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

[WarDemon666]

ARGH... friggen msi..... I also cant get the multichannel surround working, the digital outs work, BUT THEY ARENT DIGITAL!!!!

ideas?

PM ME!!!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: JonJonXD
Hey, I plan on using the neo4 platinumpaired with:

4400+ X2
2x 1gb sticks of corsair XMS
BFG 7800gtx OC
2x Sata hard drives (80gb and 300gb Seagate Barracudas)
3 opticals + 1 pata hard drive (take up the two IDE channels)
E-power Tagan 480watt U22 powersupply

I was hoping you guys could shed a lot of information on how I can get this system up and running without problems and everything. Thanks in advanced.

I'm not much on dual rail PSUs, but many seem to have no issues so meh

I'd be certain to flash to a X2 supporting bios pronto if it doesn't ship with one. It'll avoid potential problems that some seem to be experiencing when installing the OS before doing the flash. I also would use for install order-

1. Xp+service pack2 or 2KPro+SP4 [other OS= you are on your own}

2. nF4 drivers* minus ActiveArmour and SW IDE. I had various trouble with 2 versions of AA, and the SW IDEs for this platform are getting enough bad feedback for me to avoid them until/if I think I'll see a benefit from using them, or they mature to the point that issues are rarely reported with them. Try if you like, but that's the smart money bet where early issues will arise from. Ram compatability or stability in dual channel it seems is #2 with this board.

3. Vid card drivers*

4. Audio drivers.*

5. Updates for OS.

Obviously don't connect the system to the intardweb until/unless you have some type of firewall or router between ya.

 

[MayanGuy]

Originally posted by: WarDemon666
ARGH... friggen msi..... I also cant get the multichannel surround working, the digital outs work, BUT THEY ARENT DIGITAL!!!!

ideas?

PM ME!!!

Have you tried updating the Realtek Drivers through Realtek? Not sure if this would solve you issue.

 

[wanderica]

Rather than start a new thread, I'll just post here. I am getting ready to put together my first computer build. I am a total n00b at this. I realize this may be sorta hardcore for a first timer, but oh well, learn by doing, right? My specs are as follows:

MSI K8N neo4 platinum SLi
2 x 1024 OCZ platinum EL
X2 4400+
MSI 7800 GTX
PC P&C 510 SLi
2 x raptors 74 Gb (want to do raid 0) haven't read about this being a problem on these boards. Is it safe to assume that everything will go as planned?
180 Gb seagate 7200.9 SATA

I realize that problems and n00bie mistakes are inevitable, but I want to do as much research and preparation as possible before I attempt this. I do plan on a light to moderate OC. (at least to 4800+ specs) This board should do that with ease, right? Is there anything else I need to know? I can still swap out already purchased components if necessary. Please let me know what you all think. Particularly things I need to know before I "get my hands dirty."
thanks,
Wanderica

 

[WarDemon666]

Originally posted by: MayanGuy

Originally posted by: WarDemon666
ARGH... friggen msi..... I also cant get the multichannel surround working, the digital outs work, BUT THEY ARENT DIGITAL!!!!

ideas?

PM ME!!!

Have you tried updating the Realtek Drivers through Realtek? Not sure if this would solve you issue.

yup....


i read somewhere that the integrated sound card cant encode DD or anything of that sort.... the only way to get surround sound is to use the analog outputs or to play a dvd thats already encoded..........

is this true?

 

[theRedMosquito]

this isn't really a chipset question, but more about the mobo its self. i read on the newegg.com customer comments section that u can use a 20 pin power connection instead of the stated 24 pin. the poster cited the mobo manual as saying this aswell. is this true, has anybody tried it, does it really work, ist that really stated in manual because i couldn't find it anywhere

 

[JonJonXD]

is there anybody here running an X2 on this board and is running perfectly fine?

 

[Lonyo]

What's the best BIOS for this board?
I updated from whatever mine shipped with to the 1.9, and lost a LOT of mem divider options for some reason (like half of them), the voltage options got changed (and lowered) etc.
Currently running 1.9, would it be better to drop back to 1.6?
I am overclocking.

 

[Carraspin]

Hi, I don't know if this question belongs here, but I just bought the Tagan TG 480-U22 power supply and I don?t know exactly where to connect the grounding cable in my board. In the manual it says ?Connect the RTN grounding cable connector (a thick cable) to one of the fixing screw-holes of your mainboard (the RTN/GND connections). Double-check, for contacts with neighborhood components and for short-circuit? this isn?t very clear, could you help me out? Is this connection necessary?

 

[Keyser Soze]

I too am unable to get x.1 (either 5.1 or 7.1) surround sound via TosLink. Anyone found a solution for this yet? I find it nearly impossible to believe that MSI/Creative would promote this on-board feature and design it without AC3 or DTS decoding or passthrough options.

 

[MayanGuy]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
What's the best BIOS for this board?
I updated from whatever mine shipped with to the 1.9, and lost a LOT of mem divider options for some reason (like half of them), the voltage options got changed (and lowered) etc.
Currently running 1.9, would it be better to drop back to 1.6?
I am overclocking.

