MSI Mega 865 Reserator cooling, Northbrige passive cooler?

Hi all,
Have been running my mega as a media centre for five years or so. Have been through two sets of fans which though quiet at first have got progressively noisy again, especially when starting up or working PC hard.
I want to go as fan free as possible but before I do....
Is the reserator system the only fan free system and the best for me, it is ferociously expensive but I will pay it if it really is worth it.
The Northbridge(?) also has a noisy little fan, can I do away with this and fit a passive heatsink? Could I also water cool it?
Any options for laptop style external power supplies or water cooled PSUs that will fit in the box.
Many thanks all, lookforward to your answers,
Epirb, or Barney if you prefer!

Hi Barney,
If you'd looked in the sticky topics, then these topics listed in here might be of help to you:
How to cool your Mega PC down
In particular, Emma's topic about how she fitted a Reserator 1 to her Mega 180, which essentially should be the same process as for the Mega 865. Unfortunately, her pics no longer seem to exist, but otherwise, her topic might help you.
Quote
What I need to know is if anyone has any ideas about the other chip which I am calling the North bridge. Is this the right name, I am not sure.
Yes, that will be the Northbridge chipset.

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MSI Mega 865 DVDRW Drive

Hello. Can you please tell me which DVD writer I need to buy for my MSI Mega 865. I want to add a DVD writer behind the panel and my third party Sony doesnt open the front panel. Do the MSI drives work OK. Thanks.

Hi williac10,
Though you are right in asking for a better alternate optical drive here but I think it'll be better if you ask the Mega PCs users in our Mega PCs, SFF PCs Forum .

MSI Mega 865 PRO???

Lookie lookie, the next Mega has been unveiled:
http://msices2005.vtion.com/
They're revamping the faceplate, moving the knob and buttons to the right side. Also, it includes a 7-in-1 reader, with new support for MMC cards. It looks like they're finally including a wireless-G card. Most intesting is the claim of "Home Theatre Without Windows". They use different wording on the site than for the Hi-Fi mode of the 180's and normal 865's, which implies that this machine would be able to play movies without booting Windows.
Judging from MSI Athletic Support, they'll probably shaft us with specs to its display and remote too.

i own a MSI Mega 865..and im happy with it..but i never turn the thing off...
so the Radio/CD/MP3 player...and if i waited and got the 865pro...even the DVD player on the would be of absolutely no use to me!
if this wants to be a real all-in-one HTPC...i would really need a few things :
firstly ...DVB card with BDA support.....
secondly ....the on-board graphics must be fully DX9 compliant..including the freaking drivers...and be more than 16MB onboard-VRAM...i would like DirectxVideoAccelleration, VMR9 and HardWareMotionCompenstation support ..which i belive are currently only on the radeon and nVidia FX and later cards
next we need more than just VGA and s-video....we also need DVI-in/out...and while your at it MSI..give us component too
i belive the SPDIF 5.1 in and out are an absolute must and it should stay...the more channels the better
as it stands i had to fork out a whole lot more money to get this the way i wanted it...this MSI *WAS* really a barebones HTPC....but since i finished building it im very happy with it

Replacing the MSI Mega 865 Power Supply

Has anyone attempted to replace the power supply on the MSI Mega 865? Is it ever suggested?
I am currently looking at the following (http://www.tomshardware.com/firstlook/20040720/index.html) as a possibility, but I seem to recall that there is a special connection that is necessary for the HIFI 'always on' functionality.
If you have successfully replaced the power supply, what product did you use?

Quote
Originally posted by Stu Online
the mega psu has extra connectors to supply 12v power while the pc is off, so the cd drive works in hifi mode (i think!)
Interesting, does that mean theres a possibility for modifying an existing PSU so that it also supplys 12V (i wouldnt be able to do this tho, dont know enough about this stuff )

MSI MEGA 865 not support Prescott 3.2 & higher

i have 3.2e Prescott but has vcore problem mega 865
and then see link
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/slim_pc/slm/pro_slm_cpu_support_detail.php?UID=547&kind=4
mega 865 not support 3.2e Prescott
maybe power supply & cooling problem

Have you checked your XP Eventlog, I had a problem like this also and it turned out BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) gave the problem. (and booted my PC)
I had to upgrade to BITS 2.0 and now I'm running like a charm.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b93356b1-ba43-480f-983d-eb19368f9047&displaylang=en
Also, before I assembled my PC I had a look at
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ to calculate the wattage needed.
I'm assuming the configuration in your .sig and I'm getting to 265 watts for your configuration with 3.2 prescott . (Hardly any difference with mine)
Ray

MSI Mega 865 TV-out card

I am ordering an MSI 865 Deluxe this week and will use it with my TV. Unfortunately I have been told that the MSI Mega TV-out card will not be available in our country.
Does anyone know or use other brands of PCI TV-out cards with their Mega PC?

