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

[complexmath]

Dumb question, but do you have the SI drivers installed?

BTW, is there any advantage to using SI stata vs. nforce sata for a standard 2-drive RAID? According to the docs it sounds like they're both sata-2 so there shouldn't be any performance difference, but that has me wondering why they bothered with the SI sata at all.

 

[d3vilz]

I believe I have the SI driver installed, I will have to check again though. I thought I saw somewhere that SI Sata was faster cause it was on the pci-e bus, Can anyone clarify that?

 

[complexmath]

I just did some poking around and there doesn't appear to be a difference between the NVidia SATA ports and the Si SATA ports for a 2-drive RAID. Both have the same throughput and benchmark about the same. HardOCP does extensive testing of this board, with the SATA info here:

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzE0LDQ=

 

[Lizzy729]

Hi all. I have a Neo 4 Plantinum SLI and a Plextor PX-716SA (Serial ATA). I saw a post a few pages back about CD/DVD burning issues. I was just wondering if there has been a fix. The weird thing is that I have a friend that has a similar setup and his burns discs fine. Also my drive shows up as a PX-716A (PATA). I don't have any PATA drives. My other drive is a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 (SATA).

 

[Berg]

Anyone run this board with a X800XL and a 20 pin PSU? The X800xl doesnt have a power connector and i heard the power for the card comes from the last 4 pins. Does this board come with a thing like the EZ-plug on the Asus A8N that directly sends power to the card?

 

[evilgrin998]

If you have the 716sa installed on the nvidia controller than it will not write. It'll only read. Appears to be some compatibility issue with the nforce chipset and the 716sa drive. To date I don't think either nivida or plextor have release a driver/firmware update to resolve the issue. I installed the drive on the Silicon Image controller and it's been working great.


AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (90nm) @2505mhz
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
Corsair TWINX1024-3200XLPRO 1GB (250mhz 2.5-3-3-7)
PowerColor Radeon X850 XT OC@540mhz/1180mhz
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA
Plextor 716SA 16X DL DVD+/-RW SATA Drive
Thermaltake VA3000 Case
ThermalRight XP-90 with Panaflo 92mm fan
Antec NeoPower 480W PSU

 

[The Internal]

Greetings,

I glanced through the thread, but didn't see anything about the problem with the the Neo 4 failing to boot if you have a USB hub hooked up. My 24" Dell widescreen LCD's USB 2.0 hub, when hooked up to my system will cause my system to halt before the OS loads... I downloaded the recent BIOS release (upgraded form my BETA BIOS) and still had the same problem. Is there a way to get my system to boot with the USB hub plugged in? Also, the new BIOS solved the Maxtor 300 GB SATA HD problem, just so whoever might wanna know... er, knows.

Thanks!

 

[kobe8]

Originally posted by: The Internal
Greetings,
I glanced through the thread, but didn't see anything about the problem with the the Neo 4 failing to boot if you have a USB hub hooked up. My 24" Dell widescreen LCD's USB 2.0 hub, when hooked up to my system will cause my system to halt before the OS loads... I downloaded the recent BIOS release (upgraded form my BETA BIOS) and still had the same problem. Is there a way to get my system to boot with the USB hub plugged in? Also, the new BIOS solved the Maxtor 300 GB SATA HD problem, just so whoever might wanna know... er, knows.
Thanks!

I had the same exact problem with my Dell 24" LCD. By accident, I discovered that it boots fine with a compact flash card in the CF slot. You might want to give it a try.

 

[PoxMeister]

Originally posted by: Berg
Anyone run this board with a X800XL and a 20 pin PSU? The X800xl doesnt have a power connector and i heard the power for the card comes from the last 4 pins. Does this board come with a thing like the EZ-plug on the Asus A8N that directly sends power to the card?

Berg,

Not sure if you got any more info for your question yet, but I just upgraded 2 weeks ago using this board (MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum), with WinXP Pro, an Athlon64 3200+ Winchester, 1GB of Corsair VS RAM, and a built by ATI Radeon x800XL (my XL does not have an extra power connector).

I am using a Thermaltake Silent Purepower 420W PSU. It only has a 20 pin connector and 18A on the 12V rail. I was a bit nervous initially to use this PSU, but setup was a breeze (went perfectly actually), and I've been running completely rock solid stable for the whole time so far. I've had no crashes at all. The only games I've playes so far are Riddick and WoW, but no problems at all with either one. It's nice being able to crank up the AA and AF with higher resolutions now

I have a DVD burner, CD-RW burner, floppy drive, PCI Modem, and an external 120GB Seagate barracuda installed also. I'm running at stock speed/settings though. I am not really an overclocker. But if I would ever attempt it, I think I'd opt for a beefier PSU. But this Thermaltake seems to be handling everything right now just fine.

