MSI Warning

pieps · Post by **pieps** » Sun Apr 17, 2005 5:01 pm

I have very bad experiences with MSI . Three (!) MSI 865 NEO motherboards broke down in my P.C. in half a year .
A friend of me had the same experience ( but with only two MSI 865 Neo's )
Okay , they replaced the motherboards ... but I was out of P.C. for Three Months in total .
And no excuses , no service ...nothing .

MSI SUCKS!!!-DON'T BUY THEIR SHIT !!!
MSI SUCKS!!!-DON'T BUY THEIR SHIT !!!
MSI SUCKS!!!-DON'T BUY THEIR SHIT !!!

Stige · Post by **Stige** » Sun Apr 17, 2005 5:20 pm

Can you tell me how it happened?
I have MSI neo platinum (about 6 months now), and it's already started to decay. CPU is loosing it's voltage and causing stability problems.

pieps · Post by **pieps** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 12:48 am

It just didn't start up again after I shut it down .

Vasfed · Post by **Vasfed** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:09 am

May be your power supply unit is too weak?
(of course it is not an pardon for msi service, but may be the reason for malfunction)

Stige · Post by **Stige** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 8:34 am

In my case the problem is most probably voltage regulators in mobo. I have 550W powersupply and I've measured it delivers healthy voltages.

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 12:47 pm

Thanks for the heads up. I've had bad experiences with MSI boards in the past, but was considering taking a risk on one of these Neo boards. I'm glad I waited as long as I did so I could see your post.

When I was working for a PC repair company, there was one MSI board (MS-6340.. I'll never forget that model number) that had really quite amazing failure rates. The problem was the capacitors - they fried extremely easily.

More recently I tried out an MSI 1st generation Nforce Athlon XP board... the thing would not even run at full CPU speed - had to downclock it to get it to boot.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dArKr3zIn on 2005-04-18 13:49 ]</font>

maakbow · Post by **maakbow** » Wed May 04, 2005 12:00 am

I have had msi boards Go Bad..The electrolytic cpower capacitors leak there insides out.

Apparently many boards are in same boat of a few years ago...believe it or Not, the story goes that the guy who invented the particular concoction that goes inside a decent portion of the worlds electrolytic capacitors [panasonic i think] died or left his job and his recorded formula accidently had an error in it. Heaps of caps have been crapping out all over.

It IS fixable though...I have successfully onsoldered and replaced with better caps on dodgy mobo's...right through a six layer PCB...It's not that hard. Be careful with heat tho.

Maak

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu May 05, 2005 7:43 am

tnx a lot for inspiration - I've had a MSI Intel 815 based mobo that started to go mad a couple of month back.
And YES a cap right in the middle of the board had become a bit bulky. Replaced it, revitalized Win98 and shifted my 2 Pulsars back into their old home...

Nice one

I can use the Pulsar's analog ins again, which was impossible on the PIV due to noise they captured whenever a cable was connected (believe me, I tried everything and a bit more...)

PCI capacity is way better.
I can have STW's Plate reverb PLUS the Chorus delay, or Ambience plus Masterverb - also impossible on the PIV.

Ok, I admit the cards aren't brand new, but the PIV 2.6 ran on an Intel 865 board under Win2K Server, so wtf can't it keep up with a Celeron 1G under Win98 ???
I don't need to encode a ton of pirated video each week or mp3 my vinyl collection (which is too small anyway... )

cheers, Tom

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Thu May 05, 2005 8:21 am

I can't use Ambience. Do you have a type 1 card in the mix? I replaced my graphics drivers recently because I couldn't play DVDs. Maybe that was the problem. I haven't tried Ambience since then. It really sucks to buys something nice and not be able to use it.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu May 05, 2005 10:19 am

oops, sorry - I should have pointed that out clearly: 2 Pulsar ONEs.
So there's no chance for me to run both the plate or the ambience simulaneously, but one of them definetely and under all conditions.

I'm finished with PIV - gonna get me a nicely housed PIII server or some other 815 based stuff for 50 bucks from eBay (for SFP) and probably a small notebook for programming

cheers, Tom

Post by **garyb** » Thu May 05, 2005 11:27 am

with my d850 mobo and a p1 w/ a powerpulsar i can easily use all those verbs at the same time. no noise problem either. in fact, the intel mobos have been pretty much flawless out of the box. which 865 board was giving you trouble?

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu May 05, 2005 12:41 pm

it's a Gigabyte GA-8IG-1000 (865G chipset), the redundant twin of our office server, which I use for developement.

It was not choosen for audio in the first place - obviously

but when the 815 got sick, it was handy as a guinea pig for Pulsar with PIV and Win2K.
The case is an idustrial type 19" and the PSU is no cheapo either.

For some strange reasons the Pulsar becomes an antenna as soon as something is connected to analog in. It even gets those infamous mouse zippers, too

With nothing plugged in the empty channel shows a nice -84 dB noisefloor.

It's really no big deal, as I don't need a massive amount of CPU power.
A 2nd hand PIII is cheap and I can continue with the TripleDat/Osiris combo (I already own) for vinyl restoration and arrangement of VDAT clips.
For some time I've considered the Restore package - convenient tho, but not that much better in the vinyl domain to justify the investment.
For someone without the old Osiris that's a different story. It's rather competetive in comparison to native stuff in that price range.

Actually the MSI box must be considered pretty solid, given how I treat(ed) it...
A small desktop case (2 units high) isn't intended to house 2 Pulsars, mounted rectangular over the CPU. It needed an extra flat cooler and an extra flat fan - and yes, I've moved a cap on one of the Pulsars to the other side of the circuit board, because it got in the way of the fan...

Not to forget the fan moves at 5V (resulting in at least 65 Celsius on the Celeron).

It's done it's job for several years under these conditions... so it deserves some nice retirement. I'll probably give it to my dad to browse the internet and cut his home video stuff.

cheers, Tom