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MSI K9N2 Diamond

MSI brings us their K9N2 based on NVIDIA’s 780a chipset. Does being able to turn off that power hungry video card get your attention? On paper this board has a lot to offer but how does it work in the real world?

Introduction

MSI has been in the motherboard manufacturing business for several years now. In that time they’ve produced enthusiast level boards, low end boards and everything in between. Recently we reviewed the MSI P45 Platinum and found it to be a very interesting product that really showcased what MSI can do and what we hope to see more of what we found in the P45 Platinum in the future. This time around we are taking a look at an AMD Phenom compatible motherboard from MSI called the K9N2 Diamond. This is their top of the line NVIDIA chipset based board and its’ packed with features.

As many of you know NVIDIA started out in the motherboard chipset business producing AMD processor compatible motherboard chipsets. After a somewhat rocky start NVIDIA earned a reputation for building solid chipsets and in my opinion they had the best chipsets for the AMD platform for some time. The nForce 4 family was fantastic and packed with features. The nForce 500 series was nothing spectacular but it wasn’t bad either. The 680a didn’t really find its’ way into many boards so that chipset was pretty much a one hit wonder on the ASUS LIN-64 SLI board built for AMD’s 4x4 platform which hit more than a year ago. Now we have NVIDIA’s 780a SLI chipset which might breathe some much needed new life into the AMD platform as it will bring SLI support, 3-Way SLI, and hopefully rock solid performance to the AMD side. Some of these things were already available but nothing recent and nothing really geared toward the Phenom.

The MSI K9N2 Diamond uses NVIDIA’s 780a SLI chipset. On the surface the 780a SLI chipset is the same thing as the 780i SLI chipset for the Intel side feature-wise. The real differences are technical. The 780a SLI chipset doesn’t have a memory controller as those are integrated into AMD’s CPUs. On the Intel side there is an MCP and SPP. On the 780a all the features of both are combined into one chipset. In this case the 780a SLI MCP. Like the 780i SLI chipset the 780a doesn’t natively support PCI-Express 2.0. So additional PCI-Express lanes and PCI-Express 2.0 support come from the nForce 200 series MCP and aren’t native to the 780a MCP or SPP. The need for the nForce 200 series chip isn’t ideal but its’ worked well enough in the past on the 780i SLI chipset based boards.

The MSI K9N2 Diamond supports the latest AMD Phenom processors, Athlon 64/X2/FX and Sempron socket AM2/AM2+ processors. As with all newer motherboards few additional components are required to complete a functional machine. The required components are a socket AM2/AM2+ compatible CPU, DDR2 memory, video card, power supply and drives. MSI integrated the following components into the K9N2 Diamond: 2 ATA 133 ports, 1 floppy port, 6 SATA ports (4 SATA ports provided by the 780a SLI MCP, 4 via the JMicron controller chip 2 of which are eSATA and 2 are regular SATA), 10 USB ports (4 on the IO panel, 6 via USB headers), 2 IEEE1394a ports (1 on the I/O panel, 1 via onboard header), 2 GigE Ethernet ports, and standard keyboard and mouse ports.

Main Specifications Overview:

Detailed Specifications Overview:

Packaging

The packaging for the MSI K9N2 is fairly basic. The box has the standard cardboard insert that goes on top of the motherboard. The board itself ships in an anti-static bag. Included are driver disks, manuals, cables, M-Connector pack and of course the X-Fi audio board. The usual USB bracket is included and MSI also included a eSATA bracket that has a power plug and two eSATA ports on the back. They also have a power cable included with the bracket that can be used to connect internal hard drives to the outside of your PC with minimal fuss.

Board Layout

As I pulled the MSI K9N2 out of the box for the first time I scratched my head and I began to wonder where a commandment is written that states that any and all AMD processor compatible motherboards must have a bad layout. All the other Phenom compatible motherboards I’ve seen in the last several months have had a terrible layout as well so while I’m hammering MSI about this at present they are not the only motherboard manufacturer guilty of this offense. The MSI K9N2 probably has the worst layout out of all those boards I’ve tested. The RAM slots are poorly placed as the tabs can’t be opened easily with a video card installed.

The front panel header is horribly placed as once used, the onboard power, reset and clear CMOS buttons would be even harder to reach. The floppy connector is placed at the bottom of the board which I’ve always hated but worse than that is the fact that an IDE channel is below the last PCI slot which is again inconvenient to say the least. The other IDE channel is behind the 24-pin ATX power connector instead of being placed in front of it like it should be. Anyone who has ever tried to use an IDE channel placed in the same fashion on other boards knows what I’m talking about here. The CPU area is relatively clear but this board uses the goofy rollercoaster Circu-Pipe cooling system which I’ve never been a fan of. Expansion slot positioning is relatively good so I’ll give MSI credit on that. On a purely cosmetic level the board almost looks good. The hideous color scheme of the memory slots and the purple SATA ports kind of ruin the look in my opinion but I’ve never really judged a motherboard on its’ appearance so take my comments with a grain of salt.

