Overclocker Cafe - Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith VE

Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith VE

What you get:

Part of the cost savings is the cutting back on extras packed with the VNF4 Ultra. While we do have the requisite manual and driver CD, there is only a single SATA drive cable, one IDE, one FDD cable as well as one SATA power cable adapter. The other disc included with the package is Chaintech Bonus CD.

Also part of the extras, they have included a small package of thermal paste, which I have yet to find in any other motherboard packages. While the cost of this is inconsequential, it shows that Chaintech does try to take care of the end user.

Board Layout

The VNF4 is not a micro ATX board, but neither can it be labeled a full ATX either. While the length of the motherboard is equivalent to ATX standards, Chaintech has narrowed the width considerably from their other boards resulting in the VNF4 Ultra's layout.

The most noticeable is the location of the memory DIMMs. Traditional ATX boards have them placed to the side of the CPU socket, but here they are positioned above it at the top of the board.

While this will save room in width, it poses a few small problems during installation, as does the position of the 24-pin and 4-pin ATX connectors. These are located between the CPU socket and the rear I/O ports.

Due to the positioning of these two connectors, as well in relation to the DIMM slots, the main ATX power cable will wind up being positioned above the heatsink. The 4-pin cable can be routed above the memory slot and out of the way if your power supply’s cable is long enough. We’ll be sure to check that out in more detail during the installation.

Also surrounding the socket, are eight large capacitors.

These don’t interfere in any way with the stock heatsink for the 939 Athlon, a larger more aggressive heatsink may pose problems and is something that you should be aware of when considering an alternative cooling solution.

The two IDE connections are placed at the front edge of the board, just to the side of the socket.

Below them are the four SATA connections. While quite a few boards these days are sporting more than four SATA connections, for the average user four is more than enough.

Taking a spin around the board, we have the Vitesse VSC8201 chip which will be handling the on board GB LAN. Next is the I/O controller chip from ITE.

And finally, we have a shot of the Phoenix BIOS.

The nForce4 chipset is adorned with a nice large active cooling sink labeled with Chaintech’s logo.

While I do like having an active sink on the chipset, the design of the motherboard will pose problems with the location of the sink and the PCI-Express slot. The heatsink is located just above and behind the PCI-Express x16 slot. The closeness of the two will make installation of the VGA card problematic for a few of the larger cards that we’ll discuss further during the installation of the system.

The rear I/O panel is a pretty standard layout. We have the parallel port above two serial ports, with four USB connections and the onboard LAN.

The inclusion of onboard sound these days is pretty much a given, but even with Chaintech’s design for the board to be an affordable cost effective solution, they included 7.1 channel sound instead of 3.1 or even 5.1.

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