Originally posted by: rugrat
link to toms hardware
Nice article you linked to rugrat.... Unfortunately it has no information on either the Chaintech board OR the MSI K8N Ultra (Also called the MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum). I own a Chaintech VNF4, so I can definitely vouch for it's overclocking prowess with the new (still BETA) BIOS. I have been running mine at 300HTT (which puts my 1.8GHZ A64 3000+ at 2.7 GHZ!) stable for several days now. This thing is a BEAST when it comes to overclocking! I have never had a board come close to this before.
As far as differences between the 2 boards which would affect the price, the chaintech board does NOT have firewire built into it. This is an issue for some folks, but I did not care, since you can buy a firewire card fairly cheaply. The other major difference between the 2 is that the MSI board has 8 SATA connections (4 on the NVIDIA RAID controller, and 4 on the Silicon Image controller). This could make a big difference for anyone wanting to run 2 different RAID arrays, or more than 4 SATA devices. This again was not an issue for me, since all I needed to run SATA was my 2 WD 120GB Hard drives in RAID 0. Finally, the MSI board comes WITH 10 USB connections (4 built in, and the rest in those little inserts that fill a expansion slot on your case), while the Chaintech board SUPPORTS 10 USB slots, and has 4 built in, but does not come with the inserts for the other ports. The MSI board also has DUAL gigabit ethernet connections, while the Chaintech has a single GB-E connection. An interesting note AGAINST the MSI is that it only has 1 PCI-E 1X slot, while the Chaintech has 2, but these slots are mostly decorative until cards come out for them anyway.
There are other differences as well, but they would not affect the price. The Chaintech board has a VERY unusual layout (
http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw...rboard/VNF4Ultra_L.jpg)
compared to the MSI (
http://www.msicomputer.com/pro...Neo4_Platinum&class=mb).
The RAM is located ABOVE the CPU slot on the Chaintech, with the CPU moved down further, while the MSI has a more standard layout. The Chaintech's design is close to a BTX style of layout. The Chaintech's layout works VERY well with some cases (those that vent out of the back easily), and certain Heatsink/Fan combo's (those that push air out of the case backwards are EXCELLENT for this board, such as my Coolermaster Hyper6). The design of the Chaintech has made it one of the coolest running boards I have EVER seen, even with stock cooling -- it also improves the airflow in from the front of the case if you have fans up there.
In the end, it comes down to what you want out of the board, since I imagine that the MSI board will overclock well also (although I do not know for sure). The Chaintech board has all of the important stuff (PCI-Express, 4 SATA ports, Gigabit Ethernet, Dual Channel RAM support, etc), but none of the shiny extras like firewire, dual ethernet, 8 SATA channels, etc. If I were you, I would decide if I were going to use any of the extras on the MSI board, and if so, buy it. But if not, the chaintech board is a great value, and I have not been at all sorry that I bought mine.
EDIT: And I have been running my board above 250 for several days without the LAN problems described above, so I am not sure what is causing these on the affected systems... I only know that they do not affect mine! I HAVE added a fan to my chipset's heatsink tho, so if the NIC is run off of the chipset (and I think it is) then maybe they are overheating the chipset, and the NIC is the first place they see problems.
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