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.
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| 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 |