**Official Chaintech Zenith VNF4 nForce4 Motherboard Thread**

[Silversierra]

Sorry, my first link doesn't work.
Go here
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-156-140&depa=1
and click on picture 7.
It shows the amperage of the power supply.

 

[anthony88guy]

Sorry I forgot to mention I will most likely be using a Western Digital 80gb 8mb 7200rpm HDD, and for the PSW a OCZ modstream 450watt. I've read this thread and it seems some people are having trouble getting the BIOS to see their SATA HDD. I might just get a 200gb HDD SATA II if thats possible, but then again this is a budget build. I've been reccomended both the 6600GT and the x700PRO, still not totally sure on what video card to get. I heard that NVIDIA has heat problems. I have looked at Tom's Hardware Review. I will be using this system mostly for applications and light gaming.

anthony

 

[xAIRPOWERx]

I have spent upwards of 18 hours trying to get my maxtor diamondmax 10 sata drive to detect with this board and it is utterly hopeless.

It may be the board, which I hear lots of bad things about, or it may be the maxtor drive, and as I think everyone knows, Maxtor makes garbage, that is their primary business in the computer hardware world.

 

[Ackbar]

Originally posted by: xAIRPOWERx
I have spent upwards of 18 hours trying to get my maxtor diamondmax 10 sata drive to detect with this board and it is utterly hopeless.

It may be the board, which I hear lots of bad things about, or it may be the maxtor drive, and as I think everyone knows, Maxtor makes garbage, that is their primary business in the computer hardware world.

Best way to sort this out would be to see if another SATA drive will detect. If it does, it's your HD otherwise it might be something else.

Personally this mobo is okay in general... i've had problems with it, it's a value board there's no doubt in my mind. It was basically the first available and it's obvious in a lot of ways...

 

[tennesota]

Damn the luck; I have defective sound ports on my new board
Side Speaker-Out port, Rear Speaker-Out port, and Center/Subwoofer port are all static.

 

[Ackbar]

Originally posted by: tennesota
Damn the luck; I have defective sound ports on my new board
Side Speaker-Out port, Rear Speaker-Out port, and Center/Subwoofer port are all static.

I think mine are like that too! I thought that I might've had it configured wrong though... are you sure?

 

[tennesota]

I'm absolutely positive; you can test it by using one speaker plug at a time. Plug a line into any port on the right side [black, gray, or yellow]. Play a random sound in Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices properties page [I'm using XP]. It's all static for me.

I have tested with two sets of speakers. My serial number begins with 050108xxxx. My hunch is the first six digits indicate the day the board was produced.

 

[Ackbar]

Originally posted by: tennesota
I'm absolutely positive; you can test it by using one speaker plug at a time. Plug a line into any port on the right side [black, gray, or yellow]. Play a random sound in Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices properties page [I'm using XP]. It's all static for me.

I have tested with two sets of speakers. My serial number begins with 050108xxxx. My hunch is the first six digits indicate the day the board was produced.

Grr! I've had some issues with things that were supposed to be implemented not working with this board (try setting your vcore to anything between 1.45 and 1.6V exclusive)... but that is ridiculous if this is something that isn't working on multiple boards.

 

[tennesota]

I bought this particular board from ZZF; this will be my first time to RMA any product to a vendor.

 

[tennesota]

I just ordered another one of these boards from a different vendor. Hopefully I will receive a more recently produced board. The blue pcb with active cooling would be nice.

 

[fr0thing]

This board has been very stable and I've had no compatibility issues thus far. Stay away from Maxtor hard drives. The x700 Pro video card seems a bit pricey for the level of performance. For $20 more you could purchase a 6600GT. I guess it depends on your budget and the amount of gaming you will be doing. I don't game often but when I do I like to crank up the details so a decent video card is a necessity.

 

[lamovr]

I bought a Thermalright XP-90 too. Haven't assemble the system yet, because my CPU hasn't arrived. The other parts were shipped via FedEx and UPS; they got here yesterday. I see the problem you describe. The only thing I can think of is to loosen the leads of offending capacitor with a soldering iron and rock it back a few mms. What did you do?

