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Conclusion

The Chaintech 7NJS Ultra Zenith is a very impressive board, as it offers some of the most complete packages right out of the box. In terms of hardware bundles, there is no equal (where else can you find a remote control and flash card reader in the same box?)

However, as described earlier, many of the extras are little more than gimmicks, although with some better driver support from Chaintech, I would probably buy this in a heartbeat.

When it comes down to it, the final determinant is the price. At the time of writing, the Zenith board costs $157 on Pricegrabber, which is a fairly high price considering some other nForce2 boards cost you half of that. The only other motherboards that cost this much is the DFI LAN Party II and the Gigabyte 7NNXP. However, if you value the remote control and the flash card reader, then the motherboard is actually a pretty decent deal.

For the enthusiast who is out to overclock their system to the maximum, the lack of a PCI lock is a sure deterrent (although there is an AGP lock available). Without have done a head to head overclocking test against the Asus nForce2 Deluxe with the same 1800+ T-bred, it is hard to say which is the better board. As it stands, the Zenith has a substantial number of overclocking options for the tweaker, but the target market will definitely be the home entertainment market (people like me are sorely tempted by this motherboard).