MSI P6N-FI SLI 650i replaces Gigabyte 965P-DS3; good result

I replaced the Gigabyte I bought last month used with a new P6N from MSI
hoping that my audio problems, power delivery problems, and the forgetful
BIOS problems would go away. They sure did. That board did great in OCing,
was stable, but it had a host of other problems that made it an ideal
candidate for being sold.

So starting off with the MSI, I hit a FSB wall at 1200MHz and couldn't go a
smidge over 1212MHz. Read that 1310MHz plus was good so I hit that up and
booted fine into 1333x9. Just crashed in Orthos so I bumped Vcore up to
~1.33V and cut down the frequency to 1330x9. I have the memory locked at
800 and will play with that a bit later. More details later (I have to send
this out before the compy crashes).

--
Phil

"Phil, Non-Squid" <notsure@iwanttogiveyou.this> wrote in message
news:465656db$0$12500$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>I replaced the Gigabyte I bought last month used with a new P6N from MSI
> hoping that my audio problems, power delivery problems, and the forgetful
> BIOS problems would go away. They sure did. That board did great in
> OCing,
> was stable, but it had a host of other problems that made it an ideal
> candidate for being sold.
>
> So starting off with the MSI, I hit a FSB wall at 1200MHz and couldn't go
> a
> smidge over 1212MHz. Read that 1310MHz plus was good so I hit that up and
> booted fine into 1333x9. Just crashed in Orthos so I bumped Vcore up to
> ~1.33V and cut down the frequency to 1330x9. I have the memory locked at
> 800 and will play with that a bit later. More details later (I have to
> send
> this out before the compy crashes).
>

No crashes yet.

When I took apart the previous build, I found that there were parts of the
HSF that didn't have any compound on it at all. Big whoops on my part.
This was partly due to the fact that I improperly mounted my Thermaltake
onto the mobo because the original seller neglected to include the proper
parts for installation. This afternoon I bought the right M3 screws and got
enough compound to cover the whole spreader. Max ORTHOS load temps dropped
by around 10-12C as reported in TAT, currently hovering between 58C and 61C.
I was able to hit 2925MHz stable before; I wouldn't be surprised if 2992MHz
will stay stable. Gonna try to raise it up slightly, but since it didn't
make it at 3000, I don't expect it to make it much more above that and will
pull it back for daily use.

So in short, I will never buy used again... cars and motorcycles, yes, but
compy stuff no.
--
Phil

One thing I really didn't like about the P6N was that BIOS updates required
using my floppy. All of my floppies are so old that they're all
unread/writeable. Only the one that came as a WinXP install press-F6 driver
disk with my mobo from 2003 actually worked.

--
Phil

"Phil, Non-Squid" <notsure@iwanttogiveyou.this> wrote in message
news:465656db$0$12500$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>I replaced the Gigabyte I bought last month used with a new P6N from MSI
> hoping that my audio problems, power delivery problems, and the forgetful
> BIOS problems would go away. They sure did. That board did great in
> OCing,
> was stable, but it had a host of other problems that made it an ideal
> candidate for being sold.
>
> So starting off with the MSI, I hit a FSB wall at 1200MHz and couldn't go
> a
> smidge over 1212MHz. Read that 1310MHz plus was good so I hit that up and
> booted fine into 1333x9. Just crashed in Orthos so I bumped Vcore up to
> ~1.33V and cut down the frequency to 1330x9. I have the memory locked at
> 800 and will play with that a bit later. More details later (I have to
> send
> this out before the compy crashes).
>
> --
> Phil
>
>
>

