The OFFICIAL MSI K8N Neo2-939 tips and tricks guide thread

[kimandsally]

[QUOTE=kimandsally]Hi some time ago there was a great walkthrough on installing xp on the msi neo2, I have spent the last 4 hours trying to find it, there were links from Ocuk to this site but every link just takes me to the first page it no longer takes me to the bit I'm looking for.
I can't remember who wrote it but I think his avatar began with ( R ) it was a very thorough guide which made it virtually impossible to not get it right.

I'm needing it as I have 2 x sata drives which I want to run xp on one and put programs on the other, I had managed to do it but can't remember how, my mate came round and in his wisdom played with my bios then it said something like no operating system, I disconected the drive with my programs on then the remaining drive with xp on it works fine, I have tried various options but it no longer works with the 2 drives.

I know less than nothing about raid so I'm a bit stuck to say the least.


If someone knows where the thread is I would be pleased to death.

Cheers.[/QUOTE

Hi maybe I can explain a bit better, I have 2 hitachi deskstar 160gb sata drives and I want to run them in raid 0, I have followed the instuctions from the MSI manual but it will not load xp, I do not have another drive in my computer so I am setting these up in a raid 0 array, then go to install xp I press f6 when it asks for drivers and it loads them then it carries on untill you have to press enter, at which point it then says no hard disc detected

I have used the hitachi drive tool to write zero's to the drives and it still does the same, I have configured the drives for raid 0 and it says drives healthy.

Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong?

Any idea's would be welcome.

[vkbms]

i think that do you need a Ide Hd where win can load the sata driver....

[kimandsally]

Does that mean that I cannot load xp onto my sata array? It just doesn't make sense to me, what would be the benefit of having the discs in a raid array if you have to run windows from a single drive?
I bought the 2 drives so that everything would work faster, I trying to get the most from my computer for benchmarking.
Thanks for your reply though.

[kimandsally]

i think that do you need a Ide Hd where win can load the sata driver....

Just looking at your spec, how did you get your xp onto your 2 disks? And the speed you have yours is great how do you manage to get your winnie up to 2.9?

I would be well pleased if I could get close to that.

[vkbms]

Does that mean that I cannot load xp onto my sata array? It just doesn't make sense to me, what would be the benefit of having the discs in a raid array if you have to run windows from a single drive?
I bought the 2 drives so that everything would work faster, I trying to get the most from my computer for benchmarking.
Thanks for your reply though.

You haven't understood....I think you need a Ide disk where sata driver sould be stored to be loaded on windows boot ....After that the driver are loaded you don't need to access anymore at the ide disk....

Ps: Sorry 4 my English :P

[vkbms]

Just looking at your spec, how did you get your xp onto your 2 disks? And the speed you have yours is great how do you manage to get your winnie up to 2.9?

I would be well pleased if I could get close to that.

I had a 120Gb Maxtor HD for storing purpouse.....My winnie goes @ 2.950 only for screen (i have to update the sign....) .....It can bench @ 2780mhz..... And it finish Spi1M @ 2820-30 mhz...

[kimandsally]

I have found my problem, I was using the floppy that came with the motherboard, I carefully read the pdf manual and it says to take the drivers from the cd and put on a floppy, I did that and windows xp has just finished loading So maybe I need to be a little more carefull when reading the manual.

I still think you overclock is fantastic, I can only get mine to boot into xp at 300 fsb max with the ram running on the 133 divider, but to do any benchmarking I can only run it at 295 fsb. I am also running the ( Northbridge ) I can't think what it's called on water, and the cpu, although it's not the best water cooling, Zalman Resorater, I am very happy with it the temps are kept down to 43 c most of the time

My cpu is a week 46 I think but the Northbridge chip is one of the older not so good ones.

Thanks for you help .

[vkbms]

I have found my problem, I was using the floppy that came with the motherboard, I carefully read the pdf manual and it says to take the drivers from the cd and put on a floppy, I did that and windows xp has just finished loading So maybe I need to be a little more carefull when reading the manual.

I still think you overclock is fantastic, I can only get mine to boot into xp at 300 fsb max with the ram running on the 133 divider, but to do any benchmarking I can only run it at 295 fsb. I am also running the ( Northbridge ) I can't think what it's called on water, and the cpu, although it's not the best water cooling, Zalman Resorater, I am very happy with it the temps are kept down to 43 c most of the time

My cpu is a week 46 I think but the Northbridge chip is one of the older not so good ones.

Thanks for you help .

