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Burned two MSI boards in a week...

Burned two MSI boards in a week...

Postby skyline » Sun May 23, 2010 6:07 am

Hey everyone, I used to frequent the hardware section here, but haven't been into computers too much until recently when I decided to do a new build.

I didn't want to break the bank, so I bought a MSI 790X board. Got everything up and running, then went about tweaking with BIOS settings, seeing what kind of stable OC I could manage with the new X4 955 Black. I kept creeping up on 4.0Ghz with different frequency/multiplier settings, but every time I actually hit 4, I'd either BSOD or Windows would just hang.

Finally got it at just under 4.0, and started a Prime95 torture test, which ran great for 45 minutes, then instant shutoff, no BSOD or anything. Booted it back up, and one of the caps literally burst into flame and smoked till I shutoff the PSU :-?

Called up Frys (where I bought the board) and told them it "caught fire" and they assured me I could return it, because I was still within their 15 day return policy.

So this time when I went to Frys I was slightly more prepared, I bought a MSI 980 this time, because it had better heatsinks on the area that last went up in flame on the other board.

Then tonight, I decided to add a second fan to my Coolermaster H50 setup, as everyone seems to be raving about a push/pull setup. Mounted the new fan in the case, plugged it into the motherboards fan controller, powered it on, and poof. More smoke. :roleeyes

Now I've always thought MSI made good boards, and I'm fully aware the first one was (mostly) my fault, but this is getting a little ridiculous now.

Anyone else had bad luck with MSI boards lately? Or any suggestions as to what AM3 board I should be looking at? Preferably one that can handle a decent OC? Any input would be appreciated ^*^ ^*^
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Re: Burned two MSI boards in a week...

Postby yeshuas » Sun May 23, 2010 6:22 am

I pretty much stick with ASUS boards, haven't had much luck with MSI, only used them a couple times and didn't like them at all
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Re: Burned two MSI boards in a week...

Postby skyline » Sun May 23, 2010 8:19 am

yeshuas wrote:I pretty much stick with ASUS boards, haven't had much luck with MSI, only used them a couple times and didn't like them at all

I used to have an ASUS board back when I first got my first 64 bit S939 cpu, and I really liked it, but the local store had a really limited supply (if at all, I don't really remember seeing any ASUS boards to be honest) Guess I will have to go look tomorrow and see what they have in stock.

Any particular ASUS board you'd recommend?

On the plus side, having to tear the motherboard out of my case again motivated me to paint the inside of my new Antec 300 black instead of that horrible grey color :yesnod:
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Re: Burned two MSI boards in a week...

Postby yeshuas » Sun May 23, 2010 1:20 pm

What CPU do you have, or are you looking to buy?

What memory do you have, is it DDR2 or DDR3?

Are you looking for Crossfire, or SLI support?

The best way to research the board or boards is to select a board and then check online for real customer reviews, e.g. Newegg customer reviews for instance, just be sure to take some with a grain of salt and try to find boards with more than a couple reviews.
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Re: Burned two MSI boards in a week...

Postby augie » Sun May 23, 2010 4:02 pm

Well, a well known mobo maker for OC'ing things to within an inch of their death is Gigabyte even though I've been an ASUS man for the last 8 years though I don't OC that far.
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Re: Burned two MSI boards in a week...

Postby NT50 » Sun May 23, 2010 6:44 pm

I run ASUS and never OC. Got one upstairs running 6 or 7 years NON stop and NO problems. how old is the AMD 3800X2 chip. That is how old the computer is, bought it when it was released back when AMD whooped Intel's butts but not now.
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Re: Burned two MSI boards in a week...

Postby skyline » Sun May 23, 2010 7:49 pm

yeshuas wrote:What CPU do you have, or are you looking to buy?

What memory do you have, is it DDR2 or DDR3?

Are you looking for Crossfire, or SLI support?

The best way to research the board or boards is to select a board and then check online for real customer reviews, e.g. Newegg customer reviews for instance, just be sure to take some with a grain of salt and try to find boards with more than a couple reviews.

Well I've already got 8GB of DDR3 and a 955 Black, so AFAIK any of the AM2+ or AM3 boards will work, because the DDR3 is backwards compatible as well as the AM3 chips.

Just got a really good deal on a 285GTX as well, but I seriously doubt I'll ever be buying another one for SLI, so support for that isn't exactly necessary, although it's hard to find anything that isn't mATX and doesn't support either SLI or Crossfire.

Seems that a lot of people like the Crosshair ASUS board, but I'm not sure how the AMD chipset gets along with the Nvidia card vs the Nvidia chipset+Nvidia card? Like I said I had really good results with my old ASUS board.

Only experience I have ever had with a Gigabyte board was in my old Athlon x32 build ages ago, and that only lasted until the 64 bit Athlons came out, which wasn't long.

I do seem to remember the DFI boards being able to take quite a beating when OC'ing, I remember everyone had one of those goofy orange/black/yellow DFI Lanparty something or others, are they still as good as they were back then?
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