# MSI motherboard?



## xman73 (Nov 25, 2008)

About 4 years ago, I assembled a low cost box using a MSI P4MAM2-V mb with a Celeron 2.93Ghx processor. It has run WindowsXP, Suse Linux, Slackware, and now FreeBSD 6.2 & 7.0 without a hitch. Currently, I have dual monitors with old Elsa agp and nVidia pci cards.

I want to put another low cost computer together, and because of the good luck I have had with MSI, i am leaning toward this make.  I can buy a MSI P6NGML motherboard bundled with an Intel Celeron Dual Core E1200 1.60 Ghz processor for $89.99.  I would use dual monitors with  a couple of older ATI pci cards I have on hand. 

Since I know next to nothing about selecting this hardware, I would appreciate any comments or suggestions.  I should add that my needs are not great.  I don't do games and have no need for fancy graphics.


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## Carpetsmoker (Nov 25, 2008)

In my experience MSI mainboards are pretty bad quality, especially capacitors often break.

In my experience, ASUS is a fairly decent brand, Intel is also OK, but pretty expensive.


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## xman73 (Nov 26, 2008)

Carpetsmoker,

I have seen several instances, on Google, where users have complained about MSI boards, and I was thinking of getting an Asus with an Intel processor. Thanks for shoving me off the fence.


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## aragon (Nov 26, 2008)

I agree with Carpetsmoker.  I've found MSI's ACPI to be rather dodgy as well.

I find Intel boards have the best ACPI implementation...


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## kbw (Nov 27, 2008)

I've been running FreeBSD (5.x and 6.x) on an MSI Athlon board for some years now.  The machine has been running for most of that time.

ACPI does not work properly.  It has to be physically powered off once halted.

I did have one of the tabs on the end of the memory socket snap while removing memory once.

That aside, I've been very happy with it.  It has survived the odd power surge, dust and heat.

I would probably buy MSI again.  All my other machines have Asus boards, they're pretty reliable too although you want to stay away from Via chipsets, opt for nVidia instead.


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## mfaridi (Nov 27, 2008)

I tested K7N2Delta and KT6 and KT4AV , all of them run FreeBSD and OpenBSD and Linux , without mnay problem , but all of them have bad quality , all of them broken and after 1 or 2 years , I have to use another mainboard .
we have 40 computers in here and we had 10 MSI motherboard , we lose all of them and we change them with ASUS.


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## gnemmi (Nov 28, 2008)

I have a MSI 945GCM7-L with a Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.20GHz and 1G ram.

All in all .. pretty happy with it .. 

As stated above by kbw.. ACPI does not work as it should and the machine has to be physically powered off once halted ... but that's about the only real bummer ...


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## tmeisenh (Nov 28, 2008)

I have an MSI board that I have zero problems with using FreeBSD 6.4.  I want to say that ACPI works fine and I don't have to hit the power button to halt it but the truth is I haven't shut it down in about a year (previous MSI board went two years + w/o a halt) so I don't remember.  
All that said, MSI seems to make good quality boards and I haven't had a single issue in 8 years of using them.


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