Lourens Steenkamp wrote:
Personal AND friend experiences. I'd like to note that before Athlon 64 when we used Intel only, 95% of our self made PC's used MSI boards, so it's not out of some random hatred for the brand. I'm just disappointed at the sudden quality drop. I currently have a large load of MSI 865/875/7205 intel boards that have run for a long time 24/7 with high loads without problems. I'd recommend them to anyone. Right now, around half a dozen MSI K8T boards have been tested by me. My friend has been working on a larger amount of them, both K8T and K8N. I find it useful to compare experiences with people working locally with similar hardware.On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 22:32:12 +0200 Lourens replying to Kyuu Eturautti <vekotin@b2.st> : [snipped]In short: I haven't been impressed with MSI's quality with Athlon 64 boards. A friend recently told me that over half of their MSI A64 boards sold in the past months have been returned with several types of faults. Not good. Though I'll note that when they work, they work quite well.This is the second time that I have seen you vented about MSI mobos, based on someone else's experience? I use them exclusively for Linux and doze (Desktops and small Linux servers) and have yet to have a problem with one, then, I buy my mobos from an official Distributor ?
To clarify the experiences. Both my friend and I setup pc's. I do it for in-company use, mostly servers. He does it as a retailer. Both get our motherboards from the official distributors (which is GNT Finland over here). I've learned to gather various experiences before jumping to conclusions. My conclusion is that MSI has, or at least has recently had severe quality control problems with at least some batches of Athlon 64 boards. The problems are of different type with K8T and K8N, though. Knowing MSI's level of quality generally, I'm sure they'll be working on it. And obviously I have sent feedback.
As for RAM, I use Kingston. It's been found optimal as I couldn't care less about overclocking. More expensive than cheap brands, but I have yet to find a single faulty Kingston memory - desktop, laptop, server or flash. Compatibility sucks with them at times though, such as VR models rarely working (properly) with brand PC's even though the numbers match.
In any case, everyone will have to take this as my $0.02 and form their own opinions based on several other opinions and personal experiences as well. I've in fact been very pleased with hearing several better experiences with these boards. I'd like to test out a few more MSI Athlon 64 boards in the near future, hoping that the problems have been fixed.
/v\