Chaintech VNF4 Ultra

Author:  Tyler Curry Date:  2005.10.09 Topic:  Motherboards Provider:  Chaintech Manufacturer:  Chaintech

The VNF4 Ultra in detail

The VNF4 Ultra box clearly advertises Chaintech's Zenith series which is aimed at the enthusiast of sorts however this is not just a Zenith but a Zenith VE, or Value Edition motherboard.  We will assume because of this label that this motherboard is aimed at the budget enthusiast if you will.  It features the NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra chipset, and with the nForce4 Ultra chipset featuring such things as Serial ATA II (3.0Gb/s), this is definitely a bonus on a budget oriented motherboard.

The package included with the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra is rather slim, as you would expect from a budget package, the contents are as follows.

• 1x IDE cable

• 1x FDD cable

• 2x SATA cables

• 1x SATA power cable

• 1x I/O Backplate

• 1x Driver CD

• 1x Value Pack CD (Includes Norton Antivirus 2005)

• 1x User Guide

Taking a look at the rear I/O panel, there isn't exactly anything special, it is rather standard.  Included are your typical PS/2, parallel, serial, ethernet, and USB ports.  Also you have your sound inputs which Chaintech decided to go with 7.1 channel audio.

Onto the layout of the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra.  Initially you will notice the motherboard itself is marginally smaller than your typical ATX motherboard so you definitely shouldn't have any problem fitting this board into a case or have to fiddle with it to much.  Also you will notice the placement of the memory DIMM's which are placed above the CPU socket (left in the picture), traditionally the DIMM's are placed to the right side of the CPU socket.  We particularly love this type of DIMM placement because it completely eliminates the possibility of those long video cards from interfering with any DIMM slots like we have seen so much in the past.

Over we like the layout of the VNF4 Ultra, but there are a few things that can pose issues.  First of all is there are eight large capacitors located rather close to the CPU socket which may pose a problem with the large heatsinks out there.  Unfortunately we didn't have a large heatsink on hand to test this theory.  Also the location of the ATX power connectors are located near the rear I/O panel which could cause some problems with streaming cords overtop or around the heatsink in order to plug them in.  We prefer the ATX power connectors to be somewhere on the left side of the motherboard.  Lastly, which is probably the biggest concern is how close the PCI-Express x16 slot is to the chipset heatsink/fan.  For longer and large video cards out there this could turn into a pain.

Other than that we are very pleased with the layout of this Chaintech board, all the fan connectors are adequately placed, the IDE and FDD ports have an ideal placement on the left edge of the board making them within good reach of your drives.  The SATA-II connectors are finely placed.  We also love the included active cooling solution on the chipset, which considering this is a budget oriented motherboard is a great bonus.

BIOS

Unfortunately there are no pictures of the BIOS included in this review though really they are not needed, as this is your standard looking Pheonix Award BIOS included on the VNF4 Ultra motherboard.  However considering this is a budget board as said many times before we are pleased to see a decent Frequency/Voltage control section that will make any mainstream user happy with some good overclocking controls.