MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum Motherboard Review

The K8N Neo2 Platinum is MSI’s premier board based on the latest version of the NVIDIA nForce3 chipset. The NVIDIA nForce3 Ultra chipset fully supports all Athlon64 based socket 939 processors, DDR memory operating in Dual Channel mode, and Gigabit Ethernet support with integrated hardware firewall. The K8N Neo2 is a feature complete motherboard requiring the addition of processor, DDR2 memory, video card, drives, and PSU.

The following onboard devices have been integrated into the K8N Neo2’s design: 2 IDE ATA-133 and 4 SATA-150 ports (RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 capabilities across all ports); 8 USB 2.0 capable ports (4 in rear panel and 2 onboard headers supporting 2 ports each); 3 IEEE 1394 capable ports (1 in rear panel and 2 onboard headers supporting 1 port each); Realtek Gigabit Ethernet jack; NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet jack with integrated hardware firewall support; Realtek 7.1 channel audio codec featuring S/PDIF RCA and optical output ports; D-Bracket2 supporting 4 LED diagnostic display; and serial, parallel, and PS/2 port support.

…Aside from the easily addressable issues above, I found absolutely no reason not to recommend this board. With its incredible maximum allowable CPU FSB of 450 MHz, support for CPU multipliers down to 4x, and outstanding spectrum of CPU and AGP voltages, this board has some great potential waiting to be unlocked. The one big thing that could work against it though is the pending release of the nForce4 chipset based boards. This one is definitely a board to keep an eye on though… Quite simply, if you are looking for a solid AMD 939-pin motherboard that supports AGP8X, the MSI K8N Neo2 should be on your list to check out.

HardOCP
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum