room now hover around 93c which is better but I would really like to stay out of the 90s. May not be possible with air cooling and the cards so close together

Pic 1
Pic 2

tret

Wow what is that on your cpu?
I am thinking about getting this mobo and I wanted to get a zalman copper cpu fan. I assume it would fit if that large thing you have fits.

Does the bottom card cover the bottom two SATA ports?

 

[sharad]

I just wanted to mention something about the MSI MB, nforce4 drivers and NCQ hard drives.

On my MSI K8N SLI Platinum motherboard after installing all the NVIDIA drivers I was getting the following warning in the Event Log.

An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation.

The machine was also taking long time to boot, 3+ minutes, when these warnings were logged. I am using a 160GB Segate SATA NCQ drive. Since then I have uninstalled the NVIDIA ATA drivers and using the default Windows XP drivers. Haven't seen the warnings since.

I did run HD Tach benchmark and found that there is virtually no difference between the Windows XP driver and NVIDIA driver. Actually NVIDIA drivers with NCQ enabled had the worst performance.

Just my 2 cents worth.

 

[tretneo]

Originally posted by: billwinkle
I too have read for quite a while now about the temp bug. People in other forums have said that if you have a 6800 card with temps problems, just overclock you video card by just 1 or 2 mhz. If I were you I would give it a try. It wont hurt youre card and you just may see youre temps drop down.

BTW. thank you tretneo for posting your pics. NIce setup. I have been trying without success to find out if I could to the same coolers in my setup with dual 6600gts. I am now going to find the best price and get these puppies. From everything I have read, they are about the best you can get. I do love zalman heatsinks.

p.s. please wish me a speedy recovery. I am sitting here with a 101.8 fever from the flu

Being sick sucks, hope you get better, I will try the OC idea.

Originally posted by: kilovolt3
Wow what is that on your cpu?
I am thinking about getting this mobo and I wanted to get a zalman copper cpu fan. I assume it would fit if that large thing you have fits.

Does the bottom card cover the bottom two SATA ports?

It is an XP-120 w/ a Panaflo 120mm fan. I had to slightly bend a capacitor on the left side due to the heat pipes but it wasn't much of a bend and nothing seems to have been affected. The bottom two SATA ports are not blocked by the sound card but it is close.

tret

 

[JJK80]

Originally posted by: Hammer0id
My K8N NEO4 Platinum runs stable at:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @2550Mhz @1,50v cooled by TR XP90 C&Q enabled
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Bios 1.2
2*512MB TwinMos Twister Pro DC Kit @2,5-3-3-5 @255Mhz @2,7v
Club3D X800XL with ATI Silencer5 Rev.2
2*WD740GD 74GB SATA Raptor @ Raid 0
1*Hitachi 250GB SATA
1*Hitachi 160GB SATA
1*Maxtor MaXLine III 300GB SATAII
Enermax Coolergiant EG485AX-VHB(G) ATX 2.0 480W

Everything over 255fsb x4 fails in superpi but prime is stable:

http://mitglied.lycos.de/sledge12345/3200+%20@2600Mhz.jpg


If I have more time i'll investigate the bottleneck - MemContr./HTT/RAM etc.
No Problems booting up at 275 x10 Htx4 but instable.

You have not had any problems going above HTT/FSB 219MHz?

 

[dartworth]

Anyone running 4 x 512MB of RAM on one of these?

 

[JJK80]

MSI MS-7125 K8N Neo4 Platinum v1.30

Have you tried that new BIOS?

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Wow, sure wish my keyboard would work with this thing! A note to all owners of the MSI Neo series mobos, you may need a USB keyboard to work with this keyboard as PS2 keyboards have a tendency to not work.

 

[BayBug]

Originally posted by: Puffnstuff
Well we discovered that we could boot my sons neo4 plat if he unplugged all his usb cables during the post and replug them in windows which is bs. Today his dfi lanparty4 ut ultra-d came in and I installed it without a hitch. I'm going to rma the neo4 to msi for a replacement. This is costing me a lot of money in hardware and shipping. My abit fatal1ty an8 has been rock solid since I first hit the power button so I'm most displeased with msi since their product has been anything but reliable.

