MSI Platinum K9A2 Platinum Desktop Motherboard - AMD 790FX Chipset - Socket AM2+ PGA-940

MSI K9A2 Platinum needs lots o' power

Strengths: nice connectors for case switches, USB, front panel

Weakness: power hungry

I had a problem with not enough power for MSI K9A2 Platinum so be careful as you spec out system. Wouldn’t boot, thought it was board but after much work determined it was power. I had tried new Antec Earthwatt EA 500 but wouldn’t cut it. I have 4 GB DDR2, new GPU with 512MB DDR2, Intel 80 GB SSD and couple peripherals. I needed 25+ AMPs and EA 500 only had 21. I went with Corsair TX650W...
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I had a problem with not enough power for MSI K9A2 Platinum so be careful as you spec out system. Wouldn’t boot, thought it was board but after much work determined it was power. I had tried new Antec Earthwatt EA 500 but wouldn’t cut it. I have 4 GB DDR2, new GPU with 512MB DDR2, Intel 80 GB SSD and couple peripherals. I needed 25+ AMPs and EA 500 only had 21. I went with Corsair TX650W Model CMPSU-650TX, 52 AMPS +12Volt power to be safe.

By MikeofWestport - Mar 19, 2009

A++ motherboard

Strengths: Goodd looking board with intense features. It works fine with my AMD 9600 (black edition), 4x1GB Crucial memory and 2x HD 4850 in crossfire.

Weakness: Uses the little dated, but capable SB600 southbridge. But not a big issue for me.

I knew I wanted a 790FX board for my Phenom 9600 and future crossfire build. This one completely satisfied me. It is worth noting here that it comes with more connections/cables for every contingency. The manual is well written and MSI's website is very easy to navigate and useful. wonderful!!

By flyinghao - Jul 1, 2008

Great Overalll Motherboard

Strengths: Stable. Booted right up and has run fine so far.

Weakness: Chipset heatpipe too close to the main PCI-e slot.

Booted up fine then updated bios and has run smoothly and stable since. Have used a couple of MSI boards before an never had a problem one still in use to this day 15 years later. Got this at a pretty good deal but do have tot wait and a rebate. So far a quality product as usual that I have come to expect from MSI.

By bamboozled2 - Jun 5, 2008

A good 790FX board for slightly less...

Strengths: Price, Reliable, Features, 790FX, Support for Phenoms, Good OC

Weakness: RAID (see comments), Only 4 back-panel USBs (the rest you must connect)

This, so far, is a great board... after spending quite some time getting it to work properly. If you plan on using the SATA RAID with a SATA DVD, you will have some issues. Some people say to use the 2xPromise ports for the raid, but I found a better way. The Promise RAID is not as good, supporting only smaller stripe sizes. But if you use the ATI RAID, you must set all ATI SATA ports to RAID,...
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This, so far, is a great board... after spending quite some time getting it to work properly. If you plan on using the SATA RAID with a SATA DVD, you will have some issues.

Some people say to use the 2xPromise ports for the raid, but I found a better way. The Promise RAID is not as good, supporting only smaller stripe sizes. But if you use the ATI RAID, you must set all ATI SATA ports to RAID, and then cannot boot from CD. Which is the issue. Just temporarily hooking up a IDE DVD was the best solution I found.

Btw, you'll need a floppy to load up the RAID drivers during Windows install if you plan on using XP. With Vista, you're fine, since it supports loading them off a CD or USB.

Hope that helps some people, RAID can be tricky to get to work, but I have it running Vistax64 quite nicely finally. This board supposedly over clocks well too, although I have not tried this myself.

Sys Specs:
K9A2 Platinum
AMD A64 X2 5000
A-DATA 2x2GB DDR2 800
2x Seagate 7200.11 ST3320613AS 320GB (Single Platter) in RAID0
1x SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB

By mattrg - May 18, 2008

K9A2 Platinum Motherboard

Strengths: One of the best over clocking motherboards I have ever tested. Overclocking AMD 5000 Black safely at 3.4!!

Weakness: Only compatible up to 8GB of DDR2. Gigabite is compatible up to 16GB of DDR2.

K9A2 Platinum Motherboard is one of the best motherboards that I gave ever tested. I\\\'m using and overclocked AMD 5000 Black with Dual Crossfire Radeon 3870 512MB and 4GB of OCZ Reaper DDR2 800 in a Cooler Master COSMOS 1000 and a Cooler Master Power Supply 850 watts. K9A2 Platinum Motherboard enable me not to only over clock my CPU but also my RAM and GPU with their very easy to use BIOS. I...
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K9A2 Platinum Motherboard is one of the best motherboards that I gave ever tested. I\\\'m using and overclocked AMD 5000 Black with Dual Crossfire Radeon 3870 512MB and 4GB of OCZ Reaper DDR2 800 in a Cooler Master COSMOS 1000 and a Cooler Master Power Supply 850 watts. K9A2 Platinum Motherboard enable me not to only over clock my CPU but also my RAM and GPU with their very easy to use BIOS. I would recommend this motherboard to anybody who wants to achieve serious speed at a great cost. By the way I found this motherboard, but of couse through pricegrabber.com.

By davidhoops - Jan 10, 2008