MSI P6N SLI-F Available At The Egg

T

The Doc

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 2, 2005
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Well, another 650i motherboard has surfaced on Newegg. I may end up getting one of these babies. It looks like I've found a new home for my 6800GS's :)
 
Good find. I haven't been able to find any reviews on this board but I'm curious to see how well it stacks up to the Asus 650i board, P5N-E. I was going to go with the Asus for a new build but it looks I might consider the MSI, depending on its performance and stability.
 
Here ya go! Looks decent, and like every other beta mainboard released to the masses the BIOS is going to need some tweaking before overclockers jump on it.

clickerooney dooney

GibMonkey
 
DOH!!!
I just bought the Asus version. I probably should have seen this coming.
The one thing I don't get is why does this have a Standard Return policy while the Asus version doesn't at Newegg. That doesn't make any sense.
SoulMan901
 
From MSI's Website

Platinum: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=P6N_SLI_Platinum&class=mb

SLI-F:
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=P6N_SLI-FI&class=mb

Looks like it uses a combo NF6/4

Chipset

NVIDIA® nForce 650i SLI (C55) Chipset
• Supports FSB 533MHz, 800MHz, 1066MHz & 1333MHz* (FSB 1333 requires FSB 1333 CPU and manual FSB adjustment in the BIOS)
• Support Dual channel DDR2 533/667/800 memory interface up to 8GB
• Support Dual PCI Express 16X interface with either 1x16 or 2x8 operation.

NVIDIA® nForce 430i (MCP55) Chipset
• Integrated Hi-Speed USB 2.0 controller, 480Mb/sec, 8 ports
• 4 Serial ATAII ports w/ transfer rate up to 3Gb/s and support RAID (0,1, 0+1 & 5)
• 2 channel Ultra ATA 133 bus Master IDE controller up to 4 IDE drives
• PCI Master v 2.3, I/O ACPI 2.0 Compliant
 
wow.. for $124.99 you can't complain tho.. in this world of $300+ 680i mobos.. I wonder how this one OCs? coolaler reviewed this one and said something about p965 killer.. looks very interesting.. great price! :D
 
just jumped on it...been needing a way better board than this ECS piece and i can do quad core and SLi later. :D me happy
 
I'm in for one too. Looks like a decent board and a great deal. MSI has done good by me for the last several builds and my local pc shop lets me trade my old ones in towards new mobos lol. Of course, I am probably the only high end buyer he has so he does go the extra mile for me. I think he gets bored with all the business pcs he builds lol.
 
should be getting it tomorrow. i'll report back if its a piece or not lol
 
the Platinum board doesn't look like it's anything special. :(

MSI's SLI X16 socket 939 board was great, but the 6x0i chipset Platinum board seems pretty meh.
 
jtobrien said:
the Platinum board doesn't look like it's anything special. :(

MSI's SLI X16 socket 939 board was great, but the 6x0i chipset Platinum board seems pretty meh.
Click to expand...

This pc has the K8N Neo4 Platinum running twin 6800 gtx in it I am hoping the P6 Diamond turns out ok if not I go Asus.
 
Rather fugly heatsink on that northbridge. Should be fun rigging a fan onto it. :D
 
i love this board. completely stable so far. i just did a simple overclock to 1333fsb and its fine for me. my hsf is huge and i thought it wouldn't fit right but it has a little less than a cm between the NB heatsink so its good.. now i just gotta update my drivers and be on my way. my one disappointment: NO CASE BADGE. i was hopin for one but it wasn't there and i looked everywhere for it. meh. oh well.
 
Man, not only is this thing cheaper than the Asus, but it comes with a heatsink on the Southbridge. What a concept! I presume they chose one short enough to fit under an installed video card too...
 
Like markt, I'm currently running a no-effort overclock to 360 fsb with no problems. The only thing I've noticed so far is that vCore seems to be a bit low. Don't know if that's a reporting issue, or what, but mine is set to auto and is sitting at 1.272v with a +.05v boost enabled through the BIOS.

Is there any program that is less likely to lie about vCore than others? I'm using CPU-Z.
 
