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Silly MSI PM8M3-V H Build

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First post, by Evert

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So, as some of you may know, I recently acquired an EPoX EP-3BXA and EP-3VBM+ board, as well as an MSI PM8M3-V H Rev 4 motherboard. I must say, it's quite an interesting motherboard: it's an Intel 775 board with a VIA P4M800CE chipset, AGP 4X/8X, 3 PCI slots and an onboard VIA VT8237R SATA RAID controller. For those interested, here's a a photo I got on the internet of the board:

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The other night I was reading some reviews of the new AMD R9 Fury X and I couldn't help but take out my Gigabyte-built Rage 128 Pro. This got me thinking: what's the fastest you could make one of these run. Now, it just so happens that you can actually run this card on this board without any problems. I've got an old AOpen 350W (Model #: Z350-08F) power supply with the following specs:

3.3V: 18A
5V: 12A
12V1: 8A
12V2: 13A
+5Vsb: 2.5A
-12V: 0.3A

3.3V + 5V = 120W Max and 12V1 + 12V2 = 252W Max

This power supply was given to me, and I've found it to be mostly useless for most of my retro builds (because of the weak 5V line). Could I power the following system with it:

- Pentium D 950 3.4GHz (Yes, it does run on this board)
- Cooler Master Hyper TX3 Evo Cooler
- 2Gb (2x1Gb) Corsair ValueRAM DDR400
- 32Mb Gigabyte Rage 128 Pro
- 160Gb Western Digital SATA2 Drive (Jumper set to SATA1 mode)
- Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS / ASUS Xonar DG

I will probably run Windows XP SP2/SP3 on this system.

Last edited by Evert on 2015-07-06, 09:37. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 1 of 7, by ODwilly

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That is a really weak 12v rail for a Pentium D 950. Using an online calculator 13 amps on the 12v equals around 150 watts. Seeing as how the video card is not a huge power sucker you should be fine, but I would be hesitant and put a less power hungry 775 chip in it myself. Prime 95 it for a few hours and if it doesnt explode you should be ok!

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 2 of 7, by Evert

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I was reading this article by SPCR and their tests showed that a Pentium D 950 + Radeon X1950 drew a maximum of 298W from the wall during their PCMark05 benchmark. This could actually work... But long-term wise I do agree that you'd want a power supply that delivers at least 300W-350W on the 12V line(s).

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Reply 3 of 7, by Evert

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So, I wanted to flash the board to the latest BIOS so that I can see if the Pentium D 950 works and as luck would have it something went wrong and the BIOS got corrupted. Worst of all the BIOS bootlock is also corrupted (I tried re flashing it using a floppy drive). For my EPoX EP-3VBM+ project I bought an EPROM programmer and I could theoretically use that to reflash the BIOS to either the version it originally was or to the new version. The problem is that MSI were kind enough to solder the BIOS chip on the board. Here's what I can do:

1. Buy a couple of new EPROMs off of eBay, program them and solder the new chip into the board
2. Solder a PLC socket into the board so that I can easily replace the BIOS chip.
3. Throw it away and count my losses.

It's a pretty interesting board, so I don't really want to do number 3, but I paid $60 for the 4 boards I got and I don't want to spend a fortune getting it fixed either.

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Reply 4 of 7, by Skyscraper

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Evert wrote:
So, I wanted to flash the board to the latest BIOS so that I can see if the Pentium D 950 works and as luck would have it someth […]
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So, I wanted to flash the board to the latest BIOS so that I can see if the Pentium D 950 works and as luck would have it something went wrong and the BIOS got corrupted. Worst of all the BIOS bootlock is also corrupted (I tried re flashing it using a floppy drive). For my EPoX EP-3VBM+ project I bought an EPROM programmer and I could theoretically use that to reflash the BIOS to either the version it originally was or to the new version. The problem is that MSI were kind enough to solder the BIOS chip on the board. Here's what I can do:

1. Buy a couple of new EPROMs off of eBay, program them and solder the new chip into the board
2. Solder a PLC socket into the board so that I can easily replace the BIOS chip.
3. Throw it away and count my losses.

It's a pretty interesting board, so I don't really want to do number 3, but I paid $60 for the 4 boards I got and I don't want to spend a fortune getting it fixed either.

I would opt for number 2 but I would not be in a hurry... 😉

Im pretty sure the CPU gets power from both 12V1 and 12V2 so I think the PSU should work as long as its in decent condition. If you are not overclocking you should even be able to add some more fancy video card like a GeForce4 Ti 4600 or even a Geforce 6800GT with the latter beeing close to the limit when it comes to power.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 5 of 7, by Evert

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After reading some guides, like this one, I am feeling more optimistic that I can fix it. Fortunately the you can get 5 new chips for very little money. It's strange how they opted for such a cheap method. I'll upgrade the PSU to at least 450W, since I do like having some overhead, as soon as I find a cheap replacement.

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