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Introduction

Chaintech is a lesser-known brand, one that is overlooked and/or cast aside when purchasing motherboards. With their new Zenith series, Chaintech is attempting to make their products noticed by the market.

The Chaintech 7NJS Ultra Zenith is a motherboard based on nVidia's nForce 2 Ultra 400 chipset, which is the newest revision designed for 400 FSB operation. However, the motherboard we are reviewing today has more than just a chipset upgrade. Compared to the previous Zenith board, there are other differences to the package.

Just take a look at the box (it's double the size of practically every other motherboard box around)!

With motherboard speeds running within 1-3% of each other for any particular chipset, is there any reason for you to purchase this motherboard over any other? Hopefully by the end of this review you will be able to come to a better conclusion.

Below is a table that summarizes the differences between this revision of the Zenith and a few other motherboards.

1. 	Chaintech 7NJS Ultra	Chaintech 7NJS	Asus A7N8X Deluxe 2.0	EpoX 8RDA3+
   Chipset	nForce2 Ultra	nForce2	nForce2 Ultra	nForce2 Ultra
   USB (Back panel/total)	2/6	2/6	4/6	4/6
   Audio	CMedia 8738	CMedia 8738	Realtek ALC650	C-Media CMI9739A
   RAID/SATA	Promise PDC20376	Promise PDC20376	Silicon Image Sil 3112A	Silicon Image Sil3112A
   LAN	1x 10/100 nVidia	1x 10/100 nVidia	1x nVidia 1x 3Com	2x Realtek
   Front bay device	2x USB, CF/MS/SD/SM reader, 1x Firewire, Headphone/Microphone, Infra-red	4x USB, 1x Firewire, Headphone/microphone, Infra red	None	None