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11.96 in.(L) x 9.61 in.(W); ATX
4 DIMMs w/ DDR2 1066+ up to 8GB
2 PCI-E 16X (Support 8X+8X in CrossFire); 1 PCI-E X1; 2 PCI
Realtek 7.1 CH HD audio
Gb LAN; RAID(0, 1, 0+1); SATA2; ATA133
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Technical Details
- Bulk/Retail - Retail- Form Factor - ATX
- Pin Count - Socket AM2+
- Chipset
- - AMD 790X (AMD RD780) & ATI SB600
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By M. Carpenter
First, I received this motherboard a day sooner than the soonest date in the delivery window and in good shape! The purchasing process was seamless and the service was excellent.
As for building my system around the MSI K9A2, my goal was to replace a relatively new but dead motherboard with something inexpensive. So price was a major factor in my decision to go with an AMD-based board. At the same time, I did note the K9A2's support for 4 SATA drives, 8 GB of RAM, and so on. I decided to go with an AMD Athlon X2 dual-core CPU only after I ordered the motherboard. The idea of two cores was appealing and the processor was also relatively inexpensive. Keeping with my money-pinching approach, I also ordered the MSI nVidia GeForce 8400GS PCI-Express video card because it's inexpensive and reviews well; note the K9A2 does not have integrated video on it, so a separate video card is needed.
I planned to reuse as much as possible from the system I already had. For those of you planning to do the same, I note that the re-usable hardware included a mix of IDE and SATA drives, a CD-ROM drive, and a power supply. But there are some considerations I failed to account for until after the fact. First, the memory on the dead mobo was incompatible with the K9A2, so I had to order some DDR2 memory (a 2 GB Corsair DDR2 dekstop memory stick). Second, the K9A2 has only a single IDE interface. So, if you have more than two IDE drives as I did, you're not going to be able to use them all without an additional IDE controller card.
Unfortunately, I ran into a little trouble getting everything going and my system looks like a science project for the time being. To make a long story short, the system would reboot any time the CD-ROM spun up in the CD-ROM drive so I could not boot from or otherwise read from a CD-ROM. After a process of elimination that included purchasing a new SATA DVD burner (thus alleviating my problem of having more IDE drives than IDE interfaces), ripping everything out of the case and re-assembling on a bench, and raising the ire of my spouse, I concluded that the re-used power supply unit wasn't hacking the new system's energy demands. In fact, the mobo manual recommends a 350-Watt supply, so consider re-use of your old PS.
Anyway, I ordered a 400 Watt Diablotek DA Series power supply. Again, inexpensive component with good reviews. I plugged the supply in and - viola! - the K9A2 works like a charm and the CD boot/read issue gone.
All that's left to do is to re-assemble the science project into the case. Assuming nothing is damaged when I
eventually put things back together, it'll be a sweet system, Had I noted _all_ the details regarding the mobo requirements, I would've had the system built in a straight shot! :-)
By Mark L. Love
I would buy this board again worked perfect. The only thing to watch out for is the SLI bridge does not come with the motherboard and SLI slots are pretty far apart. My SLI bridge that came with my other MSI board was too short. So I need to find a larger bridge one should have come with board
By A. DANILOFF (USA)
DISCLAIMER: I'm not a brain dead gaming addict nor MS Windows slave. So, people from this category please walk on by. I'm not going to brag about how your "beloved" MS OS or whatever game flies or rather gloriously smokes on this board.
I purchased a couple of these boards to build a cheap High Availability Linux Cluster without breaking the bank and to reliably run my Web, Mail, MySQL, SVN and other server applications in 24x7 operation mode.
The set of requirements was to find a general purpose motherboard which will sustain a high I/O throughput with good reliable componentry, and with minimum to none set of unnecessary features like EEE1394 / FireWire, Optical SPDIF outs, IEEE1394 ports and so on.
MSI K9A2 CF-F V2 has perfectly met these requirements. The only two wasted features were sound capability of ALC888 chipset and CrossFire capability of 790X main board chipset. Which is nothing compare to what would be wasted, had I chosen a different, more expensive board.
MSI built this board with long life solid capacitors which prior were used mainly on the server grade boards. Solid capacitors can outlast any conventional electrolytic capacitors by ten fold, which is very important for long term reliability of servers and HA clusters.
K9A2 CF-F V2 board supports up to 8GB of DDR2 533/667/800/1066 memory that is more than enough to have in every single node of the HA cluster or in light to medium duty general server.
The only noticeable drawbacks of this board were its el'cheapo aluminum heat sinks with that goofy and useless heat tape. The major cause of electronic componentry failure in almost 65% of the cases is insufficient heat transfer. So, I had to remove all the heat sinks, lap them, then polish, and then re-install them using an excellent Arctic Silver-5 heat sink paste.
I have my own well developed procedure how to drastically increase thermal conductance of any heat sink. On average 11 Centigrade temperature drop of the heat sink protected components was achieved in this case. I have to praise this board BIOS flexibility and intelligence. Due to the space limitations, I had to install Promise SuperTrak EX8350 Raid controllers in the first PCI-Ex16 slot and nVidia 7200 video cards in the second PCI-Ex16 (practically Ex8) slot on all these boards. K9A2 CF-F V2 handled this unusual arrangement without a hitch. While comparable and more expensive ASUS motherboard failed to recognize either Raid controller or video card, didn't post, and just produced some error code in the series of beeps.
So far, all five initial cluster nodes I built using this board are functioning admirably as they should. The best thing, that by choosing this inexpensive MSI K9A2 CF-F V2 board I did not exceed $1,050 price tag per each cluster node loaded with 8 x 0.5TB SATA hard drives, 8GB of RAM, EX8350 Raid controller, 9600 X4 Phenom CPU, e.t.c. Had I chosen a different mother board I would have spent at least $100 more with questionable hardware compatibility and potentially other problems as well.
In short, MSI K9A2 CF-F V2 is an excellent board to build a server or HA cluster to run your business or applications. Again, I don't give a damn about it's MS Windows or gaming capabilities - please see my disclaimer.
By Roger K. Garcia (venezuela)
well this is a excellent MOBO, you can use the lastest AMD CPU Phenom AM2+, the only cons, is that you need to buy a graphic card because don't have internal graphics.
By Clemente Perez (San Felipe, Venezuela)
Esta tarjeta es excelente, lo unico es que no trae video integrado y hay que comprarle una tarjeta de video a juro para ponerla a funcionar, pero eso es lo de menos.
Puedes tener 2 tarjets de video a la vez y OC para sumarlas y el rendimiento es excelente.
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