**Official Chaintech Zenith VNF4 nForce4 Motherboard Thread**

[AnnoyedGrunt]

Thanks guys.

Got MBM setup, although the fan speed is measuring 0 RPM (maybe cuz I still need to restart my comp). But don't really care about that. The temps are working, and that's what I really wanted to see.

WoW seems to have fixed itself. Not sure what was going wrong yesterday, but didn't have any problems tonight (except for getting killed by other players far too often).

-D'oh!

 

[Burts]

Had to update to latest Nvidia Drivers, the problem on punkbuster is now gone!!!
6.39

 

[dklingen]

Anyone interested (my experience),

I had an AthlonXP 2500 on an ASUS Nforce2 motherboard. I upgraded to the Chaintech VNF4 with an Athlon64 3200. I had hoped that I could just install my old hard disk drive and the motherboard drivers would uninstall/install as necessary. Ironically this worked perfectly, EXCEPT for the gigabit lan. I could not get the ethernet to work (uninstall or driver upgrades in the device manager wouldn't work), there was some conflict with the naming convention from my old ethernet on my Nforce2. So, ultimately to my disappointment I had to reformat my hard drive and reinstall WindowsXP Pro. After this everything worked great (just running stock speeds). I have been able to sustain > 50 fps in Half Life 2 and Far Cry (my goal) using an X800XL video card.

Overall, I am very happy with the board (particularly consider the value)!

 

[fr0thing]

AnnoyedGrunt:
To use NVidia NTune I had to flash the BIOS to the latest version 2.0, and use NTune version 2.00.23.05. NTune is kinda cool - it gives you CPU and mobo temps, overclocking options, and benchmarking utils.

 

[Ackbar]

Actually... I didn't think so before, but I just noticed that the new BFG nF4 Ultra mobo looks identical to the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra mobo!

Chipset Fan
VNF4 Ultra mobo pic (newest version)

(Got the newest version of the VNF4 Ultra today, includes a chipset fan if you couldn't tell)

 

[dklingen]

Update:
Realized I could run HL2 and Far Cry at 1600x1200 everything at max and maintain > 50 fps. The X800 XL is pretty awesome.

Bye

 

[Oceanic]

Mines ordered. dont have it yet but asked for the fan and they want 5$ to ship it lol....

hope it has it, it came from california and i saw that ones coming from NJ had it, CA should get asian stuff before east coast right? lol

newegg btw

 

[fr0thing]

I requested the chipset fan from Chaintech and they e-mailed me an order form that I faxed back. The shipping cost was $5. The fan arrived three days later in a generic Trident Blade-3D box wrapped in foam. I installed the fan and to my surprise it is very quiet. It's keeping the chipset 8 degrees cooler than without the fan so I think it's worth switching it out.

 

[fr0thing]

NVidia recently released NForce4 version 6.53. It resolves several issues including a networking error I was experiencing with Ghostcast server. Highly recommend installing it if you haven't already.

 

[bradley]

Too bad this board won't work with PCI video cards. Chaintech's saying that it's a chipset specific issue, but I'm not aware of any other Nforce4 motherboard with this particular problem.

 

[Brandubh]

Unfortunately, I may have gotten a bad board or cpu.

Background Info:
CPU: AMD 63 3200
HSF: Thermaltake SilentBoost K8 A1838 RT
Mem: 2x 512M PDP PC3200 Dual Channel
PSU: Antec 350W SmartPower (21A on +12V)
Vid: None yet.
HD: WD 160G ATA 133

I don't have a vid car yet, but I put the CPU, HSF and Mem in.

Some of the things I tried:

[*]Powered it up w/ 20-pin attached, I got nothing but the HSF and PSU fans spinning up, no POST sound, with or without the case speaker attached. I also noticed that my HD didn't spin up either.
[*]When I hooked up the 4 pin power, the same thing happened but this time the HD spun up.
[*]When I tried the whole thing again, w/ the 20-pin only, the chipset heatsink warmed up but not the HSF. It did warm with the 4-pin attached.
[*]Tried it with 2 Mem, and alternated each single Mem to see if it was that
[*]Reset BIOS

Unfortunately, I don't have anyone in the area that has AMD 64 equip except a crooked tech shop that will charge me $100+ just to plug them in, so I guess I'll wait until tomorrow morning to call tech support and probably get an RMA from Newegg.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[jediannie]

I really wish I would have read this thread before I spent all weekend trying to figure out why my PCI vid card wasn't working! So dumb sometimes. . . but I learned my lesson. . . Going out to buy a PCI-E card tonight. Ugh, my "cheap" computer is getting very expensive.

 

[exitnow]

did anyone have a problem getting a floppy drive to work with this board? i can't get one to work on mine.

 

[imported_Slider]

Originally posted by: exitnow
did anyone have a problem getting a floppy drive to work with this board? i can't get one to work on mine.

Me too. At first I thought it was the fdd so I swapped it out for an older one. Nope. Then I tried changing the cable. Nope.

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

I'm running a floppy just fine.

I needed one to install the RAID drivers.

Double check your cable orientations, because it may be possible to put the cable in upside down.

Also, you may need to go into the BIOS to enable the floppy. I seem to recall needing to do that.

-D'oh!

