MSI Neo-F V3
Today, I have chosen a special subject to write about - my own motherboard. Why do I call it special? Well, it took some time until I got completely happy with it, but it was worth the wait. I will tell you about this, and why would you use the MSI K9N Neo V3, also known as MSI NEO-F V3, to build a computer, while giving you the technical specifications and features at the same time, so get ready!
Let's start with my story... I had to choose between an ASUS motherboard, and the MSI NEO-F V3, and despite my previous (all positive) experiences with MSI products, I was thinking about buying the M2N-E instead of the NEO-F V3. There was also a Gigabyte board to think about, but in the end I decided to go with the NEO-F V3.
Basically, this is a budget board, but you get a lot of things for your money, especially the 3 years warranty and the all-solid capacitor build, which promises to deliver a very long life to your computer (obviously, you may end up seeing a system based on this board in a museum around 2020, since my old MSI motherboard has some inflated capacitors on it and has been running 24/24 for almost 2 years this way - and it's not dead yet!).
Due to the chipset limitations, you won't be able to run Windows 98/ME on a computer using this montherboard, but I don't think this should be a problem. After buying it, I noticed that a lot of options were not in the BIOS. "OK, this is a new board, so we'll update the BIOS," I said, but I ended up with more options, and a little disaster - memory performance went down the drain. Fortunately, the version 2.5 of MSI NEO-F V3's BIOS solved that issue, and now this baby runs fast as a shark, but I'll get to that part a bit later.
My suggestion is to use this board for a low-end gaming system, since it has decent overclocking capabilities, but there are already a lot of great new ones available, and processors with a TDP over 89W are not supported.
As you can see in the image above, the PCI Express x16 slot is placed below those two PCI Express x1 slots(which you won't use for sure), and a video card with a larger cooling system won't allow you to use properly any of the 3 PCI slots, without any overheating risks. Even more, a video card that's a bit longer may be a problem when you are going to use the SATA ports, but let's get to the good parts, shall we?
If a big video card may lead you into dropping the idea of using any PCI card, it's good to know that the onboard network adapter and the HD sound, both from Realtek, do their job wonderfully. As a side note, the network and sound parts on the mainboard are the only ones not using solid capacitors, but that shouldn't be such a big deal.
Now, let me tell you a few words about performance and overclocking. Last month, when I built a computer using a budget ASUS board, I was shocked to see that I wasn't able to set memory timings manually, so I ended up with a system running 4-4-4-12 DDR2 memory at some default (and really lame) timings. Congratulations, ASUS, you (don't) rock!
Speaking for myself, I managed to easily push my AMD X2 4000+ processor from 2.1GHz to 2.4GHz by increasing the FSB to 230MHz on default voltage, but I heard about people achieving stable 250MHz FSB on this board. Anyway, I am not crazy about reaching the limits, I simply overclocked enough to have my memory run at 800MHz. Regarding the memory, I have to tell you that the maximum voltage that can be set in the BIOS is 2.3V, and this could help some people achieve tight timings or pretty high frequencies.
Getting back to the features, I should also mention that RAID is supported, but Firewire is missing. These being said, I guess it has come the time to draw the conclusions...
...so here we go: the MSI NEO-F V3 is a great budget board, with good overclocking capabilities, uses solid capacitors, and performance is very good, no matter if you want to overclock or not. On the negative side, I must quote the uninspired board layout, and the lack of Firewire connectors, because I can't think about anything else bad, at this time.
At last, if you were wondering...this board is Vista certified, but I must give you one last advice - be sure to get the latest drivers from the official page, and don't use the included software overclocking utility. If you have any problems, I'll be sure to help you, and if I can't help you, there's always the official MSI user forum.
Since currently this great board can be found for as little as $78, I think the MSI K9N Neo-F V3 still has some time left until becoming obsolete, although you won't build any record breaker using it. After all, we're not all trying to run Crysis at 1080p resolution, or get insane scores in 3D Mark...
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good review. i’ve had this board since last year, and i’m quite happy with it and its rock-stable. i wasnt able to OC until i was able to update to the bios version released last march 2008. also,as you have mentioned, you need to get the latest realtek sound & lan drivers in order for everything to work (had issues with some games due to sound drivers).
the only other bad things i can say about this mobo is the proximity of the DDR2 slots to the cpu socket. if you use a somewhat large cpu cooler, you wont be able to use the first 2 ddr2 slots next to it. also, the max cpu vcore i can set is 1.35v.. good enough for only up to 250mhz stable overclock..other budget boards offer up to 1.4v (biostar,asrock). that aside from the already mentioned (bad layout for the pci-e x16 & sata ports)