MSI K8T Master2 FAR notes

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Comments

  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    Well, you're not going to like my answer...

    Standard diagnostic procedure says test each individual component of the machine in a known-good test machine to try and isolate the damaged component. I don't put any faith in those utilities for telling me exactly what the problem is. For instance, earlier today I got lots of kernel page errors that many would automatically assume RAM, except that I know my RAID array made some funny noises before I could slap the VIA latency patch on (filesystem corruption).

    That could be your problem, but I doubt it since I only had that problem after loading the VIA Hyperion drivers and I didn't have it in DOS or Linux. I had real trouble with the 1.1 BIOS and system stability in Windows before applying the latency patch, but everything is happy now. Someone earlier was badmouthing that fix as being ancient, but it was designed for the 6235/8237 Southbridge and that's what's on your board.

    Your best bet is reposting your problem in Hardware Discussion with a title like "Can't pass Memtest, what's the problem?" and get some better help than just me.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • scotchfxscotchfx Austin, TX
    edited August 2004
    one quick question...

    by the "latency patch" do you mean the beta v1.35 Award BIOS? When I go to the MSI site I only see the v1.1 BIOS and the v1.35 beta for the k8t master2.

    I've avoided mucking with the BIOS thus far b/c I know that I will put my workstation down if I screw it up. But if this could potentially be the issue then I might as well suck it up and take the plunge.

    I will post this in the hardware forum as well and see if I get any bites.

    thanks again drasnor!
  • scotchfxscotchfx Austin, TX
    edited August 2004
    okay - reading your post closely this time I see the patch was for VIA and not for the BIOS. Sorry. Been a long day. I will look into this and see if it yields anything.

    Would this affect memtest86+ though?

    Is there any reason why test2/50% would stall for an unusually long time - could I just not be waiting long enough for it to complete?

    headed to the hardware forums as we "speak"...:)
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    The latency patch in question can be found here. It shouldn't affect memtest86+, which is why I don't think that's your problem ;)

    No, IIRC Test 2 doesn't take very long though the later ones do.

    Sorry for the delay, training the spam filter :/

    -drasnor :fold:
  • edited September 2004
    Drasnor,

    I just purchased the MSI K8T Master2 about 4 days ago. I am using it with two Opteron 250.

    I am having all the problems with noise everybody is complaining about..... Since the begining of your research on this matter there has been a lot of elapsed time. Are you aware of any new solution they may have invented and sold commercially.

    Do you know what is the recommended temperatures. What are the acceptable temperatures. With the fans in high I get 47 and 46 centigrade. With the fans on low I get 57 and 56. I read somewhere that with the pipes people should be getting 37 and 36 centigrade..... is this correct?

    Thanks
    Elliot
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Good question. I really haven't looked around for new heatsinks that fit lest I spend more money on the project ;) so I'm not aware of any new ones though there probably are several that will work.

    Acceptable temperature is a matter of opinion. The processors are rated for 80C, but they typically show instability well before that. The only way to find out is to run lots of CPU intensive stuff at those high temperatures and see whether or not it crashes. I won't accept anything higher than 50C.

    Remember to look at the deltaT when looking at people's temperatures. Sure, 36C is an outstanding temperature if your case temperature is around 30 C (typical for a good case in a normal room) but it kinda sucks if the ambient is much lower (if your case is near freezing, deltaT would be around 36C in this case). My deltaT is around 20C, which isn't particularly great but is about 10C better than what MSI could do for me.

    I suspect that the K8T Master2 reads temperatures high, but I can't verify without a temperature probe. Touching the sinks with my bare hand is accurate to within 5C, and it feels a lot cooler than 48C.

    Bottom line: experiment and see what works. I think it'd be awesome if someone else came up with a different solution than mine and we could compare the results.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • sebastienmsebastienm Portland, OR
    edited February 2005
    Hi,
    I have recently purchased a Master2-Far with 2 opteron 248. The board came with no heatsink/fans. I have read the thread about 'Cooling the Master2'. However, i don't know much about hardware so i would prefer not to have to do any modif.

    Also, the difference with what i have read so far is that my board came with identical brackets for both cpus. I have a picture here :
    http://www.sebastienm.com/master2far.jpg

    1 - Sorry about this trivial question, but i have no idea whether they are Xeon/P4/Opteron brackets... or which socket number they correspond to. Anybody? (from the picture above)

    2 - I called MSI.
    ... by the way, i first had a hell of a time to get in touch with them... it took them 10 days to reply my first RMA by email, but then i called them by phone and i left my number on the voice mail, and they called me back within the same day. They said they could not recommend anything besides the usually shipped system, but they added that some customers would switch to p4 (or did he say Xeon?) heatsink/fan... and he mailed me an additional bracket (since i supppose the ones shipped with the board are usually 2 different types). These brakets are in fact the same as the ones i already have on the board (see pix above)

    3 - From 1 & 2... my priority being on noise reduction (a good cooling is enough; not need of 'excellent'), any idea of heatsink/fan?