 

[cobra189]

I am having some very strange problems with my new system and this board.
Here is my system info:

Chaintech VNF4 ultra
1gig Kingmax(512x2) pc3200
3000+ athlon 64(90 nm version)
Aopen Geforce6200(256 meg)
Maxtor SATA 80 gig
AMD Silentboost K8 cooler/fan
Antec sl400 400w power supply
Rosewill CDRW/DVD combo drive
Lian Li case

I have been having very strange problems. First I get errors when I put in some
CD's with autorun. I get a message saying to reinsert the CD because the device
is not ready(even though the CD is still in the drive). I get errors whenever I try
to install any games. It routinely crashes when i try and run programs and when
I finally got through 3dmar05 the other day I got a score of 1155 with framerates
of about 5-6fps per test. Since all the parts are brand new I don't even know
where to start since I don't have anything I can test the other parts on.

Any help would be appreciated!!!

Thanks!

 

[customcoms]

Ok. Read the whole thread. Their is lots of info regarding this problem. I would reconmend downloading the new nForce4 drivers. If this doesn't help, try a different hd. If that doesn't help, I would change your ps to a native 24 pin unit such as this
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-101-509&depa=0

 

[customcoms]

Anyone want to measure their board? I would like to know if a Zalman 7700 AlCu fits. Here are the specs from Zalman as to the clearances required:
No motherboard components with a height greater than 39mm (1.53inch), as well as the
PSU, disk drives, VGA card, and RAM should be present within a 68mm (2.68 inch)
radius from the center of the CPU.

Thanks in Advance,
Sam

 

[Ackbar]

Originally posted by: customcoms
Anyone want to measure their board? I would like to know if a Zalman 7700 AlCu fits. Here are the specs from Zalman as to the clearances required:
No motherboard components with a height greater than 39mm (1.53inch), as well as the
PSU, disk drives, VGA card, and RAM should be present within a 68mm (2.68 inch)
radius from the center of the CPU.

Thanks in Advance,
Sam

"We also have to mention the location of the CPU VRM capacitors. They are too close to the mounting frame of the CPU cooler, thus hindering installation of some massive cooler models. On the other hand, we had no problems putting a Zalman CNPS7700Cu cooler onto the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra VE."
From http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/chaintech-nforce4_4.html bottom of the page.

 

[casijad]

Originally posted by: cobra189
I am having some very strange problems with my new system and this board.
Here is my system info:

Chaintech VNF4 ultra
1gig Kingmax(512x2) pc3200
3000+ athlon 64(90 nm version)
Aopen Geforce6200(256 meg)
Maxtor SATA 80 gig
AMD Silentboost K8 cooler/fan
Antec sl400 400w power supply
Rosewill CDRW/DVD combo drive
Lian Li case

I have been having very strange problems. First I get errors when I put in some
CD's with autorun. I get a message saying to reinsert the CD because the device
is not ready(even though the CD is still in the drive). I get errors whenever I try
to install any games. It routinely crashes when i try and run programs and when
I finally got through 3dmar05 the other day I got a score of 1155 with framerates
of about 5-6fps per test. Since all the parts are brand new I don't even know
where to start since I don't have anything I can test the other parts on.

Any help would be appreciated!!!

Thanks!

i had a rosewill drive and it didnt work either. i rma'd it and i have the newest bios which seems 2 have helped alot of problems... hopefully the replacement drive will work

 

[imported_Slider]

Thanks for the review. Now I'm glad I didn't buy that adapter at newegg which was ~$10. My parts should be here by tuesday or so and we'll see how far my 3000+ can go.

 

[shleepy]

Hi, I got this mobo for my friend's new rig and we've been having some problems with it. Right now, this is the problem: Windows XP Pro (not 64-bit) setup doesn't get past loading drivers. My friend has a new SATA hard-drive, so we copied the recommended drivers from the mobo driver CD onto a floppy and pressed F6 when asked. The drivers on the floppy were detected, and I selected them and pressed Enter. What happens time and time again no matter what I try is that the comp restarts within a minute after "loading" the drivers. The BIOS settings are set to default for now, just in case.

