Overclocker Cafe - Chaintech Zenith VE V915P Mainboard

Chaintech Zenith VE V915P Mainboard

Manufacturer: Chaintech
Supplied by: Chaintech
Estimated Price: ~$115.00

by Brian Tiller (11/5/2004)

Introduction

Upgrades can be very costly anytime Intel or AMD decide to change the CPU socket or the chipset. The upgrade to an LGA775 socket board is no exception. Changing over from AGP to PCI-Express coupled with support for the new DDR2, this upgrade just got even more costly. Fortunately, the i915 based boards will save you the cost of needing to go to the DDR2 standard, and today Chaintech is going to get run through the ringer here at the basement of the Penthouse Labs to see if their Zenith VE V915P motherboard can handle the rodeo burger.

Before we get into the good stuff, let's go over the specifications for the board so we've got an idea what we're looking at.

Specifications:

Northbridge: Intel 915 Grantsdale
Southbridge: Intel ICH6
Socket Type: LGA775 P4 Prescott Socket T
Marvell MV8001 Gb LAN Controller
Realtek ALC880 Onboard Audio Controller
Support for Dual Channel DDR400 (up to 4GB capacity)
(1)PCI-Express x16
(2)PCI-Express x1
(3)PCI slots
Winbond W83627THF I/O Controller
Support for 8 USB 2.0 ports
(1) ATA channel supports 2 IDE drives
(4) SATA channels
Phoenix Award BIOS
Hardware Monitor

One thing to take notice of is the lack of support for RAID configurations either on the SATA or IDE channels.

What you get:

Besides the motherboard, our Chaintech Zenith VE V915P came with two SATA cables, one IDE and floppy cable and a SATA power adapter cable.

We also have the installation manual, rear I/O plate, driver CD and a Value Pack CD containing Norton 2004, Adobe Photo Album, and Image It just to name a few. One thing that surprised me was the inclusion of a tube of thermal grease. It's rare to see this included with a motherboard package, especially one targeted at the budget market.