 

[Diode20]

I bought the MSI Neo4 last week. It was setup up pretty quickly. Everything ran fine. 2 days running, and it shuts itself off.

At first I thought the PSU died. I then check the PSU, and it works in another system of mine. The motherboard does not respond at all. No fans twitching on power, no beeping, nothing. I went to MSI's website, and tried a few things they suggested, reseting bios, taking mobo battery out, and shorting the power switch on the motherboard.

Anyhow, the motherboard is dead, and am waiting on RMA from MSI. They seem to have a slow RMA response so far. They have so far approved the RMA. But that's it. Order of RMA:Approved Arrived In Processing Prepare to Ship Shipped. Might be weeks before I get a replacement board. Oh, and I pay shipping.

Real bad experience so far.

-JP

 

[Mxyzpltk]

Checking MSI site did not help finding out if the new rev. E athlon64 will work with this motherboard and it's current bios, taiwan site doesn't even know they exist, I'm planning on buying it with a san diego or venice (don't know wich yet) but I don't know if it's going to boot, and I don't have any other kind of 939 cpu to boot it with if I need to upgrade the bios. Does anybody have one with an rev. E cpu, if yes, what's your bios version, if I could find this out I could start asking vendors, but there seems to be no info anywhere.

 

[Diode20]

Tried calling MSI for 3 days now. No one responded. It's like they have no customer support.

 

[Axor]

Hi guys

My first post on these boards

My system:

K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz Socket 939

Corsair TWINX1024-3200XLPRO DDR 1024MB Kit w/two matched 512MB 3200XL PRO's DIMMs

Samsung SpinPoint P120S 200GB SATA2 8MB 7200RPM NCQ (X2)

XFX GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI-Express, Extreme Gamers Ed., Retail

Thermaltake Purepower ? 560W


I'm hoping somebody can help me with out.

I'd like to know the stock HT Width and frequency for the AMD Athlon 64 3200+

I've figured out the memnory settings for the RAM in the bios. ( mainly due to reading these fourms many thx guys for the info).

I'm not really intrested in overclocking the system but I would like to be sure I have everyting set correctly for the parts I have especially the CPU.

I'm need to have a stable system so any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards
Axor

 

[Diode20]

By the time I get my MSI Neo4 replaced, it's going to be outdated. Why can't they just send you a replacement motherboard first?

MSI's RMA = sooooo long.

 

[das Monkey]

I'm looking to pick up one of these motherboards, but I'm confused over the different power supplies. While I won't be doing any overclocking, I will likely be using many drives, so I need to make sure I have plenty of power.

I'm confused between the Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 550W and Antec TruePower 2.0 TP2-550 EPS12V 550W

I've tried to read up on EPS12V, but it hasn't shed any light on which one of these is more appropriate for the K8N Neo4 Platinum.

I would very much appreciate any help anyone could provide.

Thanks,
das

 

[Rudzer]

First a little background on this upgrade:
- Prior to this combo I had myself a DFI Lanparty nforce4 ultra (from the first batch released), the board while a tweakers/overclocker heaven had way too much settings to optimize and some small but annoying glitches.

After 2 months beeing sick of it I decided to look for alternatives (not extreme but more stable and whatnot), in the process I've changed most of my remaining computer hardware in order to troubleshoot any possible problem.

The motherboard choosen (not that there are lots of options) was the MSI K8N NEO4.

Let me just say that while i'm impressed with the board packaging and whatnot i'm getting seriously frustated with the board itself...


Before I list my "complains" here is the hardware used:

Athlon 64 3000+ (VENICE)
MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum
2x512MB PC3200 Samsung TCCD
Albatron Geforce6600GT
2x160GB Hitachi SATA II hdd's
Pionner A108
Enermax Noisetaker 420w

Now for the problems...

- I can't get the cpu stable (prime, windows,etc..) with the same settings I had as "minimum" on the dfi - 2.3Ghz with 1.4v (tried equal and higher voltages on vdimm and chipset) with 255Mhz/229Mhz (ram cpu)...the cpu simply fails

- The board unlike Abit,Epox,DFI doesn't seem to have the "INSERT FUNCTION" when you are in POST (in case things go wrong), resulting in endless...and I mean endless CMOS resets... (at least they added a RESET CMOS button..i wonder why)

- The board doesn't work in a reliable way with custom ram timmings (tested and proved in other boards), specialy 1T timming...

