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Chaintech Motherboards...is this a Good Brand?

M

MrControversial

Senior member
I'm looking to purchase this motherboard because it's an affordable NF4 solution. Is Chaintech a good brand? Is it as good or better than Gigabyte, Asus and MSI?
 
Got a VNF3-250 for a A64 system I built. The lan hookup didnt work... support claimed it was bad grounding but that turned out not to be it. Just slapped a Dlink pci card in there, not worth shipping it back, other than that I like chaintech.
 
I've got one now, and it works OK - but if I had the option of doing it over again, I'd probably go with a different company, like Epox. My chaintech, at least, has a few "quirks" to work around:

1) with 2 512MB PC3200 sticks of RAM plugged in, I can NOT get the board to run at a 1:1 ratio. It defaults to 5:6, which runs the CPU at full speed but the memory at PC2700. I have yet to find a way to force the board to run at 1:1, so right now I'm just OCing a little to run the memory at full speed.

2) The temperature readings on this board are out of whack: Min consistently shows a temp close to 50c, whether the computer has been idling or going full blast - playing games, encoding video, running SETI, you name it. A friend of mine, with the same CPU and RAM, used an Epox board to build his computer, and his tems are in the high thirties, occasionally hitting 40c or so.

3) Every once in a while the thing fails to boot - it beeps and appears to go through post, but I get no video signal on the screen (which may also mean it's my video card, but since I've had 3 different cards in here at various times, I doubt it). All I have to do is hold the power button in until the thing shuts down, and boot it again, and it comes up fine.

EDIT: I should add that I have an NF3-based VNF3-250, not an NF4 board.

Nate
 
i have bought 3 chaintech mobo's
2- Socket 754 VNF3-250 - I have a total of 3 RMA's of this board.
1- Socket 478 Board works great no problems


The boards come with good features but it seems they are always dying.

Stick with
ASUS
Gigabyte
Shuttle(they really make some rock solid stuff( these are not SFF they are Regular ATX. ))
 
As a tangent, anybody care to put motherboard manufacturers in order. How would everyone rate Chaintech, ASUS, Abit, MSI, DFI, Soltek, AOpen, SOYO, Foxconn, Gigabyte, etc.

I'm looking for a Socket 939 with PCI Express but my choices are a bit limited.
 
Originally posted by: Collector
As a tangent, anybody care to put motherboard manufacturers in order. How would everyone rate Chaintech, ASUS, Abit, MSI, DFI, Soltek, AOpen, SOYO, Foxconn, Gigabyte, etc.

I'm looking for a Socket 939 with PCI Express but my choices are a bit limited.
Click to expand...

Your gonna get mixed opinions with that question. Theres no real way to put them in order from best to worse. All are gonna have problems somewhere. Grouped up in order I would say

Asus,Abit and DFI are in the same league
Chaintech,MSI and Gigabyte are in the same league
Soltek,AOpen,SoYo and Foxconn are in the same league and would be at the bottom(I would probably never buy one from any of these companies)
 
If price wasn't a factor, then I wouldn't even consider Chaintech, but for all the features it has, that's sure a great price. I'm trying to look for some reviews on it. I've built two computers so far and they used Soyo and Gigabyte mobos respectfully. I regret that I payed $120 for the Soyo mobo for the lack of features and upgradability of it.

 
I've heard good things abiout the chaintech nf4 board. It lacks quite a few features and the OCing is limited, but it sounds like a stable board, and for that price, it is a great deal.
 
What features don't the Ultra board include? I'm thinking about the Ultra board not the vanilla. If I go ahead and purchase it next week, I'm going to keep my RMA finger twitchy.
 
I have 4 of the VNF3-250's, and so far everything is going great. Been running one in my everyday machine now for at least 7 months.
 
RE:"Asus,Abit and DFI are in the same league
Chaintech,MSI and Gigabyte are in the same league
Soltek,AOpen,SoYo and Foxconn are in the same league and would be at the bottom(I would probably never buy one from any of these companies)"

Soltek is at the top IMHO...

I'd lump it as

1. Asus, Soltek, Gigabyte, MSI

2 Aopen, Soyo, Chaintech, Abit (made in the ECS factory), Epox, FIC

3. Foxconn, ECS, PC chips, Biostar
 
Its possible to get a bad piece of hardware from any company. But i have heard a lot of bad things about chaintech boards. Ive had good luck with ASUS and EPOX. A friend of mine has been using DFI boards for awhile now w/o complaints. If your going to get a nforce 4 ultra board id go with MSI or DFI. Or wait awhile until a few other companies get their nforce4 solutions out on the market.
 
The VNF3-250 is a GREAT board, I have built 2 systems for friends with that board. No problems, board comes with a lot of nice extras (thermal paste, 5.1 sound option, etc... ) Setup was easy, and the board also looks cool 🙂 I hope you'll get one!
 
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