MSI k9A2 CF..... Meltdown after assembly

Ok I bought this board with a 4000+ brisbane.
3ghz was a breeze but not stable at stock. Sitting at around 1.5vcore now (Cant go any higher till I get a bracket for my XP90C). The board will not go above 300HT though. 301 posts, 303 doesnt. This is using the 10x cpu multi. The chip can post at 3150 with the 10.5 multi so its not that.

I am also unsure of my ram speeds.
CPU-Z shows 375
Bios says it is 400
Im assuming the 375 is right?

If anyone else has any experience with this new board let me know.

this was my best 3dmark06 with that board, i was less than an hour from trying to break it before it set fire
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4502646

the reason why your bios said 400 is cause its trying to hit 400, but in reality all it does it takes cpu speed and divides it, so for me at stock speed it does 2300/6=~400 but is really 383

heres how i tried to get max everything

RAM: set the cpu low, like 8x, and HTT down to 3-4x and ram to 400, u get a ram divider of i think 5, and find the max it can do, mine was 490 at 4-4-4-12

HTT: keep cpu low, set ram to 200mhz and push the bus up till u hit max, for me it was 290x5 before it locked up.

BUS: keep all the same but put the HTT multi low and see how much higher than it got before, for me im not sure i did this step at all, but 290x5 is good enough for some fun

CPU: keep it all low and put your cpu multi much higher, like 14x. once you get the highest stable cpu speed its time for some math, me it was 3360 at 1.512v

so then i had to try and get the best of it all.
which ram divider should i use?
490x5=2450, x6=2940, x7=3430, x8=3920, so i wanted to use x7
which HTT multi? since it was stable at 5x ill just stick with that
which cpu multi?
3400/290=11.72, so ill use 11.5x
and last trying to get a 7 divider at 11.5 i had to set the ram to 333mhz at default.

that was just some quick math and i was able to get a really good OC in a little over an hours work. and im quite happy with the results for a very cheap cpu and ram

Yours caught on fire? Mine just shut down and made a funky smell. But it came back on lol.

Found out what the smell and stuff was. It ate my powersupply lol. The whole reason I bought this system was because my last system kept shutting down on its own after I switched motherboards. Figured it was the mobo. Guess it was the PSU and the first mobo had less draw?
Anywho, sniffed inside the case and smelled fine. Sniffed the back of the PSU and burnt the heck out of my nose. Probably gave me cancer lol. Ohwell. Now im on the ol backup computer :(

Correction it wasnt the PSU, the PSU just sucked up the smoke and smell. It was the mosfetts. 2 of the burned up. God I hope it didnt kill my chip too.
So... My board ran for 1 hour, 15 minutes of that spent in 1. Most of it idle. And it cooked the mosfets burned up at less than 1.5vcore with only a dualcore. GEEE love to see what it would have done with a quadcore. Get your game together MSI!... There goes my fun this weekend.

It looks like there's a pattern with these boards with higher than stock VCore -> burning MOSFETs.

It'll be good to see how many users are experiencing this.

Interesting, guess I should replace it with a different model. One day ill learn my lesson about trying things before letting others be the guinea pigs.
This happened at the 1.49 vcore setting (never tried anything above that). About 50% load (Sitting in a not so demanding game).


http://pictureposter.allbrand.nu/pic...s/HPIM0375.JPG

whoaaa!!

i was running stock volts when mine fried

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Originally Posted by Manicdan

i was running stock volts when mine fried

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what exactly happened bro?did you also get burned mosffet?

stock volts?!

Making a mental note to not get that board

I hope MSI will do small revision of this board...

Generally it's a good performer and I would like it to be solid as well :rolleyes:

You guys think its a fluke and I should trade it for another of the same? Or would it likely do it again and I shold get a refund and buy an M3A? Anyone know how overclocking is on the M3A?

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Originally Posted by Jakalwarrior

You guys think its a fluke and I should trade it for another of the same? Or would it likely do it again and I shold get a refund and buy an M3A? Anyone know how overclocking is on the M3A?

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http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=171582

:eek:

Guess I will be watching mine. I tried 1.44v on the vcore for a bit but turned it back down. Overclocking with my 9600 hasn't really been worth it. So far I've been to an uber 2640 :p: It freezes after a while.

Guess there is a reason these mobos don't list the 125W chips like the 6400+ as supported.

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?f...&cat3_no=#menu

For me there's really no need to volt up this Phenom as it isn't going over 2.5 and some change stable anyway. I did try more voltage for a bit and it didn't matter.

You may want to try the Plat version. Or if you don't need the four graphics slots the Gigabyte 790X-

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...28075&Tpk=790x

M3A does look good and you won't have the option to Crossfire if you wish to in the future. It is only 85usd though-

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch...=done&nextloc=

I'll report back if this one blows up. My other budget board the IP35-e has been running a Q6600 G-0 @ 3.8GHz 1.52v for some time now. That board was 75usd with rebate.

I may just build yet another Intel rig and move my graphics cards over there.

Looks like MSI are falling back into their old ways. :(

Think on monday I will try to talk clubIT into cross shipping me an m3a for the price difference. If I got one from Mwave id have to pay for the shipping and it would come out a bit more expensive. Sure it has less features, crappier bios, etc... but atleast it wont go up in flames :(

Good luck,

I know you are probably frustrated.

thats the same exact part that burned on mine, its like i took that picture.