- The board doesn't seem to record the voltage set in bios in windows (and the post itself seems to be made at default vcore, only then beeing changed)

- Its easy to get the "RAID BIOS ROM" problem that most people with DFI know about, diference is it happened with +280Mhz FSB and not sub 260Mhz like on the MSI

- Unlike the DFI nforce4 ultra there doesn't seem to be a bios option or application to controle and regulate the chipset fans, which in these days is not understandable..ad to that a bad bloated temp reading software....

I'm way above dissapointed with all this considering the time i've already lost with the DFI, now with this and the fact that I simply want a stable computer without extreme overclocks (and belive me 2.4Ghz for this Venice is eeeasssy)


Not to mention the upgrade cost from the DFI to the MSI (that is expensive to say the least)

/end rant :/

 

[imported_Mant]

I ordered my board from Monarch yesterday(w/ a 3000+Venice) and am dying to set it up, but these reports about a noisy NB fan are making me wonder if I should buy some aftermarker chipset cooler like this or this.
That Spire fan is 15.7 mm high and the Zalman HS is 32mm high. Know if either will fit under a 6600gt?
Or should I just wait to see if mine makes noise:clock:

 

[Diode20]

NB fan.....very noisy.

I am not sure it was smart to order this MSI. Should it go bad....

Mine went dead after 2 days usage. My gf dropped it off to MSI peronally. I emailed them Friday because the status of the repair was still as "Just arrived".

They responded:


"Your RMA arrived to us on 05/10/2005 and our turn around time is within
10~14 working days."

So on top of the time it takes you to ship your dead motherboard to them....they still have a 10-14 WORKING day turn around. What is that, like 3 weeks?

I've had PC parts go bad over the years, but never has any take so long to replace.

 

[Rudzer]

I've already regretted from buying this motherboard...and I thougth that the problems I was having with my dfi nforce4 ultra were bad...pfff compared to this...

 

[SmurfPriest]

I recently built a computer with the non-sli version of this board and so far I have been having alot of problems with it. I am not an overclocker some I am somewhat surprised that with such a basic configuration I am having so many problems. As of yet I havent been able to get it to run stably in windows and I get sporadic errors such as bio crc checksum problems which seem to come and go. Windows doesnt seem to stay up for too long before I get various blue screen errors which the online reporting system diagnoses as a hardware problem. I ran some basic testing with memtest which seems to indicate the memory is not a problem so I suspect since that the nforce 4 ultra is having some problems with the peripherals. I will try replacing the ps/2 keyboard with a usb tomorrow and see if that fixes some of the problems.

My system specs:

Athlon 64 3000+
MSI K8N Neo 4 PLatinum
2GB 4x512MB Corsair Value Select
1x160GB Hitachi SATA HDD
Gigabyte 6600GT (GV-NX66T128D)
Pioneer A09 DVD Burner
430W Antec TruePower 2.0

I will try a clean install tomorrow with a USB keyboard. After that if things still don't work maybe time to contact MSI? :-/

 

[Diode20]

Good luck reaching someone at MSI. I tried calling for 3 days before sending my gf to drive there. I was out of town, and told her to drop it off at MSI in LA.

And if u read my above post, I am out of a computer for the next 3 weeks while they "process" my motherboard.

My computer will be worthless by the time they are done.

 

[rapamarques]

Hi i bought a MSI K8N NEO4 PLATINUM, but i couldn't turn on. Is MSI K8N NEO4 PLATINUM incompatible with ATHLON 64 3000+ WINCHESTER?? Sorry, but i don't speak english, maybe my english is wrong in this post. Thank You

 

[Diode20]

It works with the ATHLON 64 3000+ WINCHESTER.

If you here no beeps or don't have leds to diagnose, then test the power supply.

If the power supply is good, then it's probably your motherboard. I say this cause my MSI died.

BTW, no response from MSI about when they will replace my motherboard.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Yep the k8n neo4 plat is absolutely the worst mb I've ever owned. I have one sitting on the table in need of rma because it's unstable and will not boot unless you disconnect all usb devices from it beforehand. It didn't do that when we first installed it but started about a week later. I replaced it with a dfi lanparty nf4 ut ultra-d and things have been fine with that machine ever since.

 

[chrisralston]

The last couple of posts here are not giving much encouragement.

I just bought all my parts which include this mobo and a 3700+ San Diego. Anyone using this pair? I will also be using 1g (2x512) CorsairVS PC3200, Seagate SATA (80g), MSI 6600 VTD, Antec TruePower 2.0 (480W).

I'm hoping that all goes well with the setup, especially after reading some of the problems people have been having.

Anyone enjoying their Neo4 Platinums'?