HELP! problem installing my new MSI mobo

Hardware and technical stuff
1

So I just received the MSI KBV Neo Plat mobo with my Athlon 64 processor(3200+) from newegg this morning and have spent the afternoon installing.

I have a 400 watt power supply and a Radeon 9800 Pro card all ready to go, but when I make all the connections and get ready to power on and enter BIOS, the system will get going for about 5 seconds…BAM power off. Nothing ever appears on the monitor, the thing just can’t seem to stay stable for some reason longer than a couple seconds. The fans are all going, nothing inside is ever on long enough to get warm(I even checked the processor and vid card to make sure heating wasn’t an issue)

I’ve triple checked all the connections in accordance to the manual, can’t at all figure what the problem is about. I ended up reinstalling my old mobo again just to get back online and find help. :(

I did read a few buyer reviews on Newegg about this mobo many implied that you must download the new Nforce drivers to install right away as there is a bug on the shipping disc ones which adds a good 30 Celsius to the core temperature that isn’t so. Though all of those people were at least able to get into the Bios!

Any thoughts? I’m out of ideas and am really feeling the $400 blow…

2

Have you checked to make sure the heat sink is seated properly on the CPU? (I had a problem similar to this once – turned out the heat sink was hung up on the mounting bracket thingy on one side, and thus wasn’t actually touching the CPU core at all. Once it was properly in place, everything worked fine)

3

I’ve had those exact symptoms with an overloaded power supply. The power supply would shut down a few seconds after startup rather than explode/catch-fire under excess load. Can you try subbing in a weaker video card and/or unhooking all the drives from power? If you can get into BIOS setup in that config, you know it’s a power-supply issue.

4

Ok, I’m still having problems and I am pretty sure it isn’t the power supply. I actually went out and replaced my current 400watt PSU with a 430 Antec one and I am STILL having the same problem. I tried all sorts of combinations including unplugging the HDD, switching out the power hungry Radeon 9800 for my old GF4 ti4200, giving no power to case fans, etc… Still can’t get the system to get into bios or stay powered for more than a few seconds.

My only guess at this point is that the mobo is just not working properly. Maybe I need to RMA… ANy more thoughts?

5

-Check the clear CMOS jumper. Some boards have that jumped by default.

-Check the power button connections. If you have to, get a pair of pliers or a paperclip and make the connection yourself and see if that does anything different.

-Check standoffs and make sure that none all line up with screwholes in the board.

If those don’t fix it, I’d RMA it.

6

Checked all that stuff and everything should be A-OK.

I’m just going to RMA it. Have no clue what the problem is, hopefully it is just a junky board I was the lucky one to receive. Aggravating, but hopefully a new board should fix the issue.

Any tips for RMA at Newegg? It’s a retail board if that matters, not OEM.

7

Cross-ship, you’ll get the replacement faster.

8

Does the athlon 64 take a second power connector like the P4s do?

9

Yea, unlike the Athlon XP chip I had previously, the Athlon 64 also requires that square-looking 4-prong power connector plugged in on the mobo to power up the CPU as well as the usual 12-prong deal that usually connects near the IDE plugs. (If that makes sense)

Bottom line, I had a busted Mobo… I know now because I got frustrated and desperate and ran out tonight to snag a new board from a store while my other MSI is being RMA’ed. Fortunately there is a 14-day return policy, so I can refund my cash eventually when I get the new MSI Neo back from newegg whenever.

Anyway, tonight I snagged the MSI K8T Neo, basically the same board except it uses the Via chip instead of the Nforce. (Again I may just switch it out and refund it when the Nforce version gets back to me) BUT… I got home, plugged it all in, prayed to the tech gods, and hallelujah I have BIOS!!!

So now I have a new problem. For some reason everytime I start up and the machine runs through the inital loading calculations and Bios info junk, it keeps saying no Bios is installed! I have used MSI’s nifty Live update tool to flash brand new Bios updates straight off the website, and still get the same Bios error messages…urgh (though there is a screen that pops up eventually in the queue that does show the Bios version I last downloaded which is hopeful, but with other error messages saying my CMOS data is wrong…something about my RAID not configured…I’m not even using a SATA drive!)

I can get into windows and jerk around and whatnot no problems, so that is a plus. But I have no A: drive, so doing the floppy disk boot is out of the question at least for now. Any ideas? The manual is total crap when it comes to setting up the Bios and drivers…Nothing in there about it!

Also, one more question for the pile…My mobo has onboard ethernet, audio, blah, blah, blah. I also have a PCI ethernet card as well as an Audigy card set up. So right now I have two ethernet connectors going simultaneously in windows, as well as my Creative card and the Realtek oboard thing happening. My last board let me set jumpers which disabled the oboard junk…can’t do that here it seems, so is this going to be a problem? Am I bogging down resources having the oboard stuff running but never used? What should I do?

Thanks for anyone sane enough to read and respond to my junk. :)

10

Ok me=idiot. Took 2 hours to realize I can switch off my onboard stuff in some tucked away Bios menu I overlooked.

So things are cool for now I guess.

11

BDGE, it was unclear to me from your last post whether you resolved all the problems you had, or just the multiple accessories one. If you are still having problems with your BIOS not being recognized after flashing updates, I found clearing the CMOS jumper (as mentioned earlier) has fixed similar problems for me.

12

Wow, has anyone noticed how much prices have dropped recently? A64 3200+ newcastle is like $165 now!

13

Yea, there was INSANE drops this week. When I ordered at Newegg last Friday, I clicked the A64 3200+ into my basket at $260, then when I checked out it a few minutes later, the price dropped in real-time to $220! Had to do a double take when the final checkout was underestimated by nearly $50, I thought I accidentally clicked the wrong item.

Guess I shoulda waited a day or two if the processors has gotten THAT low! $100 got knocked off -REAL- fast. Is it because of the 939 socket stuff coming in?

Oh and I believe my Bios stuff is all worked out. I think the problem was that SATA Raid was enabled and the mobo was looking for the actual drive connections, hence my error messages in bootup. I guess RAID and SATA has its own private Bios deal. I disabled it and all those messages dissapeared.

I’m debating whether to just get a refund now from newegg for the Nforce board and keep this Via one since it is seemingly in working condition and fully installed. Is there that much more of an advantage to going with the Nforce 3 over the k8t800?

PSS. My god this mobo is quiet! Good call on the Zalman fan in the -other- thread. It’s amazing how silent my PC is now compared to before.

14

Supposedly AMD dropped A64 prices 30% across the board… 939’s are still overpriced for the speed but 754’s are really a good value now. A64 3200+ newcastle costs the same as a 2.8Ghz P4C. Crazy.

The K8T neo uses the k8t800 chipset, which is the worst chipset of last generation. That said, if you don’t overclock it doesn’t really make a whole hell of a lot of difference. If it were me, I’d settle for nothing less than a nf3 250gb, but then I would be overclocking.