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MSI 875P NEO-FISR
by richarddx
I first looked at purchasing this board back in 2003 to upgrade my old Athlon system, back in the days when the Pentium was way ahead in performance. I read through many magazines and at loads of reviews for the motherboard that came with the best all round qualities. This includes good performance, general quality, reliability, features ... and value.
OK, it was quite on the pricey side, but I decided that because I was upgrading my system for the "long term" this wouldn't be a big deal. I bought the board along with new RAM which was PC3200 (400Mhz) effective, and 2 sticks of 512MB to enable the dual channeling feature. I also bought a Pentium 4 3.0Ghz CPU.
I installed everything myself, having built several computers in shops (for customers) before, and knowing what I was doing. However, as soon as I turned the PC on, the memory controller cooling fan was very loud, as if running at high speed to keep everything cool, and on entering the Input/Output system menu, I discovered that everything seemed to be running very hot.
Upon installing the operating system (WinXP)all applications proved to be very unstable and loads of "blue screen of death" failures occurred. Programs also crashed to the desktop. I looked once again in the BIOS and the CPU temp was 60 degrees centigrade. So I shut down the computer and decided that something was seriously wrong, but I didn't know which bit might be going wrong, whether it be the CPU or motherboard. So I at least took the PC round to a local computer store to look at, and while in their store the motherboard completely died!
So I had to pay £200 for a replacement, and it appeared that the motherboard had just "roasted" even though everything had been verified installed properly. Anyway, I ended up with the replacement, installed it, and everything worked well for a time, with great performance. However, a few months later, for some reason, the CPU died. I took the computer into the computer store again and discovered that the Pentium had burned out. The processor broke in half and had to be replaced. That cost £400. It looked like it could have been the motherboard, to blame.
On one final note, I have gone through 3 power supply units with this motherboard, one a 360W, a 400W and a 420W. All died connected to this motherboard. I think that is no coincidence, and I believe that the board could have some voltage regulation issues perhaps. This would explain failing PSUs, burned out CPU, and various problems with hard drives and optical drives not being detected. Sometimes the motherboard doesn't regonise half the drives connected on boot up, mostly it does!
That aside, it has now been working well in my PC for over a year, and seems stable. On top of that, despite its price, the board does have great features and performance. It makes a good feature platform and is great for upgrades and flexibility because it has 8 USB ports, 3 firewires, 5 PCI slots and AGP 8x speed, along with a fast chipset and up to 4 gigs of RAM support. It's one of those boards that will end up doing a good job in your PC for quite a long time, provided it doesn't blow up on you.
Finally, I have to say, I'd be cautious about this board. It may be fast, but it seems to try to self destruct your PC every now and then. That is not good. A wrecked Pentium 4, not detecting drives which are fitted correctly, and the odd crash, along with 3 burned PSUs, means that this really may not be a good choice. It even comes with an overclocking utility, but please do not overclock with this board, on pain of death!
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MSI KT4VL
by Chewystu
I bought this motherboard with the intention of upgrading my system. I had recently upgraded my operating system from Windows ME to Windows XP and my existing motherboard didn't seem to be integrating with Windows XP very well. I made the decision to purchase a new motherboard (which would also entail buying new RAM) a new ... CPU and a new Graphics Card (which I will review at a later date).
Fortunately I had all the other components needed from my previous self-built PC.
Right, now to the board (at last!).
I purchased it from www.ebay.co.uk for about £65.00. I also got the RAM on a deal (512Mb DDR2700).
The board is well laid out. There is plenty of room around the CPU to easily attach a decent heatsink without being in danger of breaking anything. The RAM is easily inserted into the DIMM slots. The floppy 'IDE' slot is in the usual place, however, the IDE cables proper are located about as far away from your drives as will be possible! So, if you buy this motherboard I highly recommend also buying some extra long round IDE cables!!
I have found, however, that to get at the 1st DIMM bank you do have to remove the AGP card as the lever that holds the RAM strip in place hits the base of the AGP card. I have. however, successfully used the 2nd bank with only one strip of RAM, so this niggly problem is easily overcome (provided you only have one strip of RAM).
The board is ATA-133 compatible. It also supports the new Barton FSB and is ideal for amateur overclockers (although I personally haven't tried it). It supports the latest DDR-RAM speeds. It has on-board LAN, USB2.0, on-board sound (LAN and sound are both able to be switched off in the BIOS), and pins waiting to be connected to a Bluetooth aeriel (if you can find one!).
The software supplied is good. Lots of applications to overclock with and an automatic driver update program.
I highly rate this board. M
y Uncle also bought this board with an XP2500+ and has had no problems either (in fact it was on his recommendation that I bought this board). It represents excellent value for money, with lots of features yet a simple set up procedure. It has (so far) been very stable and integrates perfectly with XP. A must buy!!!
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