The *Official* MSI K8NGM2-FID GeForce 6150 Motherboard Thread

[tomt4535]

For everyone interested using this board in and HTPC: I was able to get windows XP MCE working perfectly on this board. Im using an Avermedia HD tuner, along with a theater 550 pro SD tuner, and it works perfect. The board is obviously a uATX and it has passive heatsinks on the chipsets, which are pluses for hptc's. S3 suspend works flawlessly with the microsoft MCE remote. I press the PC button, it goes into sleep, I press it again, It wakes up. All I did was set S3 in the bios before I installed, no crazy reg hacks or jumper settings. This has been one of the easiest boards Ive worked with in a while. The onboard sound is incredible too, and you cant beat onboard DVI. :thumbsup:

 

[xmit]

I get a lot of memtest86+ 1.65 errors. Beleave me or not they do not appear if the USB mouse is not connected. I tried three differnet USB mice all show the same problem and this is highly reproduceable. Bios version is 3.2.

 

[ddm1969]

renethx (and all),
I recently installed an MSI board and began following the guide. After completing Memtest86 (no errors on 2 passes), my system failed to post. I reset a 2nd time and it posted. So I continued to the overclocking section. Upon entering the recommended settings (i have an Opteron 146), I saved and exitted. My system will no longer post. Any ideas? Could Memtest86 have an adverse effect? I'm a relative noob at this stuff. Any help is appreciated.
ddm

 

[aljohnso]

Did MSI change bios or version numbers with this last set of motherboards?

Oddly enough, if not then I am happier with the serial adapter since it costs much more and is more difficult to come by.

Hope we get better overclocking options by and by - the business version of the board is very unlikely to enhance that possibility however.

Allen

 

[qhungnguyen]

Never mind.....updated BIOS...works ok now

Text

Question:
my Hypertransport fequency only works when it is set to (x2) 400Mhz instead of 1000Mhz. Any other settings in the Bios causes it to freeze.

I have Cool and Quiet on.
CPU is AMD 3000+
1GB of PC3200 ram at 400Mhz.

Does anybody have an idea how I can rectify this? Is this normal because of Cool n Quiet? (no idea here)

Text

 

[renethx]

ddm1969, no POST is often fixed by turning off the switch on PSU and leaving the system for a couple of minutes.

 

[ddm1969]

Originally posted by: renethx
ddm1969, no POST is often fixed by turning off the switch on PSU and leaving the system for a couple of minutes.

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, still no joy. Any other suggestions? TIA.

 

[tomt4535]

Originally posted by: ddm1969

Originally posted by: renethx
ddm1969, no POST is often fixed by turning off the switch on PSU and leaving the system for a couple of minutes.

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, still no joy. Any other suggestions? TIA.

Try to clear the CMOS and see if that helps. You might be overclocking your setup too much. , be careful.

 

[RjG]

Originally posted by: ddm1969

Originally posted by: renethx
ddm1969, no POST is often fixed by turning off the switch on PSU and leaving the system for a couple of minutes.

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, still no joy. Any other suggestions? TIA.

You should be able to make it post again by shutting the power supply off at the back, and holding down the BIOS CLEAR button for 10 seconds, right beside the battery.

 

[RjG]

Originally posted by: xmit
I get a lot of memtest86+ 1.65 errors. Beleave me or not they do not appear if the USB mouse is not connected. I tried three differnet USB mice all show the same problem and this is highly reproduceable. Bios version is 3.2.

Memtest86 doesn't work very well with anything other than bios 3.00 and 3.13

There is a group of locations which is in use at 9B3AC through 9B3F4 which memtest86 stomps all over, then 9C080 after that.
Pretty sure this is the fault of the BIOS, it is supposed to report what RAM it is using to some generic BIOS call MEMTEST86 uses. I do know this for sure... I have 6 sticks of RAM and the same addresses come up every time no matter which stick is in which slot.
I spent a lot of hours mucking with stuff before trying that :-(

I never thought of unplugging the mouse, LOL. How did you come up with that?

