Official MSI P7N Diamond (780i) Discussion/Review/Overclock/Guide/BIOS Thread

[oz38super]

yes, three little led on and no video signal. The cpu fan on and the harddisk light on but not flashing.
I cleared the CMOS and removed the battery with only one stick and no luck.
is that possible that the new biso does not support my CPU, but it only a P4.

[stickboy00]

yes, three little led on and no video signal. The cpu fan on and the harddisk light on but not flashing.
I cleared the CMOS and removed the battery with only one stick and no luck.
is that possible that the new biso does not support my CPU, but it only a P4.

unless you had a bad flash, cpu compatibility would probably be my guess.

I've had a few bad flashes in my day... no fun.

[FedericoUY]

is that possible that the new biso does not support my CPU, but it only a P4.

If you correctly flashed to 1.2 official, that's not possible. That bios sould support any of newer chips. When you finish you bios update, does it post at least once? or it never posted again? does it finished correctly?

[oz38super]

The flash was done by the USB drive and was no error message after. I never get a POST not even once after the flash. Bad flash, how to rectify?

[FedericoUY]

The flash was done by the USB drive and was no error message after. I never get a POST not even once after the flash. Bad flash, how to rectify?

Happened the same to me, the only difference was that mine posted, but after 5 minutes while gaming, it crashed and never posted again. Maybe you should take yours to rma service...

[FedericoUY]

Hey BababooeyHTJ:
When your board returned from RMA, did MSI team told you something about your board or they just sent you the shipping information mail with the tracking number?

[BababooeyHTJ]

Hey BababooeyHTJ:
When your board returned from RMA, did MSI team told you something about your board or they just sent you the shipping information mail with the tracking number?

To be honest with you I don't even think that they sent me the tracking info. I had to check the rma info at MSI's website for the tracking info.

[dogg]

My e8600 was not supported with 1.2 bios... I put there e8400 and flash to 1.32 beta / or it was 1.23 beta? /.. put e8600 back and it works...

[rage10]

my p7n d will not stay on for more then 3-4 seconds into windows install for windows vista or xp.

WIN XP: it will go through the chose drive and partition and load files part of the installer. but once it gets to the installing part it reboots.

WIN VISTA: the installer it starts to load and then reboots. it used to get to theenter product code screen and when I pressed ok it rebooted. but now it only stays on for 3-4 seconds.

thanks in advance for the help,
rage10

[Fiskbit]

Check your SATA/RAID drivers. The stock ones may cause rebooting and such. There's information earlier in the thread about this and is what caused me to have reboots during OS installation.

I discovered yesterday that I'd been having significant problems reading from and writing to my harddrives (a couple hundred errors in early February and several hundred yesterday). My initial thought was that it was a harddrive issue, but as it was happening on multiple drives, my attention turned to RAM or motherboard. Today, I came home to find that the computer I had left running while I was out for the day was powered up and dead, and no amount of effort will get it to POST, even with cleared CMOS. This motherboard has been little but trouble for me, and while I am often happy with the results I get out of it, it is not worth the blue screens, random rebooting, various quirks, and high failure rate that I've experienced and have been suggested by others' posts in this thread. I hope no one else is suckered into purchasing this unreliable board; it certainly hasn't been worth the money I put into it last year and I'd hate to see more people deal with the various problems it presents.

[rage10]

there are no drivers. I'm trying to do the inital installation.

[stickboy00]

have you used a memory checker like memTest86 to see if you have a stable memory subsystem?

[Fiskbit]

You should be installing the SATA/RAID drivers as an early part of OS installation, not afterward. And yeah, I agree; give MemTest86 a try and see how it fairs.

[FedericoUY]

Hi, got my motherboard back from RMA. Excellent service from MSI, brand new one, sealed in a bag. Everything is working perfect, but there's a strange item that came with this board. This is a small card with some kind of chip, and a led (green color when I power on). This is not a original item of the board of course.
Does anyone knows what is this for?

[FedericoUY]

Today, I came home to find that the computer I had left running while I was out for the day was powered up and dead, and no amount of effort will get it to POST, even with cleared CMOS. This motherboard has been little but trouble for me, and while I am often happy with the results I get out of it, it is not worth the blue screens, random rebooting, various quirks, and high failure rate that I've experienced and have been suggested by others' posts in this thread. I hope no one else is suckered into purchasing this unreliable board; it certainly hasn't been worth the money I put into it last year and I'd hate to see more people deal with the various problems it presents.

That's not good to hear Fiskbit, really bad luck as the rest of us (those who had to sent this board to RMA). I've been some hours trying this new board and it really looks like it's not the same board. Have had zero problems and the new 1.3 official bios looks really stable and improved. Didn't try OC yet, but i guess this finally get a good road. The only thing that worries me is how hot NB still works. Still wondering what's that rare thing that came with my board...

[stickboy00]

That is a strange addition... looks like something MSI may have added for testing.

[Fiskbit]

Huh; that is odd. Wonder what it does.