 

[exitnow]

i have tried everything i can think of and nothing works. i was trying to install raid drivers but that seems impossible w/o a floppy. i did flash my bios with a boot cd but i don't think i can do that fot the raid drivers.

 

[boggled]

> Chaintech VNF4 nForce 4 Athlon 64(FX)/Sempron Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA
>Bios Ver 2.0 Date 2005/02/03
>Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor Socket 939
>Logisys PS500MSGN 500W Meshed Green LED ATX/BTX Power
>Mem: 512 K DDR400
>Display adapters: Abit RX600 Pro-PCIE Radeon X600 Pro PCI Express 256MB DDR Video Card
>Win XP Pro w/ SP2
>LiteOn 52X24X52X CD RW
>D-Link AirPlus DWL-G520 Wireless PCI Adapter
>Lucent Win Modem


The system works fine with and boots from either of the following HD:
I did a fresh install on the IBM and cloned over to the WD. The system will recognize and boot from either drive.
IBM Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 120GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer
Western Digital WD800BB 80 Gig PATA HD



The system does not work with:
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6B250S0 250GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer
MDL# 6B250S0A6530B
Mfg.Date 15AUG2004

The system most of the time will not even display the drive as present during system boot up. The OS can not be installed because the drive is not detected. If I connect the drive during the boot process, the system will pause to try and identify the drive. The system seems to detect something but it can?t be identified most of the time. On the occasions that the system detects the drive it still can not access the drive.

Oddly, if the SATA IBM or the PATA WD hard drives are set up as the boot drives and I connect the Maxtor to the computer, the system still will not boot from either the SATA or even the PATA drive. The following happens:

After system self test (most of the time the Maxtor was not even detected), the system attempts to boot from the IBM or WD HD and hangs in one of two ways.
1. Screen goes blank and system locks after attempting to load WIN XP Pro.
2. Screen shows WIN XP?s first startup screen and hangs, but strangely the display is very dim as if the brightness was turned way down.

I thought it may be a bad drive so I purchased a second identical drive with the intent of returning the first one if it was bad. However the second drive behaved the same way.

I have tested the drives on a different PC and it appears to work fine.

There seem to be a compatibility issue with the Maxtor DiamondMax 10s and the Chaintech VNF4 nForce MB.

I have spent many hours trying to resolve the issue. Could anyone be of assistance?
:frown:

 

[boggled]

 

[boggled]

> Chaintech VNF4 nForce 4 Athlon 64(FX)/Sempron Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA
>Bios Ver 2.0 Date 2005/02/03
>Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor Socket 939
>Logisys PS500MSGN 500W Meshed Green LED ATX/BTX Power
>Mem: 512 K DDR400
>Display adapters: Abit RX600 Pro-PCIE Radeon X600 Pro PCI Express 256MB DDR Video Card
>Win XP Pro w/ SP2
>LiteOn 52X24X52X CD RW
>D-Link AirPlus DWL-G520 Wireless PCI Adapter
>Lucent Win Modem


The system works fine with and boots from either of the following HD:
I did a fresh install on the IBM and cloned over to the WD. The system will recognize and boot from either drive.
IBM Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 120GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer
Western Digital WD800BB 80 Gig PATA HD



The system does not work with:
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6B250S0 250GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer
MDL# 6B250S0A6530B
Mfg.Date 15AUG2004

The system most of the time will not even display the drive as present during system boot up. The OS can not be installed because the drive is not detected. If I connect the drive during the boot process, the system will pause to try and identify the drive. The system seems to detect something but it can?t be identified most of the time. On the occasions that the system detects the drive it still can not access the drive.

Oddly, if the SATA IBM or the PATA WD hard drives are set up as the boot drives and I connect the Maxtor to the computer, the system still will not boot from either the SATA or even the PATA drive. The following happens:

After system self test (most of the time the Maxtor was not even detected), the system attempts to boot from the IBM or WD HD and hangs in one of two ways.
1. Screen goes blank and system locks after attempting to load WIN XP Pro.
2. Screen shows WIN XP?s first startup screen and hangs, but strangely the display is very dim as if the brightness was turned way down.

I thought it may be a bad drive so I purchased a second identical drive with the intent of returning the first one if it was bad. However the second drive behaved the same way.

I have tested the drives on a different PC and it appears to work fine.

There seem to be a compatibility issue with the Maxtor DiamondMax 10s and the Chaintech VNF4 nForce MB.

I have spent many hours trying to resolve the issue. Could anyone be of assistance?

 

[boggled]

Sorry for the duplicate postings. Don?t see a way to deleat my postings. If there is a admin feel free to remove.

Thanks

 

[imported_Slider]

http://www.chaintech.com.tw/tw/eng/Download/dl_desc.asp?DCSNo=4&PISNo=318

new bios.

 

[dwdty9]

I might get this motherboard. I'd like a quiet pc also. So is there a fan or not? I thought there wasn't until I read the end of the posts and some say there is a fan on the newer versions. Does it need a fan if it didn't have it before?

 

[Oceanic]

that bios note is the only thing thats updated?

where do you acess those features, from the utilities on the cd or what?

 

[rhrg32]

helpme

i m from brazil ,i buy this mobo but my slot pci 2.3 not express du not video???
this mobo so works in pci-ex16x ????

EX:Sorry bad ingles

 

[rhrg32]

my video card pciex16x so in 25days in my home
this mobo not work in pci normal video card???