Chaintech 9CJS Zenith

Company: Chaintech
Product: 9CJS Zenith
Street Price: ~$280 USD
Date Reviewed: May 5, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey C. aka Chong345
Overall Rating: (9/10)

Conclusions and Final Thoughts:

Price and Features - 9

The Chaintech 9CJS Zenith is full of features. Having things like Serial ATA, dual LAN capabilities, IEEE1394 FireWire, and 7.1 surround sound makes it it perfect for the high end users. Perhaps the nicest feature is the CBOX 3 and the remote control. Having all the multimedia on a front panel is very nice along with the 6-in-1 card reader. There are not many other options that Chaintech could have provided with this motherboard. The price is a steep and will be out of the range for many consumers. Those who are looking for a great multimedia package with their motherboard should look into the Chaintech 9CJS Zenith.

Performance - 10

Since this is the first 875P motherboard we have tested, we have no other comparison except to the 845PE motherboards. The performance gains from running the memory in a dual channel mode are outstanding and make for a great board. We will soon have more 875P mainboards for testing and at that time we can make draw conclusions on how this board performs when compared to others based on the same chipset.

Stability - 8

We did run into a few issues with the motherboard. Since it is an engineering sample these we expected to have a few problems. Occasionally during the tests we would get errors or reboots. There were not many problem but it has been awhile since we ran into instabilities with a motherboard at stock speeds.

Support - 9.5

The motherboard is not yet avaiable for retail, so at the moment there is little support for the 9CJS. In the future, there will be good support for this board just like all of the Chaintech products. their website has downloads for the latest drivers, BIOS, and manuals. They also have a tech support form that consumers can fill out for more help. Visit Chaintech Support Page for more information.

Overclocking - 8.5

The options for overclocking are good. The one main thing that we were dissapointed to see were the low CPU voltages available. Otherwise, the board is a relatively good overclocker. We did not run into any issues while overclocking and the performance gains were nice. Since our CPU was getting warm, it is hard to say how much higher the board could have gone but none the less, most overclockers will be happy wit hthe options available in the BIOS.

Overall - 9

We were very pleased with the Chaintech 9CJS Zenith, especially since our sample was premature. They have once again done a great job of designing a motherboard with lots of features based on the latest chipset. For our first Canterwood review, we had a nice experience using the Chaintech mainboard.We are curious to see what differences there will be in the full retail version.