Nvidia nForce3 Ultra Motherboard Roundup --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (The Bad)

Although the layout of the board was pretty eccentric, we found little to dislike about MSI's implementation. There were some minor faults we'd like to point out, but nothing that would diminish the board's functionality. Since the DIMM slots were placed at the top of the board, most of the other components had to be pushed further down and the CPU socket was also turned 90 degrees. Though we didn't detect any problems initially, they only became apparent after the board was fully installed.

Primary SATA connectors for the K8N Neo2 Platinum are also placed above the AGP slot, courtesy of NVIDIA's reference design.

Due to the DIMM layout on the board, the K8N Neo2 Platinum has all primary storage and ATX connectors located in the prefered area. However, lining them up such may cause congestion of cables later on.

There is a line of capacitors on one end of the socket that were seated too close to the retention unit. We found that installing a standard CPU cooler would be no problem, but removal became a decidedly tricky affair and one would have to take extra care not to damage the capacitors. The other problem was again due to compacted component placement. If you look at the MCP and its cooler, they are located right beside the AGP slot. After installing a graphic card, we found that we were unable to reach the AGP release latch without using a tool. This of course is only a minor issue to the users who 'install and forget', but it becomes an inconvenience to users who regularly perform spring-cleaning on their components.

MOSFETs and capacitors can be spread out due to DIMM slot positioning. However, the row of capacitors nearest the CPU socket hinder cooler installation.

MSI places the cooler too close to the AGP slot, which may hinder installation or removal of graphic cards.

Due to the close proximity of the MCP coller, the AGP latch cannot be reached without the use of tools.

As a minor note, the K8N Neo2 Platinum proved to be a very robust board during testing, but the Aggressive option within the BIOS caused severe instabilities on our board even with the latest BIOS loaded (revision 1.5). Consider yourself warned when enabling this option.



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