Some of the Magic v3 series had the occasional problem of overheating with certain models of ps2's. But it is a great chip no question.
But I think the magic 4.1 came out earlier this month to coincide with the messiah 2 Pro 1.30 (I think). Both chips are great in their own right, magic is the better opinion in terms of price effectiveness, but the new messiah has slightly better functionality.
You can boot dvdr with a flip lid, but you need to use the dvd magic swap disk. That's the pain with the flip lid, that and the noise. The only thing I'm not sure about is compatibility with the new ps2 v8 models.