MSI K8T Master2-FAR fans void AMD warranty--any problems?

[akaempf]

The MSI Master2-FAR motherboard I just received has its own heat sinks/fans, but the Opteron warranty requires that you use the AMD-supplied heat sinks, which do not fit on the MSI board. So using the MSI board automatically voids the AMD warranty.

Has anyone had problems with Opterons on the MSI board? I'm thinking of returning the MSI and getting the Tyan Thunder instead, just wanted to know if this was worth worrying about, or if the MSI setup was fine.

[mike4148]

They work here. The only problem it could cause is if one of your CPUs is bad (in which case, you're screwed).

Same board
2x Opteron 244s

[akaempf]

I spoke to someone named Rolf at AMD Europe today, and after checking with HQ he confirmed that AMD will honour the Opteron warranty, even though the MSI Master2-FAR requires you to use different heat sinks.

Nevertheless, he suggested going with another board anyway, because the Master2-FAR has a single bank of memory, which does not let the Opterons operate at their best. The way he explained it, both processors would be working from the same pool of memory, rather than having access to their own pools.

Does this make sense? Has anyone experienced both the Tyan Thunder and the MSI Master2-FAR, and can comment on whether this is an issue?

[jeffroman]

the tyan thunder k8w has dedicated memory for each processor. Long story short: k8w kicks ass.
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Thunder k8w, 2 Opteron 244s, 2GB Corsair, Audigy 2 Platinum eX, 6800 GT OC, 3Ware 9500S-4LP

[mike4148]

Dunno. If you've got the money to spare on a Tyan one (and/or you need/want PCI-X), get one of those. My system is absolutely ridiculously fast, even with the cheap MSI board. Then again, I use it mostly as a regular desktop.

[Corona688]

The Tyan Thunder K8W definitely kicks ass. I love it. It'll work with big ass heatsinks, even those enormous Zalman AlCu's(your case might be another matter ) and uses both integrated memory controllers instead of ignoring one. The only beef I have with it is it could really use another ordinary PCI slot, all but one are PCI-X.
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[thirteen]

I have an MSI Master2 Far and other than only getting a single set of retention clips for the motherboard - big problem now that I want to upgrade to a second processor - I have found the board to be pretty good.

Single processor you can fit a pretty big heatsink - i.e. quiet - I have currently got a Zahlman AlCu job, however when I sort the retention clip problem I will have to go to something a lot smaller. The second cpu slot is very close to the your video card when installed in the AGP slot so a fan that is greater than about 80mm wide is out.

The coolers provided by MSI are very loud by the way and that was with only one cooler in place!

Other than that gentoo support for the board is very good, the k8t800 chipset works well with the gentoo-dev-sources kernel.

[akaempf]

The second cooler provided with the MSI board does not use retention clips like the first one, but screws into the motherboard, using preinstalled threads. I have heard that it's hard to find alternate coolers for the second CPU.

And I have heard that the noise goes down to an acceptable level if you select fan level 2 from the BIOS, but I haven't tried this yet (getting a case today and will hopefully install tonight).

[thirteen]

Thanks for the info, I'll have a look through all the bits and bobs that came with the motherboard and see if I can't get the other fan/processor in.

Cheers

[Kow]

The MSI K8T Master2 FAR was made to balance between server and desktop environment. If it was a server motherboard there would be many things different about it, it would be a lot more like the Tyan mobo's. Nevertheless, I got the Master2 FAR because I wanted this balance, I play games a lot along with hosting a website and some game servers.
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-Kow