-
Deactivated Item
-
-
-
Manufacturer Contact Info
Return Policies
This item is covered by Newegg.com's Standard Return Policy.
- Return for refund within: 30 days
- Return for replacement within: 30 days
- Restocking Fee: Yes
|
-
- 5
-
- 49%
- 4
-
- 22%
- 3
-
- 13%
- 2
-
- 11%
- 1
-
- 5%
| Product Rating: |
 
|
| Total Reviews: |
64 |
ehhhhh
- Pros: nice board, good overclocker, nice box.
- Cons: on board lan died after 3 weeks, on board audio always had a hissing sound, could not figure that out. Bios is a PITA to get updated. Search MSI forums to update with thumb drive.
- Other Thoughts: Had to RMA this board, got refund and went with ASUS. This MSI board can overclock great. Wish the Asus could do the same.
Beware if using this for an HTPC or Server
- Pros: The board has a lot of features and a reasonably low price, but it's quite flaky (I realize this is a backhanded pro, but I'm short on them). When it did run, it seemed to function well.
The bios menus were reasonably well laid out and provided useful information, which helped a lot since the manual was basically useless unless you wanted to know only the most basic information.
I spent 5 years as a Network Administrator for a reasonable sized company working on a great many board and have worked in the high tech industry ever since so I'm reasonably well versed in what's good and what's not. I do hope that it's just that I ended up with a defective motherboard and it's not that MSI really did design something to be this bad. I guess, if you're just using this board for a basic PC and not using the on board graphics or RAID card, then it might be a good board, but it seems like you'd be paying for a lot of stuff that you're not using.
- Cons: This board is an unmitigated disaster as an HTPC. It would work fine for days and then the video drivers would crash and make you have to restart the system. It's the phantom, intermittent problems that are the worst and drain the most time diagnosing and I haven't seen a board riddled with as many of these since back in the late 90's when Tyan experimented with dual Pentiums for the first time.
To add insult to injury, they don't even have a 64 bit HDMI audio driver for Windows Vista. This is something you discover usually when you have finished all your install work and are hooking it into your home theater system and wonder why you don't get more than 2 channels of audio and then spend hours debugging the system only to discover that you're using the default windows driver. I had to reinstall a 32 bit version of Vista and then I got 7 channel audio.
I've tried every variation of driver for the on board HD 3300 and none of them resolved the issue.
- Other Thoughts: So after I finally gave up trying to get this board to work after about a month (and after I was outside of my return window), I thought I could try and reuse the board as a server board. After all it has RAID 5 capabilities and 5 slots, right? Well this produced a menagerie of different errors that often took hours to even get to (like crashing in the middle of formatting the array, or getting half way through an install and then saying "Cannot initialize UI subsystem". The RAID controller would also intermittently allow the DVD drive to boot or not boot. In case you're curious I was trying to install Windows Home Server, which I ended up having to install using a $60 PCI SATA RAID card because the onboard controller wasn't up to the task.
In the end you have to make your own decision, but I would stay far away from this board if you value your time.
Well...
- Pros: Looks great has almost everything.
- Cons: I fried my first CPU in about 2 weeks, I thought it was this board so I RMAed it to MSI, and I got it back in about 2 weeks. Well it wasn't the board, MSI couldn't tell me what if anything they fixed.
The onboard lan works intermittently. It always works when I start the computer, but sometimes disconnects and I have to restart the computer.
- Other Thoughts: Over all I like the board, I probe3bly would buy a cheaper brand if I did it over again. I did use LIVE UPDATE to flash the bios to 1.5 and it worked!!
I can't boot if I use the overclocking switches. (AMD 7750 kuma 2.7)
| Model |
| Brand |
MSI |
| Model |
DKA790GX Platinum |
| Supported CPU |
| CPU Socket Type |
AM2+/AM2 |
| CPU Type |
Phenom / Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 / Sempron |
| FSB |
2600MHz Hyper Transport (5200 MT/s) |
| Chipsets |
| North Bridge |
AMD 790GX |
| South Bridge |
AMD SB750 |
| Memory |
| Number of Memory Slots |
4×240pin |
| Memory Standard |
DDR2 1066/800
(DDR2 1066 only for AM2+) |
| Maximum Memory Supported |
8GB |
| Channel Supported |
Dual Channel |
| Expansion Slots |
| PCI Express 2.0 x16 |
1 x mazarine PCI Express x16 slot with x16 operation (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant)
1 x light-blue PCI Express x16 slot with x8 operation (PCI Express Bus SPEC V2.0 compliant)
- When 2 PCI Express x16 slots are all installed, the PCIE x 16 lanes will auto arrange form x16/ x0 to x8/ x8. Do not use the light-blue slot when only one PCI Express x16 card is installed. |
| PCI Express x1 |
2 |
| PCI Slots |
2 |
| Storage Devices |
| PATA |
1 x ATA100 2 Dev. Max |
| SATA 3Gb/s |
5 |
| SATA RAID |
0/1/0+1/5/JBOD |
| Onboard Video |
| Onboard Video Chipset |
ATI Radeon HD 3300 |
| Onboard Audio |
| Audio Chipset |
Realtek ALC888 |
| Audio Channels |
8 Channels |
| Onboard LAN |
| LAN Chipset |
Realtek 8111C |
| Max LAN Speed |
10/100/1000Mbps |
| Rear Panel Ports |
| PS/2 |
1 |
| Video Ports |
D-Sub + DVI |
| HDMI |
1 x HDMI |
| USB 1.1/2.0 |
6 x USB 2.0 |
| IEEE 1394 |
1 x IEEE 1394a |
| eSATA |
1 x eSATA 3Gb/s |
| S/PDIF Out |
1 x Optical |
| Audio Ports |
6 Ports |
| Onboard USB |
| Onboard USB |
6 x USB 2.0 |
| Physical Spec |
| Form Factor |
ATX |
| Dimensions |
11.9" x 9.7" |
| Power Pin |
24 Pin |
|
|
Reviewed By: screwu2man on 3/18/2009
Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