Again the CPU area is relatively clear which is a good thing though the proximity of the memory slots to the processor area and the bulbous and gangly Circu-Pipe cooling system could interfere with the installation of some cooling solutions. Fortunately in my testing this didn’t happen but I only tested a few cooling solutions with it.

The board has 4 DDR2 DIMM slots that are color coded in the “Old school MSI” style fashion that makes no sense and confuses people. For some reason MSI fixed the issue on the P45 Platinum but no such luck here. Again the slots are too close to the primary PCI-Express x16 slot and the CPU area as well. To be fair I did a test fit with my Zalman CNPS8000 CPU cooler which has huge heatpipes that always run into stuff and it barely cleared the RAM modules. So while the RAM slots are too close to the CPU area for my comfort what I’m seeing here is better than what I’ve seen on comparable AMD 790FX chipset based boards.

There isn’t a separation between the north and south bridges on most AMD processor compatible motherboards and this one is no different in that regard. The 780a SLI MCP handles both the duties typically carried out by the north and south bridges. The north bridge is adequately cooled by the Circu-Pipe system though the cooling hardware takes up a ton of space and is awkward looking. Touching it even while overclocked to its’ maximum stable clock speeds, the chipset only bordered on the warm side. It didn’t burn my fingers as some NVIDIA chipset boards have done in the past. Directly in front of the north bridge is the SATA ports which are well placed and out of the way of the video cards which is always a welcome sight.

The MSI K9N2 Platinum has three PCI-Express x16 slots. Unfortunately unlike other 3-Way SLI capable motherboards this board is only capable of running in a 16x16x0 configuration or a 16x8x8 configuration. Therefore it is impossible to get a full 16 lanes worth of bandwidth in all three slots. Of course for simple SLI or Quad-SLI this isn’t an issue but for 3-Way SLI this is less than ideal. There is an additional PCI-Express x1 slot (to be used with the included PCI-Express X-Fi board or a sound board of your choice.) as well as two legacy PCI v2.2 slots.

The MSI K9N2 has the standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, IEEE1394a port, DVI port, 4 USB ports, two RJ-45 ports, and two eSATA ports. Honestly I think all modern motherboards should have at least 6 rear USB ports, but not having that many isn’t a deal breaker. One thing that I noticed was that the onboard video does not work with a DVI-VGA adapter. You can see that the required pin holes are missing from the DVI port on the backplane. (Editor’s Note: Those four pins carry the VGA signal through the digital connections for analog displays.) This isn't a huge deal but it is something for anyone planning on building an HTPC to be aware of.

MSI Dual Core Center

As usual MSI included the Dual Core Center software with the K9N2. The software hasn’t changed much in the last two years or so. This version includes an efficiency monitor I hadn’t seen before on previous versions. I can only assume this was put here for boards that don’t support the Green Power functions as the Dual Core Center included with those boards has the additional button like this one does but it opens the Green Power Center instead.

The MSI Dual Core Center utility displays system status and PC health information. Fan speeds, CPU/FSB clock speeds and voltage information is all displayed in the utility and can be monitored more or less in real time. The utility also supports MSI’s Dynamic Overclocking Technology or D.O.T. This feature essentially allows the system clock speeds to be altered to fit various preset values. Essentially as the system demand increases the overclock settings increase and become more aggressive. Still the settings aren’t overly aggressive as manufacturers tend to be rather conservative in this area and of course for good reason. This feature can be enabled or disabled via the Dual Core Center or via the BIOS. The software allows for overclocking within the Windows environment through manual adjustment of FSB and voltage values or through the use of more conservative pre-defined profiles. D.O.T. is enabled once the button is clicked on and the little fan in the corner starts spinning.

The Advanced Menu is accessible from the arrow at the bottom left hand side of the utility’s main screen. Alternatively there are two buttons with waves on them. One is listed as “smooth mode” and the other as “sharp mode.” I am not really sure what that’s supposed to mean exactly but I suppose it is akin to basic and advanced. You can also create and load custom overclocking profiles within this utility. To do this all you need to do is click on the user profile button and edit the changes to your content with them and then save the settings. As mentioned before there is an efficiency monitor added to this version of the Dual Core Center.

It has a Power In monitor and a Power Out monitor marked as “Pin” and “Pout”. Underneath those displays is a Efficiency rating in percentage form. The utility monitors temperatures and can even monitor GPU temperature. It is supposed to be able to monitor two GPUs but that function didn’t seem to work with my 8600GT SLI setup. Only the first GPU temperature was displayed. Fan speeds are also displayed in the utility. CPU and system fan values were represented. Like GPU temperature the utility is supposedly capable of displaying GPU fan speeds but that function didn’t work here either. As is expected in software of this type voltages are displayed. Voltage values for the 3.3, 5v, and 12v rails are displayed along with memory and VCore values. Clock speeds can also be adjusted manually without the use of preset profiles. VGA, CPU, FSB and memory clock speeds can be adjusted within the software.