MSI K9N Neo-F - motherboard - ATX - nForce 550

The MSI K9N Neo-F
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I've never written a motherboard review before so I hope I cover everything you need to know.


AVAILABILITY:
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This item should be in the £40-£50 price range.
It is I would consider a higher mid range board.


Specs:
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ATX

This is an ...
...no good for vista, but MSI is one of the best companies for getting vista drivers out nice and quickly for vista ready boards. Take a look at some of my other soon to come motherboard reviews to see how uncommon this is especially for sound drivers, seeing as most boards use the same drivers it would be nice for mobo makers to put details of the sound drivers for vista on their sites.. Chipset drivers can be found on the Nvidia website.

more

The MSI K9N Neo-F
---------------------------

I've never written a motherboard review before so I hope I cover everything you need to know.

AVAILABILITY:
-------------------

This item should be in the £40-£50 price range.
It is I would consider a higher mid range board.

Specs:
---------

ATX

This is an ATX sized motherboard. It will fit in midi or full sized tower cases. It will not fit in mini ATX cases.

Processor = SOCKET AM2

This is a Socket AM2 motherboard.
For: AMD ATHLON 64's, Semprons And Athlon dual cores aka X2's.

RAM = DDR2

This board supports the 240 pin DDR 2 standard. It will take PC4200 PC5300 & PC6400 sticks of ram.

PCIE Graphics.

This will take a PCIE x16 Graphics card. It will not work with AGP cards. PCIE is the more recent technology.

Chipset = Nforce 550

This motherboard uses the Nvidia Nforce 550 chipset, This is a fast, reliable chipset which shouldn't let you down. Driver upgrades are easy to find on Nvidia's website.

FSB = 1000Mhz, 32 & 64 Bit compatibility, Vista Compatible. SATA & SATA II . Up to 10 USB. Storage = 1xATA 4xSATA. 7.1 Sound
Network adapter - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet

This is a very good quality mid-range board. Excellent value for money, great performance.

What's in the box?
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Cables!! This comes with heaps of cables.
The Motherboard
Driver disks
TBH I can't remember what else. It's been 2 months since I installed.

How does it look?
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This is your average looking board, not particularly exciting, but well laid out.

The Manual.
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An easy to use manual, I would say it's one of the best, but I don't know if that is because the board is so well laid out and easy to find everything or because its a well written manual. Either way it's not a bad manual.

Hardware Installation.
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This was one of the rare times I've been able to put a leading brand motherboard with a leading brand case and be able to connect all the front panel connectors with no problems.

Everything is easy to get to, well marked and easy to find. This board was probably the easiest of any mobo I've ever installed.

Also the PCIE x16 slot seems well designed, you put the rear-hook in first and almost roll it into place and lock. Finally a board that seems to use the end bit on graphics cards well, I'm fed up with boards you have pull a silly bit of plastic to get the card out, or has some weird bit of wobbly rubber there.

Software installation.
----------------------------

XP: The disks that came with the motherboard install quickly and easily on XP.

Vista. This is one of the easiest boards I've found to install on Vista. It works fine on first boot. Drivers on the disk are no good for vista, but MSI is one of the best companies for getting vista drivers out nice and quickly for vista ready boards. Take a look at some of my other soon to come motherboard reviews to see how uncommon this is especially for sound drivers, seeing as most boards use the same drivers it would be nice for mobo makers to put details of the sound drivers for vista on their sites.. Chipset drivers can be found on the Nvidia website.

Overall:
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The MSI K9N NEO-F doesn't break the bank, it is easy to install and works consistently well.

I would recommend this to enthusiastic gamers who cant afford a £200 motherboard. Also excellent in entertainment based PCs or Office PCs.

Negatives:
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Not many, in fact I was just about to post this review without any.
The Floppy Disk header is in a weird place. I personally rarely install floppy drives on any Pc I make, so this makes no difference to me. It is located not near the IDE header as with mst motherboards, but below all your PCI slots.

I suppose the one other negative is this Isn't the best motherboard in the world. However in it's price range I would recommend this to anyone. 

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