Silly mobo....My mobo does 350mhz fsb....Try to increase HTT with clockgen ....

[krush0]

I've a msi k8n neo2 and sometimes i have cold boot issues.
i start the pc, black screen, after a while a beep and my msi says "system is in overclocking safe" or something similar.
i have to enter the bios, save settings and now i can start the pc, even without overclock.
i don't know what to do, i've tried some bios, nothing. anybody with the same problem?

I have the same problem as well - if you solve it let me know
its really bugging me !!
Goes to 230 ok go to 231 or above - no cold boot

[FlyingHamster]

just got my 2nd board back from RMA. it says Korea 0451A2. anyone had any experience with this one?

[eva2000]

guys need help with MSI K8N Neo2 bios flash http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=54216 seems to just hang at please wait! flashing prompt

[darka]

>I've also been through 5 x K8N Neo2's & only 1 of them has been good so >far... It's a 0437 model... The others just plain suck...

>2 x 0420 & 2 x 0410 K8N Neo2...

Dear all,
where can i find which board model i have ?aka 0410 or 0420

tnx

Darka

[Karl Norris]

Hey darka,

You got me curious...

1 in 5 was good? Ick. How did the others suck? Low htt capabilities, or what?

I have a new board coming towards the end of next week...

Karl

[TheMeatFrog]

I remember reading a thread a little while back saying something about what bios was best for TCCD memory. If anyone can recall that thread or what bios it was please let me know.

[Arkangyl]

Just to add my 2 cents bout this board.

Really seems to hate my XMS C2 v1.2 (ought be CH-6, HS still on though)
Some days DDR440 2-3-2-6 T1 works, other days DDR333 3-4-4-7 T2 is flakey. (Ram was DDR450 2-3-2-6 in old AXP)

With some Buffalo PC-3700 using the Micron chips (more or less Ballistix) the mobo was awesome for me, managed to pull a 3000+ Winny to 2.55ghz stock voltage, stock cooling (with crap thermal pad).

Planning to get some TCCD to see where the limit is, HTT bus got pissed at 290 (3x LTD) but I'm going to give the NB some Ceramique and see whats up then.

sic thread

[ninjax]

I think 1.41 was the bios that help ocing TCCD mem (?)

[vkbms]

i have some problem with 2*256 mudhkin level2(bh5) and this board....the system won't go with 2-2-2-5 timings and 2.6v ....i've tried also 2.85v....1T or 2T nothing matters.... bios 1.36b....any suggestion?

PS: the system works only(with boot no a64tweaker use..) with 2-3-2-6 t1 2.85v

[Cashman]

Guys...

Ive had three Neo2's now and I'm loathed to get another even tho the clocks were so good.

The first two worked really well for 3 days and then just wouldnt turn on after that. The fans just started to spin for 1 sec and then stopped. I then read loads of stuff about problems with the Antec 550w and OCZ 520w PSU's.

So I sold the PSU and got a new Neo2 and a PC Power & Cooling 510 Turbo Deluxe. Worked a treat for the same sort of period and then... it wouldnt start. So I turned the PSU off at the wall and waited 1 minute. The I turned the PSU back on only to hear a tint repetitive "clicking" noise coming from the PSU. I then turned it off, had a think.. and the turned the PSU back on again, only to hear a bang and see a spark shoot out of the back of my new £150 PSU.

The PSU was dead.. I assumed (and hoped) that the PSU was at fault so I ordered another PC Power & Cooling jobbie and installed it... as soon as I turned the power on the clicking was back so I immediately turned the PC off and removed the Neo2.. reinstalled my Asus A8V and hey presto the system works perfectly!!

This really annoys me as this Asus board it terrible for overclocking and when Neo2 worked it was awesome!

Anyon know why the Neo2's kept dying on me? Id love to have one that worked but after 3 deaths already Im not keen to shell out another £100

[Karl Norris]

Hey vkbms,

You have experience with this memory working at the tighter timings and lower voltage on another board?

Have you tried to disable the aggressive timings in Cell Menu in bios?

Karl

[LoneWolf]

Okay, I haven't posted in this thread for awhile, but I had a little time to play with my system yesterday and tweak it a little further. For more details besides my sig, I've got my Athlon 64 3000+ 90nm running at 9 x 240HTT (4x HT), 1 gig of Kingston HyperX PC3200 (not the ultra-low latency type) running 1:1 at 1T-2.5-4-4-8 at 2.7v. MB BIOS is 1.4 stock. The CPU Vcore is at 1.5 (not sure I need it to be that high, but it runs stably and temperatures seem okay). If I go up to 245HTT, Memtest86+ (v. 1.51) fails between in the last 5% of each pass. My CPU is rock stable and I've had no problems there; I'm quite sure my RAM is the limiting factor (but I don't plan on replacing it just to improve my OC).

