Chaintech ZNF3-150 Zenith (nForce3)

Company: Chaintech
Product: ZNF3-150 Zenith
Street Price: $210
Date Reviewed: November 20, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

Conclusions:

The ZNF3-150 Zenith is a very nice motherboard for the Athlon 64. It is loaded with a ton of features and the performance is on par with the EPoX 8HDA3+, even with the EPoX's higher stock system clock. The Chaintech board does not come at a cheap cost though. $210 might be a little more than what most users are willing to chip in for a motherboard. A few ideas to keep in mind about purchasing this board is that it does come with things such as RadEX and CBOX3. These are features that are not common to motherboards. The CBOX3 alone is a very nice addition to the bundle and consumers will find it very useful along with the remote control. RadEX will appeal more to the enthusiasts because of the 4-phase power along with the cooling for the power regulators, which might aid in overclocking.

We are still in the early phases of getting out all of our Socket 754 mainboard reviews but you can bet that in the end, the Chaintech will be a good competitor and one of the more feature rich packages. For now we can say that we highly recommend this board to anyone who would like to use their computer as their workstation and/or entertainment center (thanks to CBOX3 and the CMC).

Since price and features is going to be key in ones consideration for this board, think about it this way. If you are willing to shell out the money for an Athlon 64 processor, why not go ahead and spend some money on a good board for that processor instead of a mediocre board. That latter would be like buying a $2000 SLR Camera and using a cheap $100 plastic lens. You are going to get what you pay for and the Chaintech ZNF3-150 Zenith is definitely a very high end board, even for the most zealous enthusiasts.