I just went back and took a closer look at the ASUS layout--only 2 PCI slots, one of which would be covered if you had dual cards with dual-slot coolers. I have an Audigy 2 and a Pinnacle video-capture card, so if I went SLI on this board with, say 8800GTS's, I'd be hosed. If I did SLI on the MSI, one of the two lower PCI slots would be covered, just like the ASUS, but that third slot between the two vidcards would be just fine, and so would I. I may never go SLI, but I want to have the choice.

The ASUS PATA connectors are nicely located down where the drive cage would be, but that's a tradeoff between HDs and opticals (which the MSI favors) so that's really a tossup. The ASUS floppy connector is in a horrible location, all the way at the bottom and halfway to the back. At least the MSI's is toward the front of the case.

All that to say, the more I look at this board, the worse I want one for my legacy-compatible Core2 build. Everything just fits what I need, including the price. In fact, if the platinum model comes out anywhere near $150, I might go for that to get the heatpipe coolers and the e-SATA port.
 
So far I have been able to hit 430fsb at 1.4 vCore and 1.45v NB. Seems to be fairly stable, where 400fsb with the same voltages was not. Haven't tried to boot any higher yet, but will soon. Also booted 330 and 360 just fine.

The northbridge is hot to the touch, but not burningly hot like the one on my old P5N-SLI used to get. There are three fan headers on the board, so I may use one of them to stick a little fan on the NB heatsink.
 
Martel-fs said:
So far I have been able to hit 430fsb at 1.4 vCore and 1.45v NB. Seems to be fairly stable, where 400fsb with the same voltages was not. Haven't tried to boot any higher yet, but will soon. Also booted 330 and 360 just fine.

The northbridge is hot to the touch, but not burningly hot like the one on my old P5N-SLI used to get. There are three fan headers on the board, so I may use one of them to stick a little fan on the NB heatsink.
Click to expand...

I haven't been able to get higher than 1500 fsb on mine which is 375. Could you post the settings that you have? Vcore, NB voltage, etc.

EDIT: wtf....after trying all day I just put in 425 and it boots up just fine....weird mobo. time for stability tests i guess.
 
430fsb orthosed all night with no problems. Will be pushing it higher when I get home from work this afternoon.
 
Sounds like maybe this board has "fsb holes" like some of the others. Probably important to skip around in 5-10MHz jumps to make sure you aren't in a hole instead of at an absolute wall. Hmmmm, E4300 @ 425, 9x multi, 3.8 GHz? Nah...:)
 
yeah it does. for me its like 1500-1700 fsb is a hole...kinda funny if you ask me.

but 1720 wasn't stable either. so i might push it further.
 
At 450fsb now, everything seems fine still. This is still with +.1250 vCore (which comes out to 1.4 vCore on all the measurements) and 1.45v northbridge.
 
Martel-fs said:
At 450fsb now, everything seems fine still. This is still with +.1250 vCore (which comes out to 1.4 vCore on all the measurements) and 1.45v northbridge.
Click to expand...

grrr...i got it up to 1709 which is 427.25. But 1710 no workie. did you happen to write down what worked and what didn't, cuz i might just be hitting another hole. i tried to go up to 450 but it didn't work with your settings.
 
The only two fsbs I've tried that didn't work were 330 and 360, but I was also still tweaking around on the settings.

I left orthos running as I went to dinner and it did two and a half hours at 450fsb with no issues.

Also I am leaving ram speed at 667 for now and OCing unlinked.
 
Martel-fs said:
The only two fsbs I've tried that didn't work were 330 and 360, but I was also still tweaking around on the settings.

I left orthos running as I went to dinner and it did two and a half hours at 450fsb with no issues.

Also I am leaving ram speed at 667 for now and OCing unlinked.
Click to expand...

ah...well after trying various other speeds...i figure i'm at my limit. 1705 is as high as I can go. i'm leavin it at 1700 though. guess i should focus on the ram now
 
markt435 said:
ah...well after trying various other speeds...i figure i'm at my limit. 1705 is as high as I can go. i'm leavin it at 1700 though. guess i should focus on the ram now
Click to expand...

So that's about the same as a 975X right?
 
kirbyrj said:
So that's about the same as a 975X right?
Click to expand...

I dunno. I went from a 965 that didn't overclock to this. Was a cheap mobo to use til i got a better one. Still its a decent overclock. I'm quite happy with it as its been completely stable since I found the sweet spot. Once I find the sweet spot for my ram I'll be truely happy haha.
 
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