SOLUTION: MSI K9N SLI PLATINUM MEMORY ISSUES

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HONkUS
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SOLUTION: MSI K9N SLI PLATINUM MEMORY ISSUES

Post by HONkUS »

I dont know if my complaint is a unique one or not but ive "uncovered" a conspiracy to rip off consumers at the hands of MSI.

Instead of going with the reference design for a copper heatpipe cooler on the northbridge of the nForce 5700 SLI MSI penny pinched and put a grossly inadequate aluminum fin heatsink. As a result clocking memory any higher that 667mhz results in the northbridge overheating and corrupt data being written and in my case corrupting an install of widnows and then not allowing me to complete the installation process on a new copy of windows. Ive recieved so many different errors and tried to install windows so many times over the course of the last 2 days that anything other then the BSOD is foreign and scary to me.

At first I thought it to be a memory issue but in the end after throttling my memory back to 400mhz instead of 667mhz as it is capable of and rigging a high flow 80mm fan ot my heatsink I can finally acheive stable computing.

all one has to do is compare the pictures of the MSI k9n SLI Platinum to comparable boards from other manufacturers and they will see how grossly insuffiecient the HS design is for the nForce 570 SLi on the MSI board is.

I plan on buying a high end Northbridge cooler and im going ot see if I can clock my memory to its stock rates without crashing. However what this will mean is that I am limited to one pcix6 slot on a mobo that is advertised as being SLi capable. So buyer beware.

This is just bad design on MSI's part. This isnt a fab mistake it is a design insufficiency made in order to cut back on spending and I for one am pissed
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kenc51
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Post by kenc51 »

Have you tried applying some AS5 on the chipset?....the "heatsink" might not have goot contact either!

If it is still bad, I'd RMA it! It should work with 800mhz ram!!!! IF it can't run 667 then it's faulty!
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Post by pastorjay »

Well I would hardly call it a conspiarcy. There are probably more boards with aluminum than copper on the NB and SB. I would say that if the board is overheating at running the memory at stock voltages that you should RMA it. Running 400 or 667 or 800 or even a 1000 should not matter. If you never raise the voltage, there is no reason for it to be overheating. I would say check the voltage and contact of the NB heatsink, and then, if it si fine, RMA the board for another, as your board certainly has issues.

I assume you have used this ram on other boards and run memtest to know for sure that it is not a memory problem. If not, I would do that as well, as it still could be a memory problem.
mortico

Post by mortico »

I'm having the same problem so i doubt its a lemon.

It's a simple case of MSI trying to get away with a passive cooler on the NB. Was a mistake on thier part really, trying to keep noise down. I don't blame them. My old Gigabyte KT400 board had a tiny fan on the northbridge that was so loud it drove me insane. and it hardly did naything, removing it didnt seem to have any effect on temperatures really - especially since it was running cool to begin with.

I'm probobly going to get a NB cooler as well - might be hard to fit it in around my vid card... I've got a 60mm fan angled at it and it seems to do the trick.

At stock speeds the NB runs close to 170 F :(
mortico

Post by mortico »

i flashed the BIOS to version 1.3 and everything now runs perfectly at optimal timings and top speed.

*jumps up and down with joy*
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HONkUS
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Post by HONkUS »

Its good to hear that MSI fixed this problem but unfortunatley I RMA'd my board for an ASUS m2n-e lol
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