Any downsides to the MSI K7N2-L?

[tradivoro]

I'm very close to buying this board and I'm wondering if there are any downsides to this board... I thinking of getting an

AMD 2200 Athlon Chip
Speeze - Socket A Cooling Fan up to XP 2800+
1 1/2 gig of Corsair 512MB PC2100 Value Select DDR RAM 266MHz
Seagate 80GB EIDE / 7200 RPM / 2MB / 9.5 / ATA-100 / Hard Drive
Liteon CDRW

Does any of the above clash with this board? What about the issue of the fact that the bios does not read the processor heat correctly, is that a problem?? Any info appreciated, thanks...

 

[Spitfire_x86]

It doesn't have MCP-T, that means it's audio quality is not outstanding like boards with MCP-T southbridge. And you are not getting many fancy features of a full featured nForce2 boards like ASUS A7N8X Deluxe

<b> "You can put lipstick on a pig, but hey, it's still a pig!" - RobD </b>

 

[rook]

That MB supports dual channel DDR. I'm not sure what the performance difference will be with the slower ram (PC2100 & CL2.5) running dual channel vs single channel. But with my config (PC2700 & CL2) it runs faster in dual channel mode. You might want to look at 2x256 of PC2100 Value Select DDR RAM 266MHz if you don't want to spend the extra money for the XMS series memory.

The only problem I've had with that MB is the on-board NIC won't run at 10MB. Not sure if it is hardware or a driver issue.

"Quotes are for people that can't think for themselves"

 

[tradivoro]

Hi, thanks for responding.. For me, that's not such an issue.. I intend to use the computer for musical purposes and will have a dedicated sound card for that, either an Echo Gina, or an M-Audio Delta 44...

 

[tradivoro]

Hi rook, for my purposes, I use the ram cause I'm dealing sometimes with very large musical files, and the more ram, the easier it is to edit the audio in the particular application.. I'm suing a PIII 500 now and have done zillions of musical projects on it... Even with the slower ram, 2200 Athlon with this board is going to seem to me like a rocket..

 

[tradivoro]

Also, has anybody had any issues with the temperature readings?? I keep hearing that the bios will tell you that the temperature is one number, when in reality, the temperature is much cooler.. Have they figured out a fix for that???

 

[Spitfire_x86]

MSI mobos temp reading is OK. but the alerm of included Win32 temp monitoring app. doesn't work, though it displays temp correctly

<b> "You can put lipstick on a pig, but hey, it's still a pig!" - RobD </b>

 

[tradivoro]

Ok, thanks Spitfire...