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The BIOS In Detail

Before we pop into the BIOS there are several useful things that Chaintech has on the main boot screen that no one else has (but should) including the actual processor clockspeed instead of the just the model number of processor. Memory speed and timings are also displayed which is handy when weird dividers and high FSB speeds come into play. The final thing is a POST code displayed right to the right of the screen to conveniently help with troubleshooting. While the POST code on boot screen is very clever, there is no physical LED set on the board itself which kind of makes this feature a bit on the questionable side since this is probably most helpful when the board is not POSTing. In any case all three of these features are very nice and other manufacturers should take note of it.

Chaintech goes with a standard AwardBIOS that should look familiar to pretty much all people who've poked around inside the BIOS before.

The Standard CMOS Features have all the drive channels listed when it is not in RAID mode. Channel 0 and 1 are regular IDE connectors while 2-5 are the SATA connectors.

Lots of stuff to look at in Advanced BIOS but probably not too much that needs to be changed. Boot device priority will be the main one that is set here. The option toggle the POST Code display is at the very bottom.

Advanced Chipset Features has some HT settings available to play around with. I would prefer the HT Frequency setting to be listed under the Frequency/Voltage Control section rather than here. There are a couple other miscellaneous settings that probably do not need to be set. The paranoid may want to enable Flash BIOS protection but that's about it.

Integrated Peripherals is organized with three subsections, IDE Function Setup, Onboard Device and SuperIO Device. IDE Function setup has the settings for enabling/disabling RAID. Like with other nForce boards, the specific drives to be used in RAID arrays can be set individually. Other options include DMA settings which probably do not need to be touched unless you own an older drive that is a bit wonky.

Under Onboard Device are USB options settings and for those adding in a fancy soundcard the onboard AC97 audio can be disabled here.

SuperIO Device is not very interesting. The legacy ports and their associated interrupts can be changed around here or disabled completely.

Power Management Setup has options for how the computer hibernates. This is not something I use so I'll refrain from making comments here.

PnP/PCI Configurations is much like the menu found on pretty much any other motherboard. The PCI Display gets priority and most users may want to go ahead and change that to PCIEx.

PC Health has voltages, temperatures and fan speeds listed. It is curious that Chaintech chooses not to list the fan speed for the MCP cooler. A shutdown temperature can be specified with the options being, 60, 65 and 70C. There are no options to vary the fan speed with regards to the temperature so those looking for a near silent PC when it is not in use may want to keep this in mind.

Frequency/Voltage Control is where the action is at. CPU Frequency/LDT Bus/FSB or whatever the preferred term is this week is front and center. Frequencies of 200-400 Mhz are selectable through a list. Memory options save for the voltage is accessed through its own submenu.

The memory timing options are a bit more on the simplistic side and most of the other PCIe 939 boards that we have taken a look at are more fleshed out on this front save for Gigabyte's value oriented GA-K8VT890-9 . The Ultra Zenith would have benefited from more dividers and a few more timing options and hopefully Chaintech will have this done for a future BIOS update. Processor voltage is adjustable to a fairly high 1.7V. Unlike the processor voltage however, DIMM and chipset voltage are on the more conservative side.