Quality doubtful with MSI Mobos ????????Am I really asking for trouble with this board?

[powerMarkymark]

Hi,

I'm putting together a new sytstem and because my current system has a triple monitor set up I wanted to do the same with my new one.


I've pretty much settled on;

MSI 6380 KT266A RAID MOBO
AMD Athlon XP 1700 CPU
512 DDR PC 2100 RAM
GP3 TI 200 64 MB VID CARD AGP
G450 Dual head PCI VID CARD
ATI tv Wonder PCI
WESTERN 60 GB 7200 HD
LITE-ON 24X CD-RW

I plan on using Windows XP:

Any opinions on my choice of MOBO?

Could I be better served with something else? (in or around the same price range)

I plan on trying the overclocking thing (never tried it before).


AAO - Golden Member posted ;

"I haven't had this MSI board, but all of the MSIs I have had or have good friends with are very disappointing. MSI has serious quality problems, they tend to go dead quite early in their life, it happens with quite a few of their boards, must be a quality problem. Sometimes they go dead under a year and you get a replacement, leading to a hassle of swapping boards, other times its over a year and you're hung out to dry. "

Am I really asking for trouble with this board?

 

[Athlon4all]

I personally don't think that is the case, but I have only had one expereicne with a MSi board and that doesn't count because it was a Gateway Computer. Truthfully, I don't think you need to worry about Msi's quality. I wouldn't hesitate to get the setup you've got planned.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

I know that MSI did have a run of bad quality a while ago with some early socket A boards, and in fact, Anand used to use them in their servers until they started dying off one by one and replaced them with ASUS A7Vs'. I personally have had good luck with MSI boards..I fact, I built a setup using the 815E Pro with a celeron 566 running @ 850 a year and three months ago. Both board and proc still going strong, and I will GUARANTEE you that this machine has had no P.M. (cleaning, etc). I know the owner. I felt confident enough in their boards to get a K7T 266 Pro2 that is now my main machine. Running hard with no problems so far and I don't expect any . Hope that helps in your decision.

 

[LostHiWay]

MSI are usually very stable...but they are also usually the slowest compared to competitors

 

[AA0]

It does happen, as I said. At what rate it happens I haven't figured out, its not something released. I know it happens quite a lot, and I have a good friend that lost another MSI last week, it was just a cheap server, but what a pain it is for a person to fix. I had thought for a bit that maybe MSI got their act back together, but when she lost that board I was obviously wrong.
IMO, their price isn't worth the hassle and worry, like IBM HDs.

 

[Stang289]

I've built 2 systems with the MSI K7T Pro2a, and 2 with the K7T Turbo. I have had good luck with MSI boards.

 

[powerMarkymark]

I'm getting conflicting advise, is this normal?

I certainly don't want to be stuck switching my Mobo in the near future.

 

[Mem]

I`ve a 16 month old MSI K7T Pro board still going strong,stability is excellent and it has never given me any problems,my friend has a MSI turbo board and his is the same as mine stability wise etc,I would say MSI are excellent brand in general, just remember it`s your money your choice and even if you went with a different brand does not mean that might not die or be a RMA board ,computer hardware in general is part luck with RMA since no brand is RMA proof.

So buy what you want and decide on.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

<< I'm getting conflicting advise, is this normal?

I certainly don't want to be stuck switching my Mobo in the near future. >>



Yes, this is normal..It doesn't matter WHICH mobo you pick out, there will be some with good posts and some with bad posts..EG: ECS K7S5A, half rock...half suck, depending on who you talk to. Even ASUS boards will garner negs (again, depends on who you talk to)..Look into other forums and read reviews, that is about all you can do. Good luck.

 

[powerMarkymark]

As always, thabks for your words of wisdom and good wishes.

 

[AA0]

I've always judged boards on a few things, the first is how many bad stories you hear. If there are just a few, I'll leave it to user error, but if there are alot, I get to wondering. Something like ECS boards which have a large amount of complaints, is not user error, its poor design. You get what you pay for.
The other thing I judge them on is how severe their complaints are, while an Asus board might have certain memory types having some trouble, other boards might not boot, or have serious issues that just aren't worth the risk. You have to decide if you want to risk it.

Keep in mind the majority of boards will be fine, but you never know what you're going to get. You usually pay extra for a quality board that has a lower chance to go bad.

 

[CraigRT]

MSI rocks!!
I've never used better motherboards than MSI.. that is no lie! stable as a rock, fast, and reliable.. two thumbs up!

 

[JoPalm]

I just built a similiar system this past week with the non raid version and havn't had any problems thus far.

Athlon XP 1700+
512 DDR
Radeon 8500
liteon 24x

 

[InsaneMorphius]

Ive also built 4 systems with the MSI boards, there top notch in stability!!!

 

[Z80]

I purchased my first MSI motherboard last month. The MSI Pro266 Master (MS-6366) socket 370 motherboard. I've had nothing but problems with it. I RMA'd the first board because it wouldn't even boot. I've had to reflash the BIOS 3 times on the second board and will probably need to return it also. I'm not the only one that has problems with this board, check out the MSI forum on their web site. I've always had good luck with Abit boards but decided to try this MSI board since it had tons of features and was very cheap. I was using it to build a system for my son using spare parts (i.e., 566Mhz Celeron that ran fine at 850Mhz default voltage on an old Abit BX6 MB). Now I just hope I can get it to run stable at 566Mhz on this MSI POS! :|

 

[Damascus]

Went MSI last July. K7T Turbo has been very good. Its been on nearly every moment since
I've installed it (it's only been shut off 4 times, 1 because I was moving the board into a
new case) In fact the board has been so well behaved that it has managed to keep
Windows from crashing on to itself for the past little over 4 weeks...

 

[308nato]

I recently built my first pc. 1.6a on MSI Ultra845-ARU. I have nothing but good things to say about the board and MSI. I initially had a problem with loading drivers for chipset (newbie=ooops). Their tech-line told me how to rectify my problem and off I went. I've got it at 133fsb and stock voltage w/memory at 2-3-3-5. It is fast and rock solid.

 

[Egrimm]

I'm pretty satisfied with my MSI boards, have had three (K7T Turbo LE, K7T Turbo Raid (more on those two) and K7T Pro2 RU).

I got the K7T Turbo LE first but after a month it died, guess I got unlucky. Then got a Turbo Raid instead, got it because the Raid was bascially free when rma'ing it as the shop couldn't get me enother LE. Another reason for getting another K7T Turbo-board was that I had an Asus A7V while the mobo was being rma'ed (was for a friends machine) and I could oc higher on the MSI (Asus was unstable with a 1.4 T-Bird @ 1533, the MSI could get 1.565 before getting just as unstable).

I'm very satisfied with the Pro2 RU I have now, oc's like a champ and even though the performance is a few (less then 5%) worse than some other KT266A solutions I'd definitely recommend it.

Oh, and the reason I got MSI was that I had trouble with an Asus board (K7V, Original Athlon) which wouldn't upgrade the gfx-card driver for some reason and wasn't as stable as it could be at stock speed. On the MSI there were no such probs with the gfx-card (and it was an Asus gfx-card too).