Here are some system specs:

- Chaintech VNF4 (non-ultra)
- AMD-64 3500+
- ATI X800 Pro
- 2x 512Mb Mushkin level-1 (or whatever the black one is called) PC3200
- DVD-ROM and DVD+/-RW
- Antec SLK3700 case with stock 350W Antec PSU
- Western Digital SATA HD with 160Gb and 7200 RPM

I have not tried updating the BIOS or using newer drivers, yet. What are some things that I should try? Right now, I think I really should update the BIOS, as this seems to be an early version of the board, anyway. Chaintech's site and manual do not mention proper procedures for flashing the BIOS, though. Can someone please give me basic instructions on how I should about doing that? I've had troubles flashing a BIOS on my own rig before (granted, that was a known issue for that board), so I don't want to screw it up this time

EDIT: P.S.: This couldn't have been just caused by using USB keyboard/mouse, could it? I know using a USB keyboard can occasionally do crazy stuff like that.
EDIT2: It was not specified in my post, but the hard-drive is detected in BIOS.

 

[GadgetBuilder]

I doubt that the BIOS on the VNF4 is a problem, it worked fine for me loading XP Home SP2 off a SATA optical onto a SATA hard drive. The latest VNF4 BIOS solves some esoteric problems but there haven't been any serious BIOS problems that I'm aware of - I'm still on the original BIOS. There are some BIOS changes which affect overclocking once you get to that stage. You may need to enable the USB mouse and keyboard in BIOS if you haven't done so.

You might try loading XP without pulling drivers off the floppy. My VNF4 ran fine on XP's default drivers and I still haven't loaded the NVIDIA IDE drivers. I also loaded XP64 the same way as above and it also ran fine - no floppy or special drivers needed.

Info about flashing the BIOS is here:
http://forums.pcper.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46
Mostly they suggest using WinFlash, for which you need XP loaded...

The referenced forum has a lot of support info for the VNF4 board as well as other Chaintech products.

 

[shleepy]

Well, it defintely does not work without drivers, and especially not the 64-bit version. You must have a new version of Windows. Mine is just SP1, I believe.

Also, I can't find a post on that site about flashing the BIOS without first installing WIndows, and that's the tricky part.

 

[imported_RaVeN23]

Anyone know if the Coolermaster Cool Viva fits with this board ?
Maybe I could use that on my 6600GT but the chipset heatsink is very close to the PCI-e slot.

Thanks

 

[shleepy]

An update for my problem:

I got Windows Setup to go pretty far without using drivers. The thing that happened was I was getting random errors in random parts during the setup, however. I believe the main problem is interruptions / IRQ. What it came down to was that I got to the part where you have to restart the computer and the main part of the setup begins, but it never does begin for me. I kept getting a BSOD as soon as it booted from CD, so I just gave up and zero-filled my hard-drive. *NOTE: I think I even got that far because I changed the MPS in BIOS to 1.1, instead of 1.4.*

After this, I tried running Knoppix (for all of you who don't know, it's a version of Linux that can just run off of the CD, without a hard-drive). After several attempts, I got it to run pretty stably, but here's what it kept saying while booting:

BIOS bug, IO-APIC#1 ID2 is already used!
... fixing up to 1 (tell your hw vendor)
... MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not corrected to IO-APIC
PCI: Cannot allocate resource region 2 of device 05:00.0 [not sure if that's the correct number after the 05:00., but probably]
PCI: Cannot allocate resource region 0 of device 05:00.1 [not sure if that's the correct number after the 05:00., but probably]

Now, after turning of APIC in BIOS, all the bugs up to the PCI ones dissappeared. Apparently, this is an IRQ problem.

Can someone please recommend some actions that I should take? Right now, I'm quite tired, but I'm going to try a couple of things tomorrow (03/02/05) to see what happens - taking out the DVD-ROM and DVD-RW drives one-by-one, and then I would like to flash my BIOS. Can someone thus please just briefly describe how I could flash the BIOS safely without Windows? Should I do that Alt-F2 thing at start-up with a floppy in my floppy drive with the .bin file for the new BIOS version? Also, should I use version 2.0 or the newever beta one (0203 or something like that)?

Any help is greatly appreciated and much needed. Thank you!

 

[imported_johnm]

You seem to be making life as hard on yourself as you can.

You only need a DOS bootup diskette to install a new bios. Just make sure the current bios is set to boot to floppy drive as 1st priority.

 

[GadgetBuilder]

Does it run Memtest86 reliably? This is a good thing to run on any new system, especially if it isn't working as you expect.

What temps are reported by BIOS?

Have you tried resetting CMOS and starting over?

Think twice about updating the BIOS: it will add another variable to an already murky situation. I haven't seen any reports of anyone else needing to update BIOS for any reason other than over clocking.