I've been pretty happy with BIOS 1.6....if it ain't broke don't fix it. have had a couple of BSODs but I think it might be driver related. anyhow, good luck!

 

[firewall]

Edit: repeat post.

 

[firewall]

Originally posted by: theRedMosquito
this isn't really a chipset question, but more about the mobo its self. i read on the newegg.com customer comments section that u can use a 20 pin power connection instead of the stated 24 pin. the poster cited the mobo manual as saying this aswell. is this true, has anybody tried it, does it really work, ist that really stated in manual because i couldn't find it anywhere

I built my AMD rig yesterday using a 20 pin Power connector in my MSI K8N SLI Platinum board. I don't see any problems occuring because of that.

Make sure that you insert it in such a way that pins 11, 12, 23, 24 are open/empty. Don't put it in such a way that pins 1, 2 , 13, 14 are empty! You will destroy(?!!) your mobo.

Pin config:

-13-01-
-14-02-
-15-03-
-16-04-
-17-05-
|18-06-
|19-07-
-20-08-
-21-09-
-22-10-
-23-11-
-24-12-

The 20 pin connector's lock will be around pin 16/17 and won't be aligned with the actual lock position but that doesn't matters much.

 

[firewall]

Edit: repeat post.

 

[NoSpeed]

I just wanted to post back regarding the "Shutdown Bug," my only issue with this board. On 10/19, I tried a recommendation from KitC to switch from the Marvell to the nVidia LAN controller. This apparently worked for him/her and seemed to be the answer to my prayers. I have shutdown my system smoothly every night since the switch. That is 14 good, successive Shutdowns in a row. Regrettably, a Restart happened after commanding a Shutdown last night. During the reboot, CHKDSK ran and corrupted three files. I was able to recover from it. A subsequent command to Shutdown went smoothly. All programs were Closed at the time of the incident. IE was running during the subsequent smooth Shutdown. I decided to observe the effects of this LAN controller switch before trying any other drivers or BIOS. I am presently using BIOS 1.6. Many of you are using BIOS 1.6 with no complaints and so I encouraged others to give BIOS 1.9 another try. However, it may contain other issues as I see some of you still suggesting to remain with 1.6. I am not overclocked and still at a loss as to how to resolve this issue. Any further suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

 

[Pumpkin]

Sorry to hear about your troubles NoSpeed. I have read this long thread and am experiencing the same problems as yourself. I will never touch this company again.
Where to begin
Came with bios 1.3 which I found out later thanks to this great forum that it had troubles with recognising venice cores. What would happen is my games would freeze which was fixed by updating to 1.9. Only the shutdown bug had begun. The only way to stop it was by turning off the computer at the initial boot stage.

Then I flashed it down to the supposedly glorious 1.6 and straight away it has come back to haunt me, my friend mr reboot.

The funny thing is NoSpeed we have nothing in common as far as our equipment is concerned:
3500 venice
Same crappy mobo
sparkle 6600gt
geil 3200ddr 2 x 512
wd250gig sata 2 hd
430watt antec truepower psu

I think it is rma time and I dont look forward to putting the components together considering I have not built a pc before when the thing comes back. Think I will look elsewhere for another mobo and sell the one that comes back.

 

[Pasquali]

Hello there new to forums. I just built a new system using:
MSI Neo4 Platinum
OCZ Powerstream 520 watt PSU
OCZ Platinum DDR400 rev 2
Seagate 160GB/8mb cache ATA 133 HD
Hp DVD dual Layer DVD burner/ IDE
Lg CD-RW/ IDE
XFX 6800GT PCI-express
Win XP Pro/sp2
floppy.

I've had to reload OS 3 times so far, constant restarts, no nvidia firewall or other stuff on my system. I had the system running fine for about 1 week then all of a sudden I went to play Far Cry again and the system shut down..permanantly, no power, no nothing, no lights on motherboard, PSU absolutely nothing. Memtest was perfect everything plugged in properly, utmost of care went into building. I now have to take her into the shop so that they can try to find out what went wrong. I'm getting to hate computers even though I love'em to death. Any ideas before I pull the pin on my CS nade and throw it into case?

 

[MayanGuy]

Originally posted by: Pasquali
Hello there new to forums. I just built a new system using:
MSI Neo4 Platinum
OCZ Powerstream 520 watt PSU
OCZ Platinum DDR400 rev 2
Seagate 160GB/8mb cache ATA 133 HD
Hp DVD dual Layer DVD burner/ IDE
Lg CD-RW/ IDE
XFX 6800GT PCI-express
Win XP Pro/sp2
floppy.

I've had to reload OS 3 times so far, constant restarts, no nvidia firewall or other stuff on my system. I had the system running fine for about 1 week then all of a sudden I went to play Far Cry again and the system shut down..permanantly, no power, no nothing, no lights on motherboard, PSU absolutely nothing. Memtest was perfect everything plugged in properly, utmost of care went into building. I now have to take her into the shop so that they can try to find out what went wrong. I'm getting to hate computers even though I love'em to death. Any ideas before I pull the pin on my CS nade and throw it into case?

