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New MSI boards...upset...

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Jhoweeee

New Member
Joined
May 3, 2003
Location
San Diego
After my wonderfull KT3-Ultra ARU Raid board went bad, and upgrading to the KT4 ultra board, I noticed that my Zalman 6000 (I think) heat sink would no longer be able to be used. This is because that heatsink requires mounting holes around the CPU. I searched everywhere for an MSI or ASUS board with those holes, to no avail. I had to downgrade to the Volcano7! I LOVED that zalman fan, it was quite, and cooled to the max. Anybody know why none of the newer motherboards have those mounting holes? I'd think more would, considering it takes stress off the CPU.
 
Many newer boards don't have them because AMD removed those holes from the suggested tech specs.

Blame AMD, and then blame the mobo mfgrs for cheaping out or whatever, ignoring the enthusiast market that needs those holes.
 
InThrees said:
Many newer boards don't have them because AMD removed those holes from the suggested tech specs.

Blame AMD, and then blame the mobo mfgrs for cheaping out or whatever, ignoring the enthusiast market that needs those holes.

That's actually been changing - a LOT of manufaturers are going back to the CPU holes. I actually wrote to MSI marketing and sales about this - they did get back to me eventually and said they would 'pass it along'. I really hope they put them back - I really like MSI boards and would like to be able to get another one at some point.
 
It's silly. All of these manufacturers want good reviews from hardcore sites like [H], etc, but they really won't get them if mounting holes aren't on the board.

You'll see something like this in every review:

"While the board appears to be very stable and very overclockable, the lack of mounting holes around the socket prevent this motherboard from being considered for any serious overclocking projects."
 
As well as it should. There are ways around the lack of the 4 holes- As an example, I think even the Maze3 waterblock comes (as an option) with a kit that uses the socket lugs.

That being said, there really was no reason to take them out. Just because AMD stopped using them in the reference board (another bad decision, BTW) doesn't mean that peps don't have heatsinks that need 'em.

Bipolar - BTW - the Abit NF7-s has them in a Nforce Board (revisions 1.2 and up). The Soyo black Dragon has them in a kt400 chipset. There are quite a few others if you scope them out.
 
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