 

[ddm1969]

You should be able to make it post again by shutting the power supply off at the back, and holding down the BIOS CLEAR button for 10 seconds, right beside the battery.

Try to clear the CMOS and see if that helps.

That did it! Thanks guys!

 

[winguy]

Originally posted by: renethx
Implementing Quiet Part

The implementation of this part is left to motherboard's manufacturers. When CPU usage is low (actually the CPU temperature is low), the CPU fan speed is lowered. In the MSI board, you need to:

• Enable and specify Smart Fan Target Temperature in BIOS (under the H/W Monitor submenu).

If the CPU temperature is higher than the "Smart Fan Target Temperature", the CPU fan runs at the full speed (2400rpm in case of Themalright XP-90RT). Otherwise it runs at a lower speed (around 1700rpm). Right now I am setting it to 60 deg C. As my CPU never goes up to 60 deg C, the CPU fan is running at 1700rpm all the time (it's very quiet).

What's the temperature range to select from? If only they made this section more robust like Gigabyte's:
Pic here


Btw, more DVI + HD audio matx boards:
NVIDIA Business Platform Certified Motherboards

 

[rei]

As someone who's just picked up the board to put into a HTPC/cube case (X-QPACK) I'd like to suggest an aside for a good low-mid end gaming card that doesn't disappoint (and won't break the bank) :

This is for beefy: http://www.xfxforce.com/web/product/lis...ils.jspa?productConfigurationId=198679

 

[renethx]

Originally posted by: winguy
What's the temperature range to select from?

Smart FAN1 Tolerance?

 

[ddm1969]

For those interested, here's the audio bracket that came with my MSI K8NGM2-FID (from the recent ZZF batch).
Bracket Picture

 

[xmit]

Originally posted by: RjG
I never thought of unplugging the mouse, LOL. How did you come up with that?

To keep the long story short: I reduced the system to the absolute minimum. Step by step I added more and more components and after each step I ran memtest until the errors reappeared. I was really suprised that adding a mouse caused memtest to fail.
Now I am back to Bios v3.00. Mouse and memtest works well with it.
I will try to let this MSI know, hopefully they will fix this soon.

 

[HungryJ0e]

Originally posted by: ohio68

HJ,

I have the same two Western Digital 250 GB Drives for my Raid setup.
Although I am using the latest bios 3.20. This new bios fixed a couple of S3 settings in the bios which previously didn't do anything (e.g. enabling or disabling the mouse to come out of Standby).

Also, you probably already did this, but make sure that the two SATA drives are on the controller that wasn't disabled (e.g SATA 1 primary and secondary).

Also, my unused SATA 2 primary and secondary drives are disabled in the RAID setup in the bios.

Ohio -

I have the setup identical to yours. Finally got it to come into and out of standby... if I wait long enough the system will go ahead and do it, but the lag can be up to 5 minutes after the command to standby was issued. I have no further high process use issues coming out of standby, thanks for the fix.

Thinking of doing a fresh Windows reinstall as this buggy standby thing is making me suspect what else may be screwed up under the hood.

- HJ

 

[trooper11]

I had another question about this board. Has anyone tried using a Thermalright SI-120 heatsink on it? Im just wondering if there are any clearance issues on the board. Id like to use a heatsink that allows for the use of a 120mm fan like the SI-120. Thanks

 

[Basilisk]

[Gee, just Brilliantly replied to a months old Q' by accident. 'Might as well delete that reply and post -something-...]

For those who dislike losing slots to Brackets: I just received my 'FID and QPack case. The case's back has a 1.75" x 5" blank area below the 120mm fan -- above the m/b rear jacks. Having only 4 PCI* slots in this case, I didn't want to waste any with those brackets. I unscrewed the brackets' Video, surround sound and SPDIF cables, used the empty brackets as templates to drill matching holes in the blank panel, and installed those cables on the back panel. Placement is critical to avoid conflict between cables and PCI slots, but will be obvious if you test the layout first.

I'll post a jpeg later tonight if anyone cares.