I would also recommend a converter, here is an example of what you are looking for.
http://www.ascent.co.nz/mn-product-spec.asp?pid=108377
More reasons for this are no drivers and Macrovision will work. If you use a gforce and try using the TV out most DVD playing software will stop, this will not happen with a conveter.
The Graphics are not the quickest on the 865 but tend to do the job.

MSI Mega 865 Availability

This might sound stoopid but does anyone know if the Mega 865 barebone case is available to buy in the UK yet?
I've been looking around quite a lot of UK sites and don't seem to be able to find it anywhere. I've found it on US sites and some of them talk about "pre order".
If this is available to buy does anyone know where from?
Cheers.

It's available in Sweden at least, and has been for a while now, so I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be in the UK!
It's strange though that stores such as Ultim8pc only sells the 651 and not even the 180. Maybe they've been visiting this forum and thought better of it...
Good luck in finding one anyway!
-M

MSI mega 865 so am I screwed?

i have had my mega for about a year now and its great but for one problem.... today i was using xp for web browesing and it just died. and i went to reboot it and the system turns on like normal sans the booting part... no logo no bios no nothing. so am i screwed? is there any history of captors or other componets?
it was running a
p4 3ghz
1gb ram
ati 9600se (low fourm factor)
ati tv wonder
sata hard drive
dvd rw
so it want anything that would get super hot....

If the iTunes Store has replied to your request and told you that they cannot refund your money, then yes, I'm afraid you're out of luck as regards this purchase. To prevent this from happening again, turn off "In App purchases" in the Restrictions settings on your iPhone. You may also want to turn off the ability to install apps, to prevent purchases in case the child gets hold of your iTunes Store account information, and set the password to be required immediately. For more information, see:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4213
Regards.

MSI Mega 865 Deluxe No Display

My PC has just gone mad in the last couple of days.
After I unplugged the PC from the power cord and plug it back again on Saturday (cos I had some problems with the graphics and sound- sound and graphics suddenly went missing), it does not allow me to reset the time. Not only that, the time on the display has remained at 4:01 overnight. Once again, I thought unplugging the PC from the power might solve the problem and let me reset the time. But it's gone from bad to worse, there was absolutely nothing displayed on my PC- not the time, not the temperature, nothing whatsoever.
Does any one have similar problems and what's the way to get around it?
My PC is only 2 weeks old and it never seemed to work properly.

What I meant by the Graphics missing is that there were no display on my monitor at all when I was half way playing a game- so does the sound in certain occassions. With the sound problem, rebooting can help to solve the problem but not all the time.
Now, the main problem is that the actual display (where it shows the temperature, clock, etc.) on the machine is completely blank. The machine doesn't seem to be able to detect the on-board sound card either.
My configurations are as follow:
O/S: Windows XP1 Build 2600
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 3.20G-C (800Mhz FSB)
DVD: LG GSA-4120B 12X +/- Dual Layer DVD Burner OEM
Hard drive: Western Digital 160G 7200RPM SATA-150 (8MB buffer)
RAM: 1GB KIT DDR PC3200 400Mhz Kingston
Video card: MSI 256MB FX5500-TD
I somehow wonder if it has anything to do with the muck up that the Live Update did with my BIOS. Apparently, my PC can't detect my HDD after I used the MSI Live Update to update my BIOS and it took some time to get it back to shape.

Mega 865 Fan airflow

Sorry for my 3rd post in 2 days but i have to improve my Mega 865!! Does anyone knows how much is the fans air flow and noise (numbers) of my mega 865?

look in the Cooling sticky, and read the Project Silent But Deadly thread for suggestions on replacing the fans

SATA Hard Drive no longer recognized by Mega 865

I recently put together an MSI Mega 865 barebone system with the following specifications:
Processor: Intel 3.2c Ghz (Northwood core)
Hard Drive: Western Digital SATA 10kRPM Raptor
Memory: 1 GB (2 x 512MB) Kingston 3200 (400Mhz)
DVD Player: Plextor 8X DVD RW
Video Card: HIS Excalibure 9800Pro 128 MB
OS: WinXP
Finally got everything up and running, and then I went to boot up, and the system can no longer find the SATA harddrive. In fact, it's not even an option in the BIOS now.
My question is the following:
Would the SATA be available all of the time, or only if a SATA enabled harddrive was recognized?
When the system is first powered on by plugging the power cord into the wall, the hard drive makes a small amount of noise, as if it's spinning a bit. When the computer starts up, there is no noise at all, although the hard drive does get warm (which makes me think there is power to the unit).
I tried the 2nd power supply (old IDE) for the hard drive, but that provided that same results as the SATA power supply.
There were some inconsistencies with my mega 865 prior to this. First, the HIFI would randomly lock up, and the only way to get it back was to unplug the computer from the wall. 2nd, it had lost communication on the serial port (why, I don't know). 3rd, and final, it doesn't seem to recognize my hard drive (or my hard drive is ruined).
Can someone help me out here, I'm not sure whether to return my HardDrive, my MSI Mega 865, or both.

