MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum overclocking gone bad- HELP!!!!!!!!!!!

[LiquidAMD]

piece of crap hardware.

was playing doom 3 when suddenly my comp locked up and hung up with a blank screen. wasnt the vpu recover of ati as it never err... recovered.

tried to boot thereafter- power off restart and it hung up after asking for the cd in the ODD as it is set up as the primary boot device. detects all installed drives and i have 4 hdds and 2 odds.

my pc ran a 4000 athlon san diego at 2926 mhz. RAM at 2-3-3-7-1 DDR 420 and NF4 voltage of 1.75. HTT at 4x.

Tried to run windows setup and it stops loading the initial setup files randomly at its own whim (does not show a read error importantly). hence am unable to get the windows recovery console and run chkdsk.

it let me see this error a few times during windows setup "config_initialization_failed".

I have tried various things, bios reset, cmos clear, voltage reset, swapping hdds and odds, removing fdd, trying to install from various win xp discs but to no result. i have played with the same components as this is the only new pc that i have though.

please help if possible.

 

[Vile]

Man... is MSI THAT bad? everyone complains about it, gfx cards that explote just past the warrant, mobo's that suddenly 'die'. I'm starting to doubt on buying that MSI K8N Neo4 =/

 

[LiquidAMD]

Hi dude,

i really don't know what to say. to be truly truly fair i am uncertain if it is either MSI putting together crappy mbs or nvidia putting together crappy northbridge controllers that cannot handle a htt speed of merely 2128 mhz and voltage increment of 16% (resulting in something blown, seemingly unrepairable and unidentifiable!!!!!!!!)

I dare say that my previous 3 pentium/asus/intel chipset combos gave me innumerable crashes, lockups, no post and hangs before finding the sweet spot of overclocked performance but none of them failed to run a windows setup from scratch and none of them failed within a month of purchase.

the worst think to really wanting to rub it in, is that my pc was stable at the settings i was running it on when my computer crashed and has not booted since. i am woking on my backup p3 crap comp presently.

i could try going with the A8N-E from asus in the hope that the excellent cpu that the athlon is- i can pair it with a decent board and hopefully better quality northbridge even if it skimps on some pretty serious peripheral options like additional sata ports, single lan and no firewire.

I do however want this pc to work and any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mdd1963]

So it won't load Windows now at stock mem/HTT/cpu clocks, even with a different hard drive? (tried a different IDE port or SATA port, as applicable?)

Tried booting with just a single mem stick, one at a time, in appropriate slot? Does that mem test good in another pc? I know MSI recommends a specific slot for single stick ops, I can look in manual if you need me to..

Beyond that, it might be RMA time! (I wouldn't mention the OC!)

nOTE: My own MSI K8N Neo-4F just does not like any FSB past 216 Mhz, regardless of core/NF4/mem voltage , HTT, lowered mem ratios, mb BIOS, etc...

 

[LiquidAMD]

Hi dude,

have tried stock everything, different ide and sata (i have 2 sata and 2 ide disks), no hdd boot (odd only), single hdd at a time- sata and pata both- different channels and ports, dual channel ram- all mentioned combinations, single stick on all 4 slots- 1 at a time and boo-hoo time nothing at all- i get the same problem whenever the pc is able to post with nothing but the boot device options modified in the bios.

to get a full overview of my problem refer to the overclocking motherboard forum section.

got any other tips (all have seemed to fail yet!!)

Man!!! i don't know if you are the ocing kind of guy and no problem if you are not but dosen't it suck to have your pc stuck to a 8% oc. but all the same at least you have a working msi comp!!!

 

[mdd1963]

"i don't know if you are the ocing kind of guy and no problem if you are not but dosen't it suck to have your pc stuck to a 8% oc. "

Yes, it sucked, as I wanted 2.5-2.6G, but since for me, gaming is about 75% of what I do, the cpu core freq doesn't matter all that much anyway at high res...; so I took the cpu from 2.51G back to it's stock 2.2G, and upped the gpu/mem clock on the 7800GT to 470/550, respectively, resulting in a massive 3 fps increase in FEAR!

 

[LiquidAMD]

the gt stocks at 400/1000 right? It's pretty good on the gpu but I guess vram could be better. my x1800xl should have stocked 500/1000 (according to ati) came stocked at 499.5/990 but i could run it at (i guess i still can- somehow!!!) 600.75/1350 and i was pretty darn happy with it for the gaming it gave me for USD 370. the gpu is watercooled, though there is nothing but copper ramsinks on the ram. any clues on how to get the stupid board running again?

 

[mdd1963]

"any clues on how to get the stupid board running again?"

Alas, no...

(Have you tried another PS yet?)

 

[Pompeii]

If possible, just replace your MSI board with one from another brand, such as Asus or DFI.

MSI mobos have been nothing but problems for me. My brother's mobo just fried a week ago, with an MSI motherboard. Even my sister's computer, which has a different MSI motherboard, has a tendency to randomly start at 2:00 in the morning. When you have many leds in your case, it gets annoying fast. Even the keyboard and mouse spontaneously "disappear", resulting in many restarts until they work again.

Even if you do somehow get your board running again, it will never be the same. This problem isn't even due to overclocking, many people besides myself admit that MSI boards have been crap lately.

Like I said, just get a socket 939 Asus or DFI mobo. But if you are really into overclocking, get the DFI.