CHAINTECH - Chaintech ZNF3-150 Review

Like most current motherboards on the market, the ZNF3-150 is a feature-complete solution, boasting the following on board components: 3 ATA-133 ports; 4 SATA-150 ports with built-in RAID0, RAID1, and RAID0+1 support through the Silicon Image RAID controller; 6 USB 2.0 capable ports (2 in rear panel, and 2 onboard headers supporting 2 ports each); 3 IEEE 1394 capable ports (1 onboard header supporting 1 port, 2 built in to audio riser card); Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet; VIA Envy24PT 7.1 channel audio featuring S/PDIF optical output port; CBOX3 device supporting diagnostic LED, 1 IEEE 1394 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, audio out and MIC-IN ports, and a 6-in-1 memory card reader; and serial, parallel, and PS/2 port support.

. . . As far as the Athlon64 solutions available in terms of raw speed and overclocking potential, the ZNF3-150 shows us great value in both areas. In both stock and overclocked situations, it was one of the fastest Athlon64 boards I’ve tested to date. Couple these facts with the sheer amount of stuff included / bundled with the board, and you definitely have one killer solution.

However, this board most definitely has an Achilles heel, which I very unknowingly ran right smack into in testing. It seems that there is a very good potential for OS and BIOS related corruption, even at stock speeds, under certain circumstances. I was not able to reproduce the trigger event for this, but I did spend a lot of time pulling my hair out over this board in pure frustration. The BIOS related issues that quickly lead to OS level corruption seem more likely to occur when the board voltages and FSBs are increased. However, in the case like I ran in to with overclocking, the board magically stabilized and all was an overclocker’s dream after that. I also ran in to major issues with a USB 2.0 external hard drive attached, where the system would not boot and eventually the OS became fully unusable. However, this situation was also not repeatable.