    4 - My CPUs are OSA248CEP5AU. Have you heard of any issues i should be aware of with this stepping (CG) and the Master2, before i plug it in?

    5 and final - The board doc says it takes only DDR333 with dual cpus, but i have heard people speaking of DDR400 earlier. So, does/doesn't it work with dual processors?

    Thank you and once again sorry if my questions sounds stupid.

    Sebastien
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited February 2005
    Some of these have been answered already but since the answers are buried within threads I'll go ahead and answer them again. The questions are valid, though just remember that in general asking stupid questions and sounding stupid is preferable to how you'll look if you shell out serious cash on hardware you can't use or return. Getting these questions out of the way now will save you a lot of grief in the future, so feel free to ask away though we do ask that you do a minimal amount of Google research in advance ;).
    sebastienm wrote:
    1 - Sorry about this trivial question, but i have no idea whether they are Xeon/P4/Opteron brackets... or which socket number they correspond to. Anybody? (from the picture above)

    2 - I called MSI.
    ... by the way, i first had a hell of a time to get in touch with them... it took them 10 days to reply my first RMA by email, but then i called them by phone and i left my number on the voice mail, and they called me back within the same day. They said they could not recommend anything besides the usually shipped system, but they added that some customers would switch to p4 (or did he say Xeon?) heatsink/fan... and he mailed me an additional bracket (since i supppose the ones shipped with the board are usually 2 different types). These brakets are in fact the same as the ones i already have on the board (see pix above)

    3 - From 1 & 2... my priority being on noise reduction (a good cooling is enough; not need of 'excellent'), any idea of heatsink/fan?
    I was less than impressed with their knowledge of their own hardware as well during my own contact with them. You'd think they'd have better answers for anyone wanting to purchase a workstation board. They designed it after all.

    The brackets on your motherboard are compatible with any heatsink using the standard s478 (Pentium 4) heatsink mount. The holes on your motherboard that the brackets are screwed in through are the same as that of s423/603/604 (very early Pentium 4 and all Xeon). What this means is that you can use just about any standard Pentium 4 cooler that will fit and any Xeon cooler designed to mount through the board (with screws instead of clips).

    The main caveats when buying heatsinks for this board is that you need to make sure the heatsink stays within an 80mm square footprint (anything with more than an 80mm fan is unusable) and that the thermal contact patch on the underside of the heatsink is large enough to cover your CPU (shouldn't be a problem). If you want me to toss out some names for you, I was considering going with Vantec Aeroflow2's but I didn't have the second set of brackets to make it work. It's Vantec's take on the very successful series of heatsinks by Dr. Thermal/Thermal Integration. These will probably also work. So will these.
    sebastienm wrote:
    4 - My CPUs are OSA248CEP5AU. Have you heard of any issues i should be aware of with this stepping (CG) and the Master2, before i plug it in?

    5 and final - The board doc says it takes only DDR333 with dual cpus, but i have heard people speaking of DDR400 earlier. So, does/doesn't it work with dual processors?
    I'm not up on my Opteron steppings so I really can't answer number 4. As for number 5, the memory speed in all Athlon64/AthlonFX/Opteron systems is determined by what kind of memory controller is on the processor die. This means that the board has essentially nothing to do with the kind of memory it takes, which is completely opposite of how every other computer before has worked. At the time MSI released the board, all Opterons only took DDR333. That changed a little more than a month later with the release of the Opteron 248, and AMD went back and quietly validated all the currently released 246's and up as DR400 compatible (I remember hearing somewhere that it was because they were waiting for DDR400 to become an official JEDEC standard). I read recently that all new Opterons 240 and up are DDR400 compatible, but I don't know what core steppings that corresponds to. You have 248's so you should be fine (I got my 248's literally when they came out and am using 2GB of DDR400 with them).

    -drasnor :fold:
  • sebastienmsebastienm Portland, OR
    edited February 2005
    Thanks a lot, Drasnor. Your reply clarified a lot of things for me.
    Google is good and necessary in order to find info (that's the way i found Shrot-Media.com) but too many times, while it answers my question, it opens the door to 10 new questions :-)

    For now, I am gonna try 2 of the Thermaltakes you have listed (TR2-M12 SE) as they are only 21 db. I'll move to something else later if they don't cool enough. However, I'll first try to lower the temp in the chassis. With my current system, the inside of the chassis feels cool (i have no probe though; maybe i should check with a regular thermometer). I may get one or two additional fans too.

    Concerning the memory. i have already bought 2x1Gb DDR333; i guess i'll sell them back and get some DDR400... but now i am tempted to get 2x2Gb ;-)

    So far i got the MSI board + 2 Opteron 248 + 2 x 1Gb of DDR333 ECC Reg for $1200... but i still need to make sure all the parts work properly :-)
    I'll use most parts from my current system (if compatible, which i am not completely sure yet). If everything works fine with no surprise (moneywise) I'd like Sata Raid with two Raptor 10k rpm drives. Currently i have 1 x 80gb and 2x 200Gb.

    ... almost there...