I'm still trying to decide if it's worth it to me to RMA my board because I have to cover the shipping cost. I've already ordered another 780i board to replace it, since I don't trust the P7N enough, but I may RMA this one to have a spare in case the other board decides to crap out (and I've become much less trusting of motherboards since dealing with this one). As I said, I was pretty pleased with this board's performance when it wasn't acting up, but it seems to act up so very often. I've learned a lot from this build and am looking forward to my next build several years down the road, since I'll have a lot in mind regarding what to avoid in order to have a reliable machine (and make any part failure less crippling, as right now I don't even have any means of getting data off my hard drives).

I'm really interested in whether anyone's having long term success with this board, so keep us updated on how it performs over the next while. Is anyone actually making it to a year of use without failure?

[dogg]

I'm really interested in whether anyone's having long term success with this board, so keep us updated on how it performs over the next while. Is anyone actually making it to a year of use without failure?

sad to read about your dead boards...
my board running since end of 02/08... never try OC before, so this board survived lots of very stupid settings until I learned a bit, thx to you all here... But I did no MB modifications, just tried to maximize cooling of NB, SB, mems, that sli thing /all on air/... Anyway, fact is, that most of boards died suddenly, so I'm checking today's MBs again... just in a case...

Federico, is your RMAd MB still signed VER. 01?

[loonym]

Is anyone actually making it to a year of use without failure?

This one's been running a q6600@3.6 100% load 24/7 crunching WCG for over a year. Soon it's going to my nephew. He will probably not overclock but it will continue to run WCG around the clock as part of our deal.

[FedericoUY]

That is a strange addition... looks like something MSI may have added for testing.

Yes maybe. Just aksked to Customer service about it.

Fiskbit: I wonder too what that is. You sould rma your board, you'll only have to pay to send it, because MSI pays the return.
I don't think this board is the whole problem, I think the problem is in the 780i chipset, and in the previous released bios (weren't the best)...

Dogg: Yes it is, MS-7510 v1.0, but it came with 1.2 bios, not 1.0 as this mb originally comes.

Still very worried about NB/MCP temp. How hot it should work? (mine working around 50ºc-1.3v)
I'm afraid to do some OC...

[dogg]

Still very worried about NB/MCP temp. How hot it should work? (mine working around 50ºc-1.3v)

mine is 63c -70c - 1.55v /everest values/ .. hot, hot.. but it works..

[stickboy00]

Mine is running at 33-38C on idle and around 50-55C on load with it set to 1.425v. NB voltage and temps are definitely the key to stability with this board. Since setting it to 1.425 I haven't had any crashes and all stress tests are stable. I do have a 120mm case fan on the side that blows directly on the NB, though.

[FedericoUY]

Mine is running at 33-38C on idle and around 50-55C on load with it set to 1.425v. NB voltage and temps are definitely the key to stability with this board. Since setting it to 1.425 I haven't had any crashes and all stress tests are stable. I do have a 120mm case fan on the side that blows directly on the NB, though.

Mine is around 50-52 idle and around 55-60 on load. Set vNB to 1.4 and put my Q9450 on 3500mhz with no problem (that's 437.5 fsb), with other minor voltage tweaks (vCore and vFsb term). Definitively think this board is great and 1.3 bios rocks.
Since my board arrived have had zero problems, incredible!

[rage10]

Hi, got my motherboard back from RMA. Excellent service from MSI, brand new one, sealed in a bag. Everything is working perfect, but there's a strange item that came with this board. This is a small card with some kind of chip, and a led (green color when I power on). This is not a original item of the board of course.
Does anyone knows what is this for?

it is probably to check if the fan outlets work. I guess that the person who checked it forgot to remove it. strange though. was it installed when you received it?

[widdyst]

Hi I,ve been following this thread since I got my P7N just over a year ago. I had a nice stable clock of 3.6ghz (using suggested settings on page 1)with version 1.0 bios but couldnt seem to get any further. I was worried about flashing the bios as I hadnt done this before BUT today I bit the bullet and did the live update flash. Hoorah it flashed succsefully and I didnt kill my board .....phew. BUT Now when I try and emulate my old overclock I cant as some things in the cell menu have changed notably the voltage settings. I used to uset CPU GTL @ 63 and FSBterm @ 65 . Now I didnt really know what these numbers meant But that they just worked (ignorant of me I know) .Could somebody help me with what I would need to set these two voltages at now.

UPDATE : Ok After a bit more reading and research I've figured it out I think ? Correct me if I'm wrong please.

It seems My old FSBterm setting of 63 was the maximum, equating to 1.3125v. I've had a play and set this at 1.280v and it seems fine (I didnt like the idea of it being maximum)
The CPU gtl as far as I can gather needs to be around 63% But the bios wont allow me to set it that low ? even when I try and do it manual the board seems to keep a relationship between FSB and GTL and so as I change FSB term the CPU gtl goes up and down on its own .
With FSB set at 1.280v the GTL sets itself around .846 Is this sounding right