"Phil, Non-Squid" <notsure@iwanttogiveyou.this> wrote in message
news:465656db$0$12500$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>I replaced the Gigabyte I bought last month used with a new P6N from MSI
> hoping that my audio problems, power delivery problems, and the forgetful
> BIOS problems would go away. They sure did. That board did great in
> OCing,
> was stable, but it had a host of other problems that made it an ideal
> candidate for being sold.
>
> So starting off with the MSI, I hit a FSB wall at 1200MHz and couldn't go
> a
> smidge over 1212MHz. Read that 1310MHz plus was good so I hit that up and
> booted fine into 1333x9. Just crashed in Orthos so I bumped Vcore up to
> ~1.33V and cut down the frequency to 1330x9. I have the memory locked at
> 800 and will play with that a bit later. More details later (I have to
> send
> this out before the compy crashes).
>
> --
> Phil
>
I locked my memory at 833 with much tighter timings and found that running
higher gave me no real perfomance gain because of looser timings. I am now
at 1424mhz (4x 356) x9 for 3.2ghz on my x6600. 4-4-4-9-1T timings at lower
speed seems to be better than going higher with timings of 5-5-5-12-2T.
Anything much higher with the tighter timings will crash Orthos so I found
it would run well at 840 so I just backed it down a bit more just to be
safe. I am doing the same as you are with the memory. I will work a bit to
see if I can get more from the processor and mess with the memory a bit
later.


Ed
>
>

Ed Medlin wrote:
> "Phil, Non-Squid" <notsure@iwanttogiveyou.this> wrote in message
> news:465656db$0$12500$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>>I replaced the Gigabyte I bought last month used with a new P6N from
>> MSI hoping that my audio problems, power delivery problems, and the
>> forgetful BIOS problems would go away. They sure did. That board
>> did great in OCing,
>> was stable, but it had a host of other problems that made it an ideal
>> candidate for being sold.
>>
>> So starting off with the MSI, I hit a FSB wall at 1200MHz and
>> couldn't go a
>> smidge over 1212MHz. Read that 1310MHz plus was good so I hit that
>> up and booted fine into 1333x9. Just crashed in Orthos so I bumped
>> Vcore up to ~1.33V and cut down the frequency to 1330x9. I have the
>> memory locked at 800 and will play with that a bit later. More
>> details later (I have to send
>> this out before the compy crashes).
>>
>> --
>> Phil
>>
> I locked my memory at 833 with much tighter timings and found that
> running higher gave me no real perfomance gain because of looser
> timings. I am now at 1424mhz (4x 356) x9 for 3.2ghz on my x6600.
> 4-4-4-9-1T timings at lower speed seems to be better than going
> higher with timings of 5-5-5-12-2T. Anything much higher with the
> tighter timings will crash Orthos so I found it would run well at 840
> so I just backed it down a bit more just to be safe. I am doing the
> same as you are with the memory. I will work a bit to see if I can
> get more from the processor and mess with the memory a bit later.
>
>
> Ed

I'll try that. Were you using Sandra to benchmark memory bandwidth to judge
overall performance? I never really know what to use to benchmark memory.

BTW, I had an Orthos stop at 13 hours. Ah well, I can back it down slightly
again. Maybe my previous 325 will be where I need to stop. I just figured
that my re-seated cooling setup would have helped at least a bit.