So, anyone with this board measured MOSFET temperatures with >1.4 VCore under load?

The one that fried looks like one supplying the inductor right infront of it. Could be just cheap IC's they're using.

thats the thing, i burned the same one with only memory at 2.3v the rest stock, and it was well cooled down by then, with the system underclocked. i was working on proper mounting since i just took the cover off the CPU. theres very few things similar between what we were doing but we both burned out the same exact mosfet.

would the mosfet burnout cause our PSUs to trip from overvoltage protection?

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Originally Posted by Manicdan

would the mosfet burnout cause our PSUs to trip from overvoltage protection?

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Nope. ;)

But overvoltage (spikes) or a shoot can burn out the MOSFET though.

I think if I was gonna buy one of those boards I'd buy some aftermarket heatsinks and a CPU cooler that directed the airflow down on those Mosfets!!

Arctic Freezer and Scythe Katana2 come to mind.....

I know it sucks for you Jackal, but that does look kinda wicked!!! ;)

Pretty sure you earned you OC'ers wings with that one!! :yepp:

i had a fan directly over them as it was also cooling down the northbridge.

im gonna talk to MSI and see if i can just get a refund to buy the platinum board. its been a very short amount of time for multiple people to have the same problem

Cant see the picture...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Manicdan

i had a fan directly over them as it was also cooling down the northbridge.

im gonna talk to MSI and see if i can just get a refund to buy the platinum board. its been a very short amount of time for multiple people to have the same problem

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Wow!!:shocked: I just assumed they overheated.....

Yeah, thats a QC issue... They should be giving you guys Platinums!!

EDIT: Pop, Pop... Thats the sound of Jakal's OC wings being removed... :}

They arent going to give us anything but some shipping fees which is essentially an 8 dollar fee to let them waste our time.
I have a spare 939 rig which im on now. Its not too much slower than the rig I was replacing it with so im fine. I mostly just wanted it as a new toy to overclock. Just hope no one else gets bitten by this. Why would they even build a board "made for overclocking" that cant handle over 125 watts, and put bios options in to allow you to blow it up with ease :( (if it doesnt blow on its own)

Anywho, on the pic. Im out of bandwidth. Will reset at midnight.

im starting to think i shouldnt have ordered this board.

i got my barc. 4000+ to 2.7ghz stable at stock voltage, so i think im not going to increase the voltage at all to try and reduce the chances of this happening.

isolated case perhaps?!

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Originally Posted by madfaze

isolated case perhaps?!

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Has to be some sort of reason for this http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?f...&cat3_no=#menu
If you keep your vcore at stock you might be ok. Just dont up it and start pushing the mhz. Notice how the 6000+ is supported, but the 125 watt one isnt.

MSI making a mess? How suprising... They had to recall a lot of K9N boards because they put a wrong capacitor on it and that caused instabillity with network use. Not to mention that the board was unstable. There is a reason why these boards are so cheap

its honestly just stupid to let anyone change the settings on something that clearly will cause a fire hazard

ow man glad I ordered the 6000+ 89 watt version then... I hope to have my gear on friday :)

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Originally Posted by Leeghoofd

ow man glad I ordered the 6000+ 89 watt version then... I hope to have my gear on friday :)

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dont overclock too far if at all :(

Would it help if I put some of those neat Swiftech copper heatsinks on it or just a 5cm fan blowing over that area... in fact the board is for a friend who wanted a gaming rig with a very tight budget...

I'll see what I can do once I get the board...

i just did the math, supposedly my cpu only put out 109 watts when i had it at its worse. which lasted long enough to do a few benchmarks. on average i was at 99W for about 2-3 hours a day, the rest was all stock 65W.

i wouldnt expect people to have similar problems on most windsor cores

There may have been some other issues affecting my board, but looking at it I dont think any amount of cooling would have helped. For me atleast this wasnt something that happened over time with slow heat build up and gradual degredation. I put it together, fiddled around trying to find the max OC real quick. Ran orthos about 1 minute. Jumped into WoW. Went to grab a coke, when I sat down and opened it the system shut off with a bad smell. Bye Bye mosfet (I replaced PSU, thinkin that was it). It did still function after that though. It repeated it after a few minutes with another bad smell (mosfet number 2?).
After that it boots and detects the CPU, RAM, and USB mouse, but goes no further.
I just cant imagine a fan or lil slug of copper saving it :(

newegg doesnt carry it anymore, i wonder why.

what average temps you get on your mobo?

btw my mobo came with a dead cmos battery, GASP

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Originally Posted by Manicdan

btw my mobo came with a dead cmos battery, GASP

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what!?...

the little round battery that comes with it was dead, so it didnt save any settings, i would have to turn the PSU on, reset the bios, go into the bios, set the ram to 2.2v since it needs that for 4-4-4-12 timings. and then i was allowed to go to the boot menu, only to have to reinstall vista from scratch. it became quite annoying and i called my brother who knew right away that the cmos battery was dead, lucky i have like 8 mobos around my house and their all the same.