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 Chaintech VNF3-250 (2004) August 09, 2004 |

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reasonable features, cheap price |
Rating: 85%
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| by: 790 ( September 01, 2004 ) |
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Experience: 1 Week - 1 Month | » Pros | |  |
-SATA raid option
-2 40pin ATA133 connections
-NForce3 w/ethernet and 5.1 sound
-small form factor
-solid construction
-8 usb2 ports
-socket 754 supports sempron and mid-range Athlon64's
-FSB Overclocking
-cheap price
| » Cons | |  |
-only 2 40pin ATA133 connections
-No CPU multiplier adjustment
-Bios upgrade needed out of the box
-piss poor English website support
-Barely any tech support
-Manual is in so many languages I didn't bother to count
-Manual is just an overview of product, containing little usefull information
| » Review | |  |
I literally followed Anands' recomendation and picked this board up for my value doom3 system, and without getting out of the scope of this review, I'll tell you all that it was good advice.
The cost was about $80.00, and I got a product fully supporting my Athlon64 3000+. I had no problem overclocking the processor 10% with this board, It has FSB options to go much higher although that will also depend on the RAM used. The board supports the Kingmax 433 just fine and I'm running it at 440 on this board with no errors per memtest86 (run for 2 hours) and prime 95 (run for 6 in all modes).
Another great thing is that since Nvidia supports 64 bit computing and this board is using the Nforce3 chipset, you'll have no problems beta testing Windows64 if you're up for it. And if you use the onboard ethernet or sound you'll save a PCI slot or 2 for the future.
Bad news; I would've given up the onboard sound for an Extra 40 pin ata133 connection. I'm not able to use two of my drives because I was so excited when I bought the board, I didn't realize that there are 2 IDE connections and not 3 like my old board had until it was to late. Don't make the same mistake I did. Lucky for me the drives were old and it didn't break my heart to loose them.
More Bad News; A bios update is needed right away to get the CPU temperature node to read properly, and enable some features like AMD's Cool and Quiet. This wouldn't be so bad if the website made since in english and if the bios was on the website, and if they gave you some instruction or utilities on how to update it. It took several hours in the forum (that I found using google) and a seperate boot disk with AWDflash on it to update the bios to a beta that was hosted...somewhere else. The onboard bios update utility that comes with the board would be nice if it worked, but it freezes the system.
Did I mention the only tech support is thru email. These problems kept me from giving any higher than 85%.
I Recomend this for someone who wants a cheap fast computer, not many drives (even if you use SATA your still limited in the # of drives as far as upgrading), and just needs 'regular' quality sound for games and windows programs -the sound chip is good, just not an audigy2.
by the way, it's 6 languages. |
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User Review Average
85%
[ 1 Review(s) ]
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"reasonable features, cheap price" by: 790 I literally followed Anands' recomendation and picked this board up for my value doom3 system, and without getting out of the scope of this review, I'...more
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