Chaintech Zenith ZNF3-250

[DR]

There's nothing much intrinsically wrong with the Zenith ZNF3-250. Great audio. FireWire, external boxes and a mouth-watering bundle are definite plusses. We, however, would recommend a revision B board with more of the nForce3 250's on-chip goodness, possibly a Gb version with integrated firewall, and an updated BIOS that lets the enthusiast push this Zenith to the limit.

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...lld19JRD03NjA=

[Liquid3D]

I purchased this board the minute I saw the VNF3 come out at Newegg. it was the first 250 chipset board to hit the market, and I was so excited, because the 150 Chaintech was reputed to be the best 150 overclocker. While considering the VNF3 at $98 with an instant $20 discount making the VNF3 a $78 mobo, it sold out, and so I got the $180 Digi-Doc which included the Chaintech.

This was the worst time for me to build an AMD testbed for my reviewing, and I was going to do this two months ago, but thought I'd wait for a BIOS upgrade giving Chaintech a fair shake. I'm glad a MUCH more established, and experienced site did this. I absolutely concur with every deficit you found, and will add, this was a very poorly designed board. They rushed it to market on the overclocking success of their 150, and destroyed the opportunity, to make a GREAT board. What they did do was make one of the WORST boards (if not the) I've ever owned.

I've written Chaintech many times, and find it offensive they couldn't find the time in 6 months to write a BIOS with multiplier option. If that weren't enough, nothing is. They completely missed the mark, by eschewing the 250's intergated features, and produced a $200 1000MHz (5X) Hypertransport platform (i found the same limited 220MHz OC potential at 4X)
which only works at 200MHz, besides that attribute, the best aspect of this board was the box it came in.