One thing I noticed was that my PS2 keyboard worked fine and everything booted quickly even with a floppy disk/ USB memory card reader, USB connections from my computer case, and a USB printer hooked up to the mb...but when I decided to hook up my USB keyboard (which is much nicer than my PS2 one), the system takes almost 5 minutes to load up in Windows XP Pro which is really strange. At first I thought I was having the same problems others have had where it doesn't finish booting at all, but given enough time, it does finally boot up. I tried hooking the USB keyboard to every one of the mb USB connections, but they all had the same result - very slow boot up time. I'm not sure where the delay is happening since I can go into the mb bios with the USB keyboard hooked up and the keyboard works fine in the menus and all.

Though I had a lot of driver/nForce4 issues, I still like this motherboard in spite of all the pain and suffering its caused me, hehe. Except for the slow boot up times with my USB keyboard, the mb is working great now.

-BayBug

 

[instant]

Originally posted by: dartworth
Anyone running 4 x 512MB of RAM on one of these?

MSI Neo4 Platinum SLI - Have 4 x OCZ Platinum DDR3200 Rev 2.0 512MBs on it

 

[JJK80]

Originally posted by: JJK80
MSI MS-7125 K8N Neo4 Platinum v1.30

Have you tried that new BIOS?

Anyone tried?

 

[jinduy]

did you guys email msi regarding this keyboard problem?

 

[Boy Hits Car]

Hey Guys,

The Nvidia standalone drivers that I should use are the Windows XP Professional x64 Edition or regular Windows XP drivers?

I have MSI neo4 platinum non-sli with an AMD 3500 and Windows XP Professional SP2.

 

[CaseyH71]

Hey All,

Great info here!

I have 2 things... And to preface my questions I am running a Seagate 80G SATA on SATA port 1, and my older Maxtor 40G IDE on Primary Master.

1. Are anyone's SATA drives showing up as removable hardware in XP (Pro SP2)? Meaning I can bring up the "safe to remove hardware" dialogue and click my drive to remove it safely! And why is that happening.

2. Do you think these issues with the Nvidia IDE driver could be why my machine takes almost 2 minutes to shutdown? Thoughts?

Thanks, Casey

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Well I am still having that problem & thought I would post some pics of the mobo as it is in my case.

Neo4 SLI

Patriot XBL RAM in RAM slots

lower right corner

PCI slots & such, lower left corner

 

[instant]

I got the "remove drive" thing when I ran Nvidium IDE drivers.. (that gave me BSODs..) removed those, removed the "remove drive" messages as well, and I boot superfast

 

[adgodwin]

quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by: JJK80
MSI MS-7125 K8N Neo4 Platinum v1.30

Have you tried that new BIOS?

JJK80,

Flashed to this new bios with liveupdate and seems to have curred my ailments with this board. I'm not sure if everyone is still having a lot of difficulties with this board or not as it was very frustrating in the beginning but now i'm happy with the results. I can run superpi superstable, prime95 for 24 hrs stable, and sandra no problems. I believe the problem is the voltage at startup coupled with bad memory timings. Currently I have the board running at 285 x 9 with a 1.475 voltage and 1.6 board voltage with 2t timings and my htt at 4x resulting in 2567mhz. The trick for me was to lower that memory speed from 200 to 166 as when overclocked I end up running the memory at 237. I have pushed the board as far as 295 stable but don't need that much right now. The board is picky but I'm sure I can get over 2700mhz out of this thing, I'll keep playing with it. That said here are my specs and by the way I appreciate all of you guys help in working with this board, i've been reading this forum for weeks and couldn't have done it without some of the good tips posted here

-Logisys Dracula Black case (tricked out with custom paint job, blood red on the inside and back, replaced pwrsupply with logisys 500watt mesh) custom drilled fan holes and filter on top to mount my 2nd radiator with matching logisys grill guard)
-MSI Nforce4 Platinum SLI mobo
-AMD64 Winchester 3000+ (running at 2567mhz currently)
-Kingwin Artec Liquid Cooler - (only running water to cpu currently, not the video card)
-Chaintech 6600GT (500/1000 stock) overclocked to 590/1120 using rivatuner
-2 gigs(4 512 megs)KingstonHyperX3200 running dual channel
-2 WD 36g Raptors running striped Raid, 1 60 gig WD 7200rpm IDE
-NEC 16X DVDburner
-2 120m fans, 2 80m fans, uv and neon lights all front panel controled
-19inch Viewsonic VP912B with 12ms resonse (love this monitor but pivot software sucks, use nvidia pivot)
-Running sound via optical through Hercules Fortisimo III to a 600 (6.1 surround) watt Onkyo recieviever with Full size Paradigm speakers, 4 front and rear, 1 midi, and a 150 watt MTX base speaker

