Chaintech
VNF3-250 NF3-250 Mainboard Preview (1) Gortok 8 May 2004
Chaintech has long been known for building reliable enthusiast motherboards
and video cards. Though I've never owned one, I've read many reviews and many
forums and never heard anyone say anything bad about their products. This is one
of the reasons I decided to try them out on their newest Socket 754 board. The
very latest is their "value" version of NVidia's latest single chip solution,
the NForce3-250. This is not the NF3-250Gb. The Gb version incorporates a
Gigabit Lan and hardware firewall.
Chaintech has, in the past, packed a nice bunch of "extras" in their MB
boxes. These range anywhere from color coordinated rounded cables, card
readers, SATA power adapters, etc, to software packages worthy of honorable
mention...Today, we look at a new version of accessories also.
This
board has also been "chained" to never-ending stress testing of Distributed
Folding for Team OCW. Some of the photos taken will while the machine is being
used....FOLD ON!
The Package
The contents: The motherboard, of course, Audio riser card (CNR slot),
manual, 2 SATA cables, dual SATA power adapter-connector cord, 1x80-pin dual
connector IDE cable, 1x FDD cable, 2xCDs for drivers and utilities and an IO
sheild plate.
Form Factor
ATX Form Factor 305mm x 220mm
CPU
Supports the new generation of AMD Socket754
Athlon 64 CPU
Processor interface via 6.4GB/s Hyper
Transport bus
Chipset
NVIDIA nForce3 250
Main Memory
Three 184-pin DDR DIMMs up to 2GB
Supports DDR266/333/400 modules
Expansion Slots
One AGP slot for both 4X/8X AGP
Five 32-Bit PCI slots (v2.2 compatible)
One CMR(Chaintech Mulmedia Riser) for
Chaintech Multimedia Card (CMC5.1)
Audio Subsystem
With external high quality 5.1-Channel AC'97
Codec
Complete software driver supports for
Windows OS
Support S/PDIF out
Video Subsystem
4X/8X AGP
UltraDMA IDE Ports
Build-in nForce3 250 supports 2
ATA66/100/133 IDE ports
FDD
One FDD connector supports up to 2.88MB
Embedded USB Controller
Build-in nForce3 250 supports total 6 USB2.0
ports with High-Speed Device@480 Mb/s Transfer Rate
Embedded system monitoring
2 temperature sensing for CPU and system
3 Fan speed monitoring (CPU, system and
Chipset)
Boot-Block Flash ROM
Award system BIOS supports PnP, APM, DMI,
ACPI, & Multi-device booting features
Software
Driver CD
Value Pack 2004
Other Feature
Rear panel I/O ports
One PS2 Mouse and Keyboard port
Four USB ports and one RJ45 connector
Two 9-pin D-Sub male Serial ports
One 25-pin D-Sub female Parallel port
Audio I/O jacks (Line-in, Line-out and Mic-in)
On-board Ethernet
On-board LAN controller RTL8100C supports
10/100Mb Fast Ethernet
On-board SATA RAID Controller
Build-in nForce3 250 supports 2 Serial ATA
devices for the highest data transfer rates (1.5Gbps burst) with RAID 0/1
solution
On-board VIA VT6306 IEEE1394 Host Controller
On-board VIA VT6306 IEEE1394 Host Controller
supports 3 IEEE1394 ports with Serial bus data rates of 100, 200 and 400Mbps.
IEEE P1394a compliant and IEEE Std.
1394-1995
On board connector for external device
Four 3x1 pin fan connectors
5x2 pin USB connector for additional 2 USB
ports
3x1 pin wake on LAN connector with housing
3x1 pin wake on Modem connector with housing
Two 4x1 pin CD-in connectors with housing on
CMC5.1
