Chaintech 7NJS nForce2 Mainboard Review (9)
Overclocker 4 Nov 2002

In our tests, the overall performance of this board is above average compared to the KT400 boards we have tested so far. In fact, it is been proven that running in SYNC DDR266 is faster than running ASYNC DDR333. If that is so, it is likely we need to run the CPU at 166 or 200Mhz to take full advantage of the ram. In the shootout between the KT400s and the two nForce2 boards, we can see the the Chaintech 7NJS does perform pretty well above the rest. It is exceptionally stable when it is run in Dual DDR400 mode in our overclocking tests at 200Mhz FSB too. WHether the slighty higher fsb at 134.6 brought abt the performance advantage, I will let you guys decide that for yourself.

Feature wise, this board has the necessary features supporting Dual Channel DDR 400/333/266 SDRAM up to 3GB, AGP 8X, CMedia 8738 6 Channel Audio, Promise PDC20376 Serial ATA RAID controller, 6 x USB 2.0 Ports, Onboard LAN, SPDIF, IEEE1394, CBox2 (DigiDoc, IEEE1394, USB2.0, Audio in/out). It comes bundled with CBox2 (for external USB, digidoc), SPDIF brackets, 60cm long rounded cables, SATA cables. A 1394 ACR card is also provided. All these accessories comes bundled "free" with the package. On top of that, this board features very interesting overclocking features like adjustable vcore, vdimm, vagp, agp selectable or fixed at 66 (see gallery for more). The Digidoc is also useful to "diagnose" problems.

As an overall package is an important leap for Chaintech. This package is very complete with all the things you would need. There is no need to hunt around for optical fibre. e.g. A case badge is even provided!! Well, that is what a call a package, everything all in. The only thing that was left out probably to reduce the overall costs is the dual LAN and Dolby audio. The Promise chipset only support one channel of IDE RAID 0/1 or 2 SATA raid ports.

Retail price : USD 188
* pricing based on pricewatch.com and are subjected to changes without notice

Discuss

Below, we list down some pros and cons of this board :

Pros:

• FSB (1mhz), Vcore, Vdimm, Vagp voltages adjustable
• USB 2.0, AGP 8x, 1394
• SerialATA
• Rounded Cables provided
• DigiDoc

Cons:

• No Dual LAN
• Single Channel RAID
• No SoundStorm

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.

Highly Recommended

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