I’m looking at buying a 6150 based S939 board for my X2 3800; does anyone have any experience of owning one of these? I’m considering these models but I’m open to others provided they support Firewire & DVI, with HD-TV out as a bonus.

MSI K8NGM2-FID
Gigabyte GA-K8N51PVMT-9
Asus A8N-VM CSM

These issues that interest me are:

Speedfan Support.
CrystalCPUID support – not sure if that’s a given for all CnQ CPUs!
Ability to overclock by 20-25% whilst keeping the PCIe buss & memory clock at or below stock speeds.
Scythe Ninja Support.

Any help appreciated.

had one of these for a few months now, very pleased:

no speedfan.
works like a charm with crystal.
no problems overclocking. check out http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=1803985&frmKeyword=&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear for info on with bios revisions to use when overclocking though. great faq there.

regards, kent.

To Kentc: Thanks for the link, that sounds promising. I've seen too many bad reports on the Asus to feel comfortable in buying one. The lack of Speedfan support is annoying in the MSI; I'll just have to 5V all my Nexus fans.

I also have the MSI board and am pretty happy with it.

I believe someone posted the other day that beta 7 of SpeedFan now supports this board.

Thanks, I hadn’t got round to googling it yet, but this link confirms that with a Beta version the CPU fan speed can be controlled and the system fan speed monitored.

one thing though it's probably the same for all boards with integrated graphics. the gpu does get ridicusly hot. with a highly efficient heatsink on the cpu (i run the xp-90c) the cpu fan is spinning so slowly you get very little airflow over the gpu. i'm planning to fix this with some sort of ducting.

regards, kent.

ps. the xp-120 does actually fit but you have to run the memory in the third and fourth slot which according to msi can have a bad effect on stability, especially on the cnq. running the 120 would put the cpu fan mor on top of the gpu and would probably cool it slightly better.

Thanks kentc. It hadn’t dawned on me that the onboard GPU might get hot, but it seems obvious now that I think about it.
I noticed that it’s a tight fight around the socket and that MSI recommend using the RAM slot nearest the CPU first. Using slots 3 & 4 only seems a bit risky to me, so if I need to upgrade my heatsink I figure a Scythe Mine would be the best bet.

I've had both the MSI and the ASUS. The ASUS sits in the closet because it never ran for more than an hour. It also had severe usb problems for that hour. I should have taken it back but i thought i could get it working.

The MSI also had some problems with both of my memory modules but I eventually got it working with higher timings than stock. This memory worked fine in my other machines. I'm glad the speedfan works now. I'll check that out. Overall, this has been a good board but lacks the voltage adjustments.

i bought the zalman zm-nb47j nb cooler today, to put on the gpu. i shall report when it's done.

May I suggest the Biostar Tforce 6100?

subjectively much cooler running. 10-20 degrees according to my finger thermometer. with the original sink i couldn't hold my fingers on it for more then a second, now i might just rest my cold feet on it in winter for comfort.

kind of a bad fit though, too big. had to mount it at about a 15 degree angle which looks kind of silly. square didn't fit and neither did 45 degrees.

also the thermal paste that was on the puny original wasn't very well applied, probably causing even higher temperatures to the chip then could be felt on the hetsink.

reagrds, kent.

Hi,

Would there be any fit issues on the Asus A8N-VM CSM ?

I am currently using the MSI 6150-board for my PVR. The only annoying thing about it the PCI / PCIe layout, which eliminates some cases from consideration (mainly silverstonetek). Works fine for PVR usage.

I've used that mobo before. Unfortunately no fan speed control and the nb heatsink is pretty small. Otherwise i was very pleased with it.

I've been running the MSI 6150 board since the beginning of the year, and it's been pretty good for me.

Lack of SpeedFan support sucks, but the BIOS has pretty decent control over the CPU fan speed. I actually like using the BIOS better than a Windows program to control the fan.

If you need to check temps while in Windows, it comes with MSI's homegrown monitoring program, which is not very user-friendly, but it does report temps, rpms, and volts. The new nTune beta has a similar monitoring utility, and it shows a temp for the "nForce", which I take to mean the IGP.

I have no problem keeping the IGP cool enough, even in a low airflow system. nTune typically reports 55-59C for the IGP during normal Windows usage. It probably helps a lot that I have a Zalman 7700 (with Nexus 650rpm fan mod) cooling the CPU. That HSF overhangs the IGP a bit for some airflow. It also overhangs the first couple of DIMM slots, and there's just enough clearance to get my OCZ sticks with their standard silver heat spreaders in.

As for overclocking, I got my X2 4200+ to overclock a totally stable 25%, with nice tight RAM timings and 5x HTT multi, and without upping vcore or turning off CnQ.

No DVI on that one, or any other 6100 boards.

I built a system around the Tforce last year. It only has a couple advantages over the MSI - vcore adjustment and price. The MSI is much better in the features department, and MSI also made a better layout.