--
Phil

"Phil, Non-Squid" <notsure@iwanttogiveyou.this> wrote in message
news:46571809$0$1390$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> Ed Medlin wrote:
>> "Phil, Non-Squid" <notsure@iwanttogiveyou.this> wrote in message
>> news:465656db$0$12500$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>>>I replaced the Gigabyte I bought last month used with a new P6N from
>>> MSI hoping that my audio problems, power delivery problems, and the
>>> forgetful BIOS problems would go away. They sure did. That board
>>> did great in OCing,
>>> was stable, but it had a host of other problems that made it an ideal
>>> candidate for being sold.
>>>
>>> So starting off with the MSI, I hit a FSB wall at 1200MHz and
>>> couldn't go a
>>> smidge over 1212MHz. Read that 1310MHz plus was good so I hit that
>>> up and booted fine into 1333x9. Just crashed in Orthos so I bumped
>>> Vcore up to ~1.33V and cut down the frequency to 1330x9. I have the
>>> memory locked at 800 and will play with that a bit later. More
>>> details later (I have to send
>>> this out before the compy crashes).
>>>
>>> --
>>> Phil
>>>
>> I locked my memory at 833 with much tighter timings and found that
>> running higher gave me no real perfomance gain because of looser
>> timings. I am now at 1424mhz (4x 356) x9 for 3.2ghz on my x6600.
>> 4-4-4-9-1T timings at lower speed seems to be better than going
>> higher with timings of 5-5-5-12-2T. Anything much higher with the
>> tighter timings will crash Orthos so I found it would run well at 840
>> so I just backed it down a bit more just to be safe. I am doing the
>> same as you are with the memory. I will work a bit to see if I can
>> get more from the processor and mess with the memory a bit later.
>>
>>
>> Ed
>
> I'll try that. Were you using Sandra to benchmark memory bandwidth to
> judge overall performance? I never really know what to use to benchmark
> memory.
>
> BTW, I had an Orthos stop at 13 hours. Ah well, I can back it down
> slightly again. Maybe my previous 325 will be where I need to stop. I
> just figured that my re-seated cooling setup would have helped at least a
> bit.
>
> --
> Phil
I use Sandra 2007 mainly because it is what I have and it does compare
what similiar and other chipsets get. I find it much better than it was a
few years ago and compares well with other benchmarks. At least I can see
performance changes and it is starting to be the standard. I have the i680
P5N32-E SLI and it has heatpipe cooled north and southbridges and they get a
bit hot. I added a quiet 100mm fan to blow across the HSs of the heatpipes
and it did help with my MB temps.
I noticed a little glitch in Core Temp yesterday while processing some
video. The steady temps for both cores would be 48-51C but every once in
awhile I would see something like 64-65C for just an instant and then it
would return to normal. This would happen with both cores, but it would
always come down instantly to the 48-51c range. Weird. I don't know how many
milliseconds there are between samplings with Core Temp but I suspect it is
a very short time.


Ed
>

Ed Medlin wrote:
> "Phil, Non-Squid" <notsure@iwanttogiveyou.this> wrote in message
> news:46571809$0$1390$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>> Ed Medlin wrote:
>>> "Phil, Non-Squid" <notsure@iwanttogiveyou.this> wrote in message
>>> news:465656db$0$12500$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>>>>I replaced the Gigabyte I bought last month used with a new P6N from
>>>> MSI hoping that my audio problems, power delivery problems, and the
>>>> forgetful BIOS problems would go away. They sure did. That board
>>>> did great in OCing,
>>>> was stable, but it had a host of other problems that made it an
>>>> ideal candidate for being sold.
>>>>
>>>> So starting off with the MSI, I hit a FSB wall at 1200MHz and
>>>> couldn't go a
>>>> smidge over 1212MHz. Read that 1310MHz plus was good so I hit that
>>>> up and booted fine into 1333x9. Just crashed in Orthos so I bumped
>>>> Vcore up to ~1.33V and cut down the frequency to 1330x9. I have
>>>> the memory locked at 800 and will play with that a bit later. More
>>>> details later (I have to send
>>>> this out before the compy crashes).
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Phil
>>>>
>>> I locked my memory at 833 with much tighter timings and found that
>>> running higher gave me no real perfomance gain because of looser
>>> timings. I am now at 1424mhz (4x 356) x9 for 3.2ghz on my x6600.
>>> 4-4-4-9-1T timings at lower speed seems to be better than going
>>> higher with timings of 5-5-5-12-2T. Anything much higher with the
>>> tighter timings will crash Orthos so I found it would run well at
>>> 840 so I just backed it down a bit more just to be safe. I am doing
>>> the same as you are with the memory. I will work a bit to see if I
>>> can get more from the processor and mess with the memory a bit
>>> later.
>>>
>>> Ed
>>
>> I'll try that. Were you using Sandra to benchmark memory bandwidth
>> to judge overall performance? I never really know what to use to
>> benchmark memory.
>>
>> BTW, I had an Orthos stop at 13 hours. Ah well, I can back it down
>> slightly again. Maybe my previous 325 will be where I need to stop.
>> I just figured that my re-seated cooling setup would have helped at
>> least a bit.
>>
>> --
>> Phil
> I use Sandra 2007 mainly because it is what I have and it does
> compare what similiar and other chipsets get. I find it much better
> than it was a few years ago and compares well with other benchmarks.
> At least I can see performance changes and it is starting to be the
> standard. I have the i680 P5N32-E SLI and it has heatpipe cooled
> north and southbridges and they get a bit hot. I added a quiet 100mm
> fan to blow across the HSs of the heatpipes and it did help with my
> MB temps. I noticed a little glitch in Core Temp yesterday while
> processing some video. The steady temps for both cores would be
> 48-51C but every once in awhile I would see something like 64-65C for
> just an instant and then it would return to normal. This would happen
> with both cores, but it would always come down instantly to the
> 48-51c range. Weird. I don't know how many milliseconds there are
> between samplings with Core Temp but I suspect it is a very short
> time.
>
> Ed

