A Closer Look:
The aesthetics of the board are very clean looking. The board has a black, blue and gunmetal looking color scheme. Two stickers were placed on the board. The first one was advertising MSI’s Active Phase Switching (APS) and the other was placed over the bottom PCI-E slot advertising the easy OC Switch. The easy OC switch is towards the center bottom part of the board (the red switch). The dual-channel RAM slots are diplayed in black and blue for some classy looking color coordination. The board comes equiped with (6) SATA ports, and as stated is HTPC ready. Having both HDMI and DVI ports for all your 1080p needs if you wish to use it in such a way.
MSI has certainly paid attention to the details with this board. Everything from the blue and black color scheme to the 90 degree SATA ports has been through of to give you a combination of good looks and an easy install and also allow for good cable routing. There is excellent clearance around the CPU socket to allow for larger heatsinks and the power and IDE ports are logically located.
Did we mention we love the color scheme? Perfect for the gamer cases with windows.
Testing:
Testing will be done on the following benchmarks using Windows Vista Ultimate x64 as the OS.
- SiSoftSandra
- 3D Mark Vanatage
- Crystal Mark
- KribiBench
- Cinebench
- Left 4 Dead
- Far Cry 2
- Crysis Warhead
| Motherboard: | MSI NF980-G65 |
| Processor(s): | AMD Phenom II X4 965 |
| Graphics: | Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon 4890 |
| Memory: | 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 |
| Hard Drive: | Seagate 160GB 7200rpm |
| Power Supply: | InWin Commander 850W |
| Operating System: | Windows Vista Ultimate |
This might be off topic but I have just fInished assembling a new RIG using the nf980-g65 MB. Have checked all the connections the board lights up all fans run GPU CPU Case etc. The blue APS light is on. The DVD drive is live at least the drawer opens and closes and the green light comes on and goes off as it should. Not so sure about the HDD. How do I check that? Not getting any beeps. Not sure if this board has a speaker? Can’t find any built in the case either. Anyhow to get to the point I do not get a post screen. Can’t install OS or MB drivers. The lights are on but nobody’s home.
NF980-G65
Phenom ll x4 965 Black
4gb DDR3 CL9 Kingston 1333mhz
MSI N465GTX (OC to 470 Specs)
PSU OCZGXS850
500 gb SATA ll Seagate HDD
Sony DVD
Well first unplug everything but the power connections,CPU,RAM. I assume you are using aftermarket vid or onboard vid. Make sure the power to the vid is plugged in right. Then start. if that doesnt work, post back here and we can go to the next step.
Hi Jason
Thanks for your input. I did what you said and it booted to post. Now I’m just tweaking everything up. For a while I thought a piece of hardware or a short at the MB / Case was at fault and I would have to start from scratch again. But as it happened I disconnected all the hardware pulled the ram and moved one stick to another channel and away it went. So thanks for help.
Ron
This may be a dead subject…but after having this board for months it has started not posting. I have to turn the power on….wait a few seconds then hit the reset button…sometimes 2-3 times before it posts….sooo frustrating.
Finally I just bought the crosshair extreme. Im in a jam because I have the AMD 1090T and two GTX580’s…tough to find an AMD board that supports SLI.
here is my rig http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35g_mnlG0ME
How is this board still running for you? I have heard that it has its faults and quite a few of them actually POP* and generate smoke/sparks when overclocked.