That's strange. I have the socket 754 version which has very nice fan control for the CPU header. It does lack DVI, however.

speedfan 4.29 beta 7 shows that sensor too. things is though "nForce" is actually the southbridge, the chip with the black heatsink closest to the sata-connectors, nForce 430.
the igp is the northbridge, the GeForce 6150-chip closest to the cpu?!

however - if a put a fan blowing at full tilt straight on the nb (and sb actually) speedfan reports 40 degrees and the heatsink is really cool to touch. after burning for a while with NO FAN what so ever speedfan reports 42 degrees but i can't touch the hs, it's red hot.

i'll have to dl the new ntune and try it...

regards, kent.

Hi, while not an Nvidia 6100 motherboard the DFI Infinity RS482 might be worth a look. It's based on ATI chipset but has aprox equal performance to the Nvidia 6100, also VGA, DVI, HDTV, Gigabit LAN, firewire and supposed to be decent overclocker.
Of course if you actually want/need Nvidia then feel free to ignore this but thought I'd toss it in as another option.
Seb

Has anyone seen AM2 boards based on nforce 430/6150?

MSI K9NGM2

K9AGM looks interesting too.

@winguy

thx, the ati board looks really interesting

@smilingcrow

I'm highly pleased with my MSI K8ngm2-fid,
as autoboy already mentioned the asus simply sucks.

Well, that's good to know. It would mostly explain the results I was getting from the MSI 6100/410 box I built for my dad last week. With that one, the "nForce" ran a steady 73C with the exhaust fan at 5v (IOW, almost no case airflow) and about 8C cooler with the exhaust at 12v (pushing a whole lot of CFMs and making my ears bleed). I would have expected a much greater temp drop since the exhaust fan was so close to the IGP.

On that system, I was just using the stock AMD HSF, which has fins and channels that direct air only towards the front and back of the case, and no air towards the IGP. So the IGP gets quite hot. Almost too hot for me to touch. Oddly, the speed of the CPU fan (as controlled by the BIOS) made a 15C difference for the nForce temp.

On my system with the Zalman 7700, I have no problem touching the IGP. My touch test says my dad's IGP runs around 75-80, while mine runs 50-55.

I could mention a third system here. I built it three months ago for my dad, and it has the MSI 6150 board, along with a stock AMD HSF and low airflow case fans. The NB and SB on it feel much the same as the ones on my dad's newest 6100/410 box, although I never got a reading from the "nForce" sensor. Even with the red hot IGP, his system has been running solid.

So the bottom line is, the stock AMD HSF is poor, but probably workable for cooling the IGP. A CPU HSF that blows even a little bit of air towards the IGP will help cool it immensely. All three of these systems survived my usual burn-in test, which includes 24 hours of Prime95, SuperPi at 32M, CPUburn, and a run through 3dMark05.

I got the MSI k8ngm2-fid! It's really nice, everything is on board so your case looks really neat and empty

I run linux only and lm_sensors reports:
- CPU temp 33C (amd64x2 4200+)
- Sys temp 34C
- temp3 (wtf is this? NB? SB?): 40C
- CPU fan: 1534rpm (this is the 100mm of the scythe mine.)

Ubuntu linux 6.06 installed without any hiccups. Everything's working out of the box: Nvidia OpenGL, Nvidia Xvmc, surround sound, network, ... The only thing I haven't tested yet is component video out. But with DVI, who care about component.

I think this also depends on the case. I have the msi-fid and the silverstone tj08 and the angle SATA connectors ended up touching the Scythe Mine. Installing HDDs in a small case with huge HSF (ninja, mine, ...) is an absolute nightmare.[/b]

hard to tell actually. the problem with the k8ngm2-fid is that the nb and sb heatsinks are rather small (27x27mm, 46,5mm hole-to-hole). he obvious solution would be to mount the zalman at 45 degrees but there are capacitors in the way - looks like the asus would have the same issue.

regards, kent.

On many of the 410/430 boards, there is no southbridge heatsink at all, so I don't think extra cooling capacity for it is all that necessary if it has a small heatsink, like on the MSI K8NGM2-FID. As for the northbridge on the MSI... as I mentioned, a Zalman 7700 on the CPU takes care of keeping it cool. I imagine a Thermalright XP- or SI-series HSF would also work, assuming those sinks fit the board.

6150LE

Perfect. But how many boards will actually use that, with DVI and HD Audio? By the time motherboards with 6150LE actually surface, 6150 boards would already have gained a strong footing in the mainstream market.

My guess is that the 6150LE will be used in boards that skimp just a bit on features and/or included accessories.

(xp-90 fits, 120 might fit on some boards depending on capacitor bendability or with ram in second bank only)

actually that's why i've put a zalman nb-cooler on my fid, my xp-90c keeps my a64 3200+ at a comfy 30-35 degrees with a nexus 92 at 25%. i don't know the rpm's but the fan stops turning at 20%... at these slow speeds the nb got red hot!
the xp-90 doesn't stretch over the nb so air has to bounce out towards it. maybe 7700 stretches over it, providing more direct airpath?

regards, kent.