If you're thinking about breathing new life into your Socket 754 system, the MSI K8N Neo3-F could be the perfect option. With a retail price of just $98 CDN ($78 US), the motherboard doesn't come with a lot of extras, but allows users to pair up a Socket 754 CPU with a PCI Express videocard. Standard hardware features include Gigabit LAN and 5.1-channel audio, and if you need to upgrade, three standard PCI slots are present as well as one PCI Express x1 slot.

With its small size the MSI K8N Neo3-F will fit in just about any-sized computer case, which is a good news for those of you with older systems or cases. Despite the small size, the layout of the motherboard is pretty good and I love how MSI colour coordinates and labels the positive values on the USB headers. It really does make life easier and I hope more motherboard manufacturers will pick up on this. The only thing I have to complain about is the PCI Express x16 lock; it's just too difficult to use. Anything else on the market would work better than the one employed on this board, and I don't understand why manufacturers keep returning to this design when there are better ones out there!?

The performance of the MSI K8N Neo3-F was very good for its class, and in many cases the motherboard scored almost as well as the much faster Athlon64 4000+ systems. In almost all the benchmarks it proved to be faster than any previous Socket 754 system we have tested too. Not bad for a budget machine at all. If you want to give your Socket 754 Athlon64 system a new lease of life, the MSI K8N Neo3-F motherboard could be what you're looking for.

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