I found out how important the NB is last night when I put the cover on my
case, my jury-rigged fan got dislodged a bit, and power was disconnected to
said fan. The computer BSODed w/in 30 seconds as it was ORTHOSing for going
on 12 hours. That MSI heatsink really is a tiny piece of metal in terms of
mass. I'm thinking about putting a beefier one on.

--
Phil

> snip<

> I found out how important the NB is last night when I put the cover on my
> case, my jury-rigged fan got dislodged a bit, and power was disconnected
> to said fan. The computer BSODed w/in 30 seconds as it was ORTHOSing for
> going on 12 hours. That MSI heatsink really is a tiny piece of metal in
> terms of mass. I'm thinking about putting a beefier one on.
>
> --
> Phil
The 680i boards are pretty well known for NBs running hot. I liked the
massive heatpipe cooling of the Asus P5N32-E boards, but they are not as
effective as they could be by themselves. I think I said I put a 100mm fan
in, but it is actually a 120mm. I attached it with velcro...:-). That keeps
it in place and reduces any metal to metal contact and in turn makes it even
quieter than mounting it with screws. I mounted it in the top hard drive bay
of my P180 case since it was empty. It is a 3-speed fan and at low/medium it
is virtually silent. On high it produces a whooshing sound which would not
be a problem if the case were not two feet from my left ear.......:-).


Ed

Ed Medlin wrote:
>> snip<
>
>> I found out how important the NB is last night when I put the cover
>> on my case, my jury-rigged fan got dislodged a bit, and power was
>> disconnected to said fan. The computer BSODed w/in 30 seconds as it
>> was ORTHOSing for going on 12 hours. That MSI heatsink really is a
>> tiny piece of metal in terms of mass. I'm thinking about putting a
>> beefier one on.
>> --
>> Phil
> The 680i boards are pretty well known for NBs running hot. I liked the
> massive heatpipe cooling of the Asus P5N32-E boards, but they are not
> as effective as they could be by themselves. I think I said I put a
> 100mm fan in, but it is actually a 120mm. I attached it with
> velcro...:-). That keeps it in place and reduces any metal to metal
> contact and in turn makes it even quieter than mounting it with
> screws. I mounted it in the top hard drive bay of my P180 case since
> it was empty. It is a 3-speed fan and at low/medium it is virtually
> silent. On high it produces a whooshing sound which would not be a
> problem if the case were not two feet from my left ear.......:-).
>
> Ed

I found out another problem though when my TAT-load temps were hitting over
80C before I had to shut it down. Originally, I attached my Thermaltake Big
Typhoon with the special screws I had to buy because the previous seller
gave me the wrong screws. I didn't want to put things too tight at first.

But the problem is that the Big Typhoon has a little foam sheet that gets
put behind the motherboard, I guess to cushion the blow of transport. This
sheet must have gotten thinner with time, heat, and pressure, so the pad got
thinner and the screws' effective length got longer. As a result, the
heatsink started to "droop." I ran an Orthos test with the case open, and
manually pushed on the heatsink to ensure proper contact. Bam, 10C drop.
But when I let go, no real rise. The compound was still keeping contact. I
pulled on the heatsink in the direction of gravity a bit. Temps shot up.
So there was my problem.

So I dug my hands in and tightened down the screws a lot more. Once I did
this, I was back down to 37C idle/55C Orthos/65C TAT-load temps Whew. That
shutdown I mentioned previously may have been related to the loose CPU HSF
as opposed to the NB behavior. I made sure to replace the wax pad on the
NB HS with AS Ceramique... After I did this, I tested temps with my infrared
thermometer. It was telling me that the *outside* of the NB was hitting the
70's. Once I put a case fan on it, it dropped to the high 40's. So that
tells me that it's probably running 20C or more hotter at the die. I was
trying to figure out if I should get a different HS for the NB, one with
more mass, but I think this one's doing okay.