Edit - 3/26 WOW players held control of the olde system, so I couldn't post those pix last nite. Here they are:
- Rear view of modified backplate.
- Inside view of modified backplate.
- Virginal m/b carrier w/ 'FID nesting therein.

Further thoughts:
- Thinking of two SPDIFs (In and Out)? There is VERY little slack for SPDIF cables to pass under PCI cards as is; two cables would require placing ports one over the other and positioned as close as -possible- to the slots -- and still might not permit both cables to mate with headers while PCI slots are in use.

- 'Want more brackets - like serial port? I should have thought of that and NOT placed connectors at mid-height of backplate; I should have aligned their center 1/4 of way down from top of plate to allow another row below. (I can -probably- squeeze in another row, but... would do differently next time.)

- I could've drilled undersize holes and used a Dremel to make Picture Perfect holes... but who cares on the back? Just get rid of any burrs that might flake off onto the m/b. If I put label-plates around each cable-cluster, that can cover my sins in drilling.

I've other mod's in mind and will probably post further pix down the road. I want something approaching a Silent PC and there are several changes to make, but the first step is to listen to its inital noise. [Wish I had a sound-meter for this project.]

PS: aljohnso -- the serial port isn't just a round hole, so some tool would be needed: a Dremel, or just a coping saw with the right blade and maybe a file to finish off. The ends can be round -- the hole needn't be "D" shaped.

 

[aljohnso]

WRT q-pack case and drilling diagram -
I am in similar situation - please post data. Or send it to me if you are shy.
Also - drill then dremel for the serial connection?

Allen

 

[imported_derekn]

SATA I or SATA II for this board?

I have owned this board for about a month now. This forum is great. Thanks for everyone's feedback.

I initially wasn't going to try RAID, but took the plunge this week and bought 2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3250824AS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive on sale at newegg.

I have been reading on other forums nforcehq forums
nvidia forums about nforce 4 chipset issues with SATA II HD. (corruption etc).

Questions:
1)Who is using SATA II successfully with this board?
2)Also, if using SATA II, what HD manufacturer are you using (Maxtor, WD, Hitachi, Seagate)?
3)I read that if there are problems, Maxtor or Seagate has firmware updates to fix "some" issues. Also, folks are just resorting to disabling SATA II and using SATA I and also disabling NCQ.

Thanks for any feedback you may have.

 

[HungryJ0e]

Derek -

Both ohio68 and I are both using Western Digital WD2500KS (SATA II). I've had no issues with the hard drives.

If you're planning on using the NVIDIA drivers (which you need for RAID) and having S3 standby, be sure to read Ohio's guide earlier in the forum on how to properly setup the device manager... o/w you may have high CPU utilization issues when coming out of standby.

- HJ

 

[rei]

i'm surprised by the amount of room in an aspire x-qpack and this mobo.

does anyone else's mobo beep on post? ie when starting it detects devices, and when i switch between kvm usb with scroll lock it beeps.

 

[rei]

lol mine says 'engineering release, not for production use' on bios startup

 

[imported_derekn]

Originally posted by: HungryJ0e
Derek -

Both ohio68 and I are both using Western Digital WD2500KS (SATA II). I've had no issues with the hard drives.

If you're planning on using the NVIDIA drivers (which you need for RAID) and having S3 standby, be sure to read Ohio's guide earlier in the forum on how to properly setup the device manager... o/w you may have high CPU utilization issues when coming out of standby.

- HJ

Cool thanks for your feedback. I only use standby on my laptops, I will try the workaround on my MSI system when I install the SATA drivers.

BTW, I was following this thread on nVidia forums about nforce4 chipset data corruption with SATA II hds which worried me. I am glad to hear that you and ohio68 are not encountering data corruption with SATA II.

I was also extra worried about nforce4 chipset because the first machine I ever built was in 2001 when I tried a Tyan s2390b (VIAKT133a chipset) and had crazy IDE issues. I swore off VIA because of that and had a great experience with 3 nforce2 chipset boards (2 Abit Nf7 v2, Asus a7n8x deluxe).