What does everyone here deem as a reasonably safe Vdimm? The Kingston is listed in manufacturer specs as 2.65v recommended, and of course MSI's red warning text for voltage starts at 2.75v. My case is cooled quite well, so I'm not super worried about heat, but wouldn't like the thought of toasting my RAM either. Will 2.75v be an issue? I think there's a decent chance that if I bring it up to that, Memtest will pass. I don't need an extreme OC, but at 245-250HTT I should be getting Athlon 64 3500+ performance, which I think is pretty good. Also, hitting 250 at 4x would bring me back to the 1GHz stock HT speed that I'd like.

P.S. Final two questions: At what speed does everyone recommend droping from 5x to 4x HT?

Second, does anybody have any problem with Folding@Home? My system runs rock solid, I can do Prime95 for hours in Torture Test mode and loop after loop in Memtest86, but Folding@Home seems to bomb out with a system error within 30-90 minutes, even though system temps stay low. I'm running WinXP SP2, could there be a data execution prevention error, or is there another problem that people are aware of?

Lot of questions, I know...thanks to anyone who takes the time to answer.

[Arkangyl]

Figured I'd update since I was in bout the CH-6 compatability.

I installed the newest nForce drivers and things are running great.

also using 1.37b BIOS

DDR450 2-3-2-6 T1 is possible, T2 is far more stable thou (I think I need more volts to go higher).

I can also swing 285 HTT x3 stable, I dunno if its an issue with the 3x mutli or what but I crap out after that. Would better thermal compound on the NB help here?

[LoneWolf]

Welp, 245 HTT is not a go at Vdimm 2.75v 1T 2.5-4-4-8. I could try 2.8v, but I'm thinking I'm about as far as I want to go without different RAM. Ah, well...360MHz isn't a bad overclock, and everything's still stable...

[I(illa Bee]

man, MSI recived my RMA on the feb. 16th, and still nothing...they told me 10-14 working days. long time no..?

[Speedi]

I finally managed to get everything stable. I replaced by cheezy Thermaltake 480W PSU with the OCZ Powerstream 520W and it works great. Voltages are dead on and the Amps are a nice dose to fresh air as well. I did have to adjust the 3.3v up a little, but not much, in order to get it to 3.3v.

As for 2-2-2-5-1T on this board with my Corsair TWINX RAM -- I couldn't make it happen. I ramped the crap out of the voltages and it didn't make a difference. I thought, well, I could just overclock the friggin' thing!

After creating this mammoth spreadsheet of different HTT, Vdimm, Vcore, Multiplier, etc., I finally settled on the configuration you see in my sig. I didn't want to run higher voltages on anything... so I squeezed 2-3-3-5-1T at 440MHz (220MHz FSB) @ 2.75v and 2.42GHz from the 3500+ 90nm using stock cooling and voltage (1.4v) along with the 11x multiplier and HTT of 4.

Here are my numbers from my current configuration:
* NV/ATI Speedup = Enabled
* Passed SuperPI 2MB, 3DMark05 and Prime95 Torture for 8 Hours.
* 3DMark05/CPUMark = 5075/6159
* Sisandra 2005 CPU Dhrystone ALU = 11051
* SiSandra 2005 CPU Whetstone FPU/iSSE2 = 3924/5130
* SiSandra Bandwidth INT ALU/FLT FPU= 6548/6465

I want to say that I was able to push the RAM up to 500MHz (250MHz FSB), but it was with timings of 2.5-3-3-6-1T @ 2.85v and a Vcore of 1.50v. I ran Prime95 Torture for about 5 Hours before I had to do some other work... but it ran fine up to that point. Like I said, I just wasn't OK with upping the voltages to these levels and leaving it. This was also done with 10x Multiplier for the 3500+ 90nm. The bandwidth numbers were only marginally (7.5%) better...

I certainly hope this info helps someone. The system is really rock-solid... but it's finding the sweet spot that was a major time-consumer. I was really concerned about corrupting my disk once I got higher and higher in FSB settings... but it never happened.

[BerT]

Silly mobo....My mobo does 350mhz fsb....Try to increase HTT with clockgen ....

Bought 2 bords ... both only did 290 - 300 HTT
That sucks... all korean chipset