Velcro... I'll have to try that. My case fan blows on both the silent video
card and the NB, so I'll have to get creative with mounting. In addition,
the velcro will need to be mounting on actual PCB so I'll have to try to
avoid getting the adhesive in case it has some conductance or capacitance.

--
Phil

"Phil, Non-Squid" <nice@try.to> wrote in message
news:465b1c3e$0$9902$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> Ed Medlin wrote:
>>> snip<
>>
>>> I found out how important the NB is last night when I put the cover
>>> on my case, my jury-rigged fan got dislodged a bit, and power was
>>> disconnected to said fan. The computer BSODed w/in 30 seconds as it
>>> was ORTHOSing for going on 12 hours. That MSI heatsink really is a
>>> tiny piece of metal in terms of mass. I'm thinking about putting a
>>> beefier one on.
>>> --
>>> Phil
>> The 680i boards are pretty well known for NBs running hot. I liked the
>> massive heatpipe cooling of the Asus P5N32-E boards, but they are not
>> as effective as they could be by themselves. I think I said I put a
>> 100mm fan in, but it is actually a 120mm. I attached it with
>> velcro...:-). That keeps it in place and reduces any metal to metal
>> contact and in turn makes it even quieter than mounting it with
>> screws. I mounted it in the top hard drive bay of my P180 case since
>> it was empty. It is a 3-speed fan and at low/medium it is virtually
>> silent. On high it produces a whooshing sound which would not be a
>> problem if the case were not two feet from my left ear.......:-).
>>
>> Ed
>
> I found out another problem though when my TAT-load temps were hitting
> over 80C before I had to shut it down. Originally, I attached my
> Thermaltake Big Typhoon with the special screws I had to buy because the
> previous seller gave me the wrong screws. I didn't want to put things too
> tight at first.
>
> But the problem is that the Big Typhoon has a little foam sheet that gets
> put behind the motherboard, I guess to cushion the blow of transport.
> This sheet must have gotten thinner with time, heat, and pressure, so the
> pad got thinner and the screws' effective length got longer. As a result,
> the heatsink started to "droop." I ran an Orthos test with the case open,
> and manually pushed on the heatsink to ensure proper contact. Bam, 10C
> drop. But when I let go, no real rise. The compound was still keeping
> contact. I pulled on the heatsink in the direction of gravity a bit.
> Temps shot up. So there was my problem.
>
> So I dug my hands in and tightened down the screws a lot more. Once I did
> this, I was back down to 37C idle/55C Orthos/65C TAT-load temps Whew.
> That shutdown I mentioned previously may have been related to the loose
> CPU HSF as opposed to the NB behavior. I made sure to replace the wax
> pad on the NB HS with AS Ceramique... After I did this, I tested temps
> with my infrared thermometer. It was telling me that the *outside* of the
> NB was hitting the 70's. Once I put a case fan on it, it dropped to the
> high 40's. So that tells me that it's probably running 20C or more hotter
> at the die. I was trying to figure out if I should get a different HS for
> the NB, one with more mass, but I think this one's doing okay.
>
> Velcro... I'll have to try that. My case fan blows on both the silent
> video card and the NB, so I'll have to get creative with mounting. In
> addition, the velcro will need to be mounting on actual PCB so I'll have
> to try to avoid getting the adhesive in case it has some conductance or
> capacitance.
>
> --
> Phil

Velcro and tie-wraps are some of my favorite tools for adding case fans to a
particular area. I have never found any situation that one or the other
would not work.......:-) Your temps are about exactly the same as mine are
now. I am about 8-10c below you with the water cooling on the CPU, but that
would be about right. Stressed with Orthos, my max temps get to 48-51c with
weird little jumps to the 60s which I don't understand......I use Core Temp
to watch both cores and it happens for just one reading. It may just be a
glitch because I don't think a 20c or so jump for a few ms would be
accurate. 3.2ghz is about all I can get with the E6600 and it does it at
stock vcore. Raising vcore does not help getting higher at all. I guess I
will work on getting the memory up from 800 now.


Ed