Numbers for benchmark are
3dmark05 - over 4300
Aquamark3-over 65K

Also, I noticed with Central Brain Identifier, the farther I got away from 1000 with the HT, the more unstable it became, staying within no more that 200 over that 1000

 

[MileN]

You see there is not a problem at all. If you read the book about the MOBO you will see that the chipset deploys some of its resources and it causes the memory to be reported lower. Just go ahead and use your 2 GB or ram eventhough it says 1.5 GB

 

[MileN]

Yes Dartworth

The bios will report the RAM as 1.5 GB but it uses the complete 2GB

 

[adgodwin]

Hey MileN,

Interesting. In fact, even with the original bios and after I flashed. My memory has always detected as 2 GB. I read over my MSI manual this morning again to make sure and sure enough mine says that incorrect memory readings only occur when installing over 3 GB. So I suppose 4GB would read as 3GB but 2GB reads correctly. Maybe I have an odd board? I've played around with the board a ton last night and now I've found that it rejects anything over 300fsb even with the multiplier lowered. (Maybe I should jump straight to like 340 or so?) This board is voltage hungry and very picky about memory timings. I can not get 1T timings with my memory, so i'll stick with 2T for now. I have boosted it up to 290 x 9 for 2610mhz for now. It seems to realy like that setting ( not reaching more than 36 degrees under load) but I think this board can reach much higher. I'll play some more after I go see my girlfriend friday and sat, she hates me tinkering with it while she's around. lol **One more note, if overclocking, the 4 HT timing is the only one that works for me. I can't lower it. Has anyone running raid switched their drives from 1 and 2 to 3 and 4 to see if that unlocks any performance? I prefer to do all overclocking in the bios, I despise any windows overclocking software, it's always buggy.

 

[mgjunk]

Hello all. I'm new to this forum and to building PCs in general so I apologize in advance if my questions are a little basic or too lengthy. I'm trying to build a Home Theater PC using the following configuration:

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum nForce4 Ultra Athlon 64
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Zalman CNPS7000B-ALCU Pure Copper CPU Cooler
Kingston HyperX KHX3200AK2/1G 1GB Kit DDR400 PC3200 w/ Heat Spreader
MSI NX6600GT-TD128E GeForce 6600 GT 128MB DDR3 Video Card (PCI Express)
ATI HDTV Wonder
Hauppauge PVR-500MCE
Case: Ahanix MCE601

Amazingly, I actually got it all setup and running on my first try (yay!). Everything is working fine but I have the following problem: It runs very hot and it is noisy. Unfortunately, I tried to put the system in a built in TV cabinet that doesn?t have great ventilation and now the CPU is running temps at between 50 C up to nearly 65 C (when I look at the HW Monitor in the BIOS). I know the my case choice isn?t the quietest (2x60mm fans) nor is the Video Card. I?m looking into quieter case fans and possibly a heatsink for the Video card.

I?m looking for help on cooling and quieting this down as much as possible but need some advice on the MSI Motherboard related issues (which is why I'm posting here)

1. How to I ?underclock? the CPU to cool it down? Is 65 C too hot? It seems so. I?m running Media Center 2005 so I?m not sure how slow it could be clocked or how to do this. I did set it to ?Cool & Quiet? in the BIOS Cell Menu but it hasn?t done much that I can see. I am unfamiliar with many of the settings (PCIE Clock, CPU FSB Frequency) so I don?t know what items I should change and what I should leave as is.

2. Frankly, I?m not exactly sure what the nForce4 SLI chipset does (something about multiple video out) but I find the little NB fan kind of noisy (even given the rest of my system). Can I turn this off somehow? I would love to unplug that little fan since I?m not using multiple video outputs. Can I put a heatsink on instead?

Many, many thanks in advance for any advice or suggestion?

Mike Smith

 

[BayBug]

Originally posted by: CaseyH71
Hey All,

Great info here!

I have 2 things... And to preface my questions I am running a Seagate 80G SATA on SATA port 1, and my older Maxtor 40G IDE on Primary Master.

1. Are anyone's SATA drives showing up as removable hardware in XP (Pro SP2)? Meaning I can bring up the "safe to remove hardware" dialogue and click my drive to remove it safely! And why is that happening.

2. Do you think these issues with the Nvidia IDE driver could be why my machine takes almost 2 minutes to shutdown? Thoughts?

Thanks, Casey

I thought that one of the advantages of SATA drives over ATA was that they are hot swappable and so you can add and remove the drives just like removable media.

-BayBug