The system worked for 4 days or so. One day, I started it up, and it couldn't boot because it couldn't detect the SATA drive. When this happened I decided to flash it to the the latest BIOS, but even this did not help.
The unit had problems before, it would lock up on initial power up, the HIFI/CD/DVD would not respond (when the computer was not on of course). I would have to plug and unplug the unit 3 or 4 times before it would power on and not lock up.
I contacted MSI support, and explained my problems. They told me to return the unit to the reseller. I'm not sure if the problem was the unit, the hard drive, or both, so I went ahead and returned the HD and the MSI unit. It'll be another 2 weeks or so now before I get my computer up and running. :(

Tvanywhere and Mega 865, install MSIPVS fails ..

Was unable to find a local source for the add in tv card for my MSI MEGA 865 and decided to use the TV anywhere card. I was also interested in the NTSC and PAL support. Everything went well until i tried to install the MSIPVS Software. The drivers installed properly in step one, but in step 2 installing the MSIPVS software i received a "Setup failed to run installation: The remote procedure call failed". I uninstalled the MEDIA Center Deluxe III program and removed all software except INCD. I am running windows XP, 512 mb memory, 3ghz intel processor. I removed the software and hardware and tried to reinstall several times, it made no difference and it failed in the same place.

see threads in the Mega PC forum
Windows XP has installed itself to the E: or F: drive because the card reader has taken C: and D: and in this case Intervideo software won't install correctly
you're gonna have to disable the built in card reader (either unplug from inside, or disable USB controller in BIOS) format your hdd and reinstall windows to C: partition - not sure if Repair would fix it
this happened to me the first time i built my mega 651 and it was SO frustrating, especially as everything else worked fine

Mega 865

I have
MSI Mega 865
P4 2.8 GHz (800MHz)
Apacer 256 MB RAM (400HMz)
ATI Radeon 9550
MSI Mega TV Tuner Card
WD 160GB SATA
WinXP (SP1) and Media Center Deluxe III
everything working properly, but:
if I got change TV chanel in Media Center - freeze whole system,
and
I have disabled background music, but radio playing everytime

Enter Audio Mixer and mute the radio input. Everytime you start MSI Radio or MCIII, this input will be unmuted and, when you close the app, the input should be muted again.

Help with MEGA 865 PC

Hi, this is my problem:
I have a Msi Mega 865 Deluxe barebone pc , i also have a Tv tuner card for mega pc ( TV @nyware ) . I have lost the cable that connects the front panel LCD remote control to the Tv tuner card remote input. I need to build a new cable but i don't know the correct position of the pin. I see on the front panel LCD that the first o three pin is numebered PIN1 and the last PIN3 . Also, on the Tv tuner card the pin ( of the remote control input connector ) is numbered from PIN1 to PIN3. The Pin1 on the LCD correspond on the Pin1 on the TV card ? Pin2 -> Pin2 and Pin3 -> Pin3? or the configuration is different?
Please help me!!!
Thancks !!

please help me, i have a mega pc 865 and i lost the cable from the front panel lcd to tv pci card , i also have lost the adapter of the tv tuner card. If you hava mega pc 865 with tv tuner card post the correct pin configuration , i don't know if the front pin1 correspond to the tv tuner card pin 1 and so... . I post a jpg to explain my problem.

Mega 865 Issues

I'm having a couple of issues with the Mega 865-based PC that I just built and I'm hoping some people here can answer a couple of my questions. If interested, system specs are at the bottom.
1. I can not get MSI's Media Center III to run in any stable form. Typically after I install it and reboot I will try to start the program and it will crash before anything is even displayed on the screen. Furthermore, this freezes the display on the front of the computer itself and the only way I've found to reset this is to shut the computer down and unplug it for a little while. This will happen regardless of how many times I re-install the program.
2. When I start the computer after having not used it for a while it will make it as far as loading the user login screen in Windows XP and then restart. After trying to start it normally or in safe mode enough times it will finally load Windows propperly and continue to work well. I can even shut it off, unplug it, and turn it back on without any problems. This only happens if it's been sitting off for an extended period of time. (several hours)
Other than these two issues the system has worked flawlessly for me. Hi-Fi mode works well and once it starts the system is stable under load dispite fairly hight CPU temperatures. If anyone has any ideas on how I might be able to get around these problems please let me know and thanks in advance.
- Ed Andocs, [email protected]
MSI Mega 865
Pentium 4 Northwood, 3ghz
1gb Corsair ValueRam
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Samsung 7.2k RPM 160gb HDD
MSI CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive 52x24x52x16

Had the same issue with mine when I started. The crash of the MMCIII is due to some writing issue of the program to the LCD screen and once the screen is upset then you need to unplug the PC to clear it. I started getting these issues after I used live update from the web, I think I downloaded a bad version of PCalert. Anyway in the long run I formated and only used the versions on the CD and it all worked fine. Oh and if your wondering about the performance of MMCIII, it doesn't get better.

MSI Mega 865 Reserator cooling, Northbrige passive cooler?

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