The MSI K8NGM2-FID has been a good purchase. I have been running Windows XP from one IDE hard drive and just installed Suse 10.1 on a SATA hard drive. The motherboard has had no issues but I have not tried all the features yet. It has so many I wonder if I ever would.
My older 20 pin power supply connector powered the MB fine. No adapter needed.
Expecting to reload XP as needed in the future and a newbie to Linux, I wanted to make the reloading of an OS to be as painless as possible but could not find information that convinced me that would be possible. I finally came to the conclusion since the XP was already loaded on the IDE HD, I made the SATA HD the BIOS boot preference and let Suse do her thing.
I did adjust the partitions so data could be stored away from the operating system partitions. Also adjusting the BootLoader a little so the SATA HD came first in priority.
Adding some extra software at install messed with my network connection. There was a "DHCP client is already running on et h0" error while trying to test the internet connection. Then I only updated the security critical issues during install.
So far I feel as confused and bewildered as a new born.

3BTech.com was selling this board, with Sempron3000+ CPU/Fan for $89 delivered, so I grabbed one, 6/10/2007. What a deal!

I had 768 Mb of PC3200 DDR RAM. on hand, to install.

Mepis 64 bit version 6.5 on the LiveCDrom installed in 9 minutes! I selected the second option, nVidia, as the "GeForce 6150" is onboard, with both VGA and DVI connectors.

It came up on my Sceptre X9 Naga 19" LCD at 1280X1024 resolution, using 64 Mb of the DDR RAM.

No game port included onboard, though it is an available optional backplane connector. Available where, I know not. Lucky me, I saved up some of these cables and things from back when PcChips and ECS boards included them. Same, with the SP/DIF connector.

RCA jacks for TV out, and S-video plus 7.1 audio are extras not expected.

With Linux, the included driver and manual disc were of little purpose, except to bundle with the useless multi-lingual manual, and tape into the tower bottom.

I considered this a fine deal, and it has run non-stop for ten days. Use a new PSU, as it requires the 24 pin power connector plus, the P4 plug.

Quad onboard SATA connectors and the nVidia chip is there to manage a Software Raid. Funny, included is only a single power SATA adapter, plus, one SATA data cable.