I have read that sometime the audio driver update helps...something about the 3d sound in the game...
I would go to the Realtek website and load the latest audio drives...not sure if it'll work but i've read that it has solved some issues with crashes during game play.

 

[dman918]

Man, I better make sure I don't touch my bios. I am running 1.9 and no problems other than me having to turn the computer on, then off and then on again every once in a while (it doesn't post). I think it may realistically have something to do with my OC settings, but we'll see.

 

[lunafish]

I've recently put together this rig (see sig), and my only issue so far is that it won't restart. Shutdown, wait 5 seconds, power on, all is fine. Hit the reset button, all fine. Restart from windows, and the XP logo starts to fade in and stops there. The board came with the 1.4 bios, and I upgraded it to 1.6, after reading this forum and seeing no benefit to 1.9. There is now a 1.A bios, but the only release note is that is supports the Winbond W39V040FB BIOS ROM, which doesn't sound like a reason to reflash. The restart problem isn't a big deal, since the machine generally runs 24/7, but I would like to fix it.

The OS is running on the primary partition on a 120Gb Seagate SATA drive (7200.7 I think, I've had it a few years), with the swap file on a partition on the other SATA drive (a 160Gb Seagate, also 7200.7). I deleted the windows folder and renamed my old program files before doing a clean install, installed sp2, critical updates, Nforce 4 drivers (including the IDE SW), and all relevant driver software. System is otherwise stable (24 hours of 2 instances of Prime 95, 100% both cores, 54C was as hot as it got, idles at around 33C). Have yet to do any gaming on it, a 1mb Virge just doesn't cut it

The restart problem existed before I overclocked the cpu, and I haven't pushed it beyond 2.53 yet, I figure it's a nice balance of extra performance without too much extra heat. Plus I want to make sure it's stable after 8 hours of City of Villains, but need my new vid card to arrive before that will happen.

All in all, seems like a decent board so far, any ideas on the restart issue would be appreciated.

 

[doc2345]

Flash to 1.A from a boot disc with this command line "awfl855a.exe w7125nms.1a0 /py /sn /wb /cc /cd /cp /r" ...... I'd bet this will fix it.

 

[lunafish]

Updated bios, mainboard now refuses to boot Reset via button on mainboard, still no boot. Gets to single beep, screen has video sync, D-LED's suggest it's at the BIOS Sign On phase (1 and 4 are green), goes no further. Left for 5 minutes, no change. Unplugged pc from mains, unplugged PSU from mainboard, waited 5 minutes, reseated PCI video card, still no boot. I'm out of ideas, help!

Edit: Further troubleshooting has determined that it boots fine if theres no video card installed. Tried a different PCI video card, same problem. Looks like 1.A removes the ability to use an old PCI video card (or I got really unlucky). Not likely to be a cmmon issue, but annoys the bejesus out of me.

Edit2: Created floppy with 1.6 bios and command to flash in autoexec.bat, booted off it with no video card, waited 10 mins, shutdown, replaced pci video card, and I'm back up and running. 1.A bios is not for me

Edit3 : Installed 7800GT and removed Virge, flashed to 1.A, all ok so far, boots fine, reboot problem seems to be fixed, been running for 3 days all ok.

 

[MayanGuy]

For anyone wanting to replace that annoying NB fan..try the Zalman ZM-NB47J. I got it to fit underneath an XFX 6600GT by cutting away a bit at the heatsink....working great so far.

 

[ali.tayyab]

hi,
i just assembled a a64 3000 (venice) system using k8neo4 plat board.
My specs:
1. a64 3000+ (Venice)
2. MSI k8neo4 plat 1.A bios
3. Seagate 120gb serial ata drive with ncq
4. SB audigy 2
5. 1gb kingston ram (512*2 = double sided with 2T timing)
6. SiS 6215 pci card 2mb (waiting for 7800gtx, due in 2 weeks)
7. LG-4160 dvd writer
8. asus starice cooler

I can post okay, but no matter what i do (use a bare min config, disable all integrated peripherals) i cant install windows!! IT copies it's ms-dos portion okay, when it restarts to complete the windows portion of the install it always crashes (bsods) AT THE SAME TIME ALWAYS: the point where the logo dissapears and the install screen *should* appear.
i really dont want to go through rma, dont have a good gaming rig.
also the fact that the crash is always at the same point in the install and not random lead me to think i'm doing something wrong...
Here are some of the errors i get
1. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR
2. PFN_LIST_CORRUPT
3. WIn32k.sys stop error (I get this with the bare minimal config)

ps.
Can there be an issue with the sis card? It's about 8 years old!
I can play around the bios as long as i want, no issues at all.
the system is not overclocked...yet

 

[Pasquali]

Check the proper timings for your memory. if the system isn't reading the right timings, your system wiil be messed. OCZ Platinums DDR400 rev2 timing for this mobo should be 1T,2,2,2,5, voltage 2.7.