    Thanks again,
    Sebastien
  • m_wallym_wally Orillia, Ontario
    edited February 2010
    Need help with K8T Master2-FAR (x2). I can't get any ram to load on either of my boards. I figure it has something to do with ECC, registered type ram which I know very little about. I built plenty of computers, I bought these boards to replace my dual athlon mp 2400 (both fried because of bad bracket). It's a 900watt system, 600watt for the board only, 300watt for fans, amp, etc. Water cooled. Nvidia pci 5000 i think and a Nvidia 7300 gt AGP (both BFG). Lots of different ram, none work.
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    m_wally wrote:
    Need help with K8T Master2-FAR (x2). I can't get any ram to load on either of my boards. I figure it has something to do with ECC, registered type ram which I know very little about. I built plenty of computers, I bought these boards to replace my dual athlon mp 2400 (both fried because of bad bracket). It's a 900watt system, 600watt for the board only, 300watt for fans, amp, etc. Water cooled. Nvidia pci 5000 i think and a Nvidia 7300 gt AGP (both BFG). Lots of different ram, none work.
    Is any of the ram ECC? I believe this board needs ECC.
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    RyderOCZ wrote:
    Is any of the ram ECC? I believe this board needs ECC.

    Confirmed on that. I had almost the exact same setup as Dras in my old system with 2GB of DDR-400 ECC Registered.
  • m_wallym_wally Orillia, Ontario
    edited February 2010
    Confirmed on that. I had almost the exact same setup as Dras in my old system with 2GB of DDR-400 ECC Registered.


    Ok well I ordered a gb of registered ECC for 40$ to test it out. Ill order more when it works. It supposed to be built for this board though. I'll post some pics but they don't do there justice, it got really messy when I was trying to get it to work.
  • m_wallym_wally Orillia, Ontario
    edited February 2010
    Mo pics, almost everything is home made. the water blocks were made at my dads work and there really nice but those ugly brackets i got on them aren't. those black things hanging out of the front is temp gauges just not mounted yet.
  • m_wallym_wally Orillia, Ontario
    edited February 2010
    Confirmed on that. I had almost the exact same setup as Dras in my old system with 2GB of DDR-400 ECC Registered.

    Got the ram, worked for a little bit then rebooted from increase of 200mhz to 233mhz, now computer won't boot... again... water cooling read 31c and 34c and pc read 32c n 34c so it didn't overheat plus I put the overheat protection on. tried emtpying the cmos by removing battery twice, other then that no idea why it is not working this time.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    DDR-400 runs at 200MHz and this board isn't much of an overclocker. Also, your case mods and custom water cooling make this the most awesome thread necro ever. Welcome to Icrontic!

    -drasnor :fold:
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    m_wally wrote:
    Got the ram, worked for a little bit then rebooted from increase of 200mhz to 233mhz, now computer won't boot... again... water cooling read 31c and 34c and pc read 32c n 34c so it didn't overheat plus I put the overheat protection on. tried emtpying the cmos by removing battery twice, other then that no idea why it is not working this time.
    Remove all but 1 stick of ram, see if any 1 stick is causing the issue. 200 to 233 is a pretty sizable overclock for ECC Ram, you might get away with 10MHz, but not much more.
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    RyderOCZ wrote:
    Remove all but 1 stick of ram, see if any 1 stick is causing the issue. 200 to 233 is a pretty sizable overclock for ECC Ram, you might get away with 10MHz, but not much more.

    Yeah, I could never touch the RAM speeds on that board, and the FSB overall was pretty touchy. It's basically a server board in ATX, rather than E-ATX format.

    Also m_wally: I have a ton of stuff leftover from that old build. I have RAM (which may be suspect) (4x512 DDR-400 ECC) and 2 Opteron 246 processors if you're looking for any spares.
  • m_wallym_wally Orillia, Ontario
    edited February 2010
    Yeah, I could never touch the RAM speeds on that board, and the FSB overall was pretty touchy. It's basically a server board in ATX, rather than E-ATX format.

    Also m_wally: I have a ton of stuff leftover from that old build. I have RAM (which may be suspect) (4x512 DDR-400 ECC) and 2 Opteron 246 processors if you're looking for any spares.

    Oooo more ram. How much? as for opterons I was close to frying them today but there still kicking.. water read 57c after the peltier could only imagian how hot it was running. But ya its working now, when erasing the cmos you have to jump the pins too:bigggrin:. Need to add some rads to this. Had to move it so I had to drink the 60c+water with red dye. Not fun
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    I'll PM ya.
  • m_wallym_wally Orillia, Ontario
    edited February 2010
    Now the board boots ok.. loads windows in about 3 seconds then freezes right after the logo goes away. Before it took 3 seconds and loaded no prob but the mouse wasn't plugged in so I had to reboot. Also I got another msi board for free that hangs on windows xp logo during load. Maybe these boards are hopeless and I should cut my loses. The board I got for free work a couple times then quit. Both have fresh copies of windows xp media center.


    Fixed the water cooling, upgrade pump, and i made a temp rad out of heatsinks and fans. runs at 21c steady, peakes at 30c. Stable at 205mhz so far...
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