INTRODUCTION AND BOARD
Theres no mention on their website of this particular model, they have the p43 neo on the msi website, but not the neo F for some reason.
It isnt feature packed as the price suggests but immediately i noticed you get 6 sata ports, and 6 audio ports. When i was researching around for mainboards i found most s775 boards in this price range had 2-4 sata connectors, and stock audio with 3 audio ports. Definately a plus though though i dont think the person i am builing this computer for wont be using these features. I also noticed that solid capacitators (or are they?) are on the northbrigde and near the power ATX connector, definately reassuring as the top half of the board will be where the hot components are. It would be hell if the caps started popping like back in the socket A 8rda days.
The MSI P43 Neo F has the following:
- P43 Chipset with ICH10 southbrigde.
- Solid capacitors in vrm, but it appears that throughout the top half of the board.
- 4x DDR 800 slots (DDR 1066 supported through overclock)
- 1x pci-e 16x slot
- 2x pci-e 1x slots
- 3x standard PCI slots
- 1x parallel (lol) and com (lol) ports
- 1x gigabit lan
- 4x usb 400 ports
- HD audio with 6 audio connections
- Passive Cooling
Motherboard IO, not USBvile like on those giga-byte boards:
CPU Area, 3 FULL AMAZING PHASES:
Lower Right Hand Side of the board:
About the OC jumper, These jumpers just control what FSB the board boots on default. After boot the motherboard can configure any FSB you like. Usefull for the system builder who doesent wanna fiddle around in the bios to get correct FSB. The motherboard is capable of fsb overclocking.
It is capable of Voltage adjustments, just not very precise ones. Looking at the motherboard and packaging its pretty plane. Doesent look as glossy as giga-byte and asus boxes ive had, and kind of reminds me of thermalright HSF packaging. Doesent say anything about whether the box was from recycled materials though, but thats fine, kinda looks like it was recycled. Woohoo green.
I didnt take pics of the innards of the box, but no suprises here, it came with:
- 1x motherboard
- 1x motherboard IO panel
- 1x sata no clip cable
- 1x molex to sata power adapter
- 1x floppy cable
- 3x cd's, of which where 2x windows/ vista 32bit/ 64bit driver cd's, and also a cd called 'HDD Backup' My guess it is a cd that restores a backup of the OS (Ghost), but in MSI branding.
- 1x quick start brochure
- 1x motherboard manual
Setting the up the computer was simple enough, just plug in the cpu install the heatsink, plug the power into the board, install it into a case, plug in the graphics, ram and drives and your off.
One thing i noticed the amount of 'play' in the DIMM slots. There just isnt that bit of plastic to guide the memory in place, caused me problems when trying to install ram when the case was vertical which i shouldnt be doing anyway. I recon MSI donated that bit of plastic to the jumpers which are so easy to handle
The finnished Product, LOL no SATA drives:
BIOS
The computer started up right the first time, no infinite loops or fans spinning but not action like on the last giga-byte p43 board i set up(bad luck maybe?). But i noticed the motherboard made a low sound beep for every usb device i had connected, which doesent happen on the giga-byte and asus boards ive had. I could see it as a handy feature though, to see if the usb's are working or not. That was then followed by the plainess looking POST screen i have seen, no logos just bios revision, usb devices connected and drives connected.
Heres the main pic of the BIOS:
Thermal Monitoring in BIOS:
Stability: Installed windows and hurrah! a fully functioning computer.
Ran folding at home on both the CPU and GFX for a day straight and had no problems. At full load the motherboard temps where around the CPU temps +- 5 degrees so around 45 to 55 degrees in my hot 35+ degree room. The GPU was feeling the heat at around 95 degrees. Thats stock cooling for you
OVERCLOCKING: After i installed drivers and everything i decided i'd have a play with overclocking. MSI calls it overclocking page of the BIOS 'Cell' and has a feature called D.O.T (Dynamic Overclocking technology) which has some pretty crappy names like Sargent, Private etc etc and depending on which rank you chose the motherboard simply upps the the fsb in relation to how much load is on the cpu. I didnt try it and decided to do it the manual way.
'Cell' Overclocking Page 1:
'Cell' Overclocking Page 2:
So i simply upped the fsb to 300 (10 multiplier x 300 fsb = 3GHZ), changed the dividers so the ram and cpu was 1:1, disabled EIST.
It booted into windows no problem, so i thought to myself, wow decent board! stock volts and i already have a 1ghz overclock!.
So if your overclocking with this board just remember to set the voltage manually, or else toasted CPU will result. I did a simple google and didnt find how to unlock the the voltages. Was going to do more overclocking(with some cold air induction, i.e desk fan @ full power on the cpu hsf 
) but the system was just fine and the system was going to meet its new owner in a hr. Just Remember to press the plus and minus keys on the numpad to adjust voltages, i just cant believe that the + and - keys where backspace is doesent adjust voltages. For under $300 for a decent cpu, okayish ram, alright graphics card, coolermaster power, and a simple motherboard i think ive done well. Runs any game ive thrown at it at medium settings so i bet the person i built it for will love it.
TL;DR: Perfectly stable board for the people who leave it stock and want p45/ x48 preformance. At $89 its $60 cheaper then similar giga-byte boards ($60 cheaper at the same store: MSY, $26 if your staticice guy). I know a couple of people who have splurged money on $200 motherboards and have not overclocked them at all, could of got this and spent that $100+ on more decent CPU/ GFX. But hay thats my 2c. <!-- / message --> <!-- edit note -->
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