**Official Chaintech Zenith VNF4 nForce4 Motherboard Thread**

[hectorrj]

Here's a new prob with this board no one else seems to have... I can NOT get this board to see more than 512 mb of ram. I have 2 sticks of Corsair XMS pc3200, I have the newest bios (3/15/05) and MB drivers (6.54), and no matter what dimm slot config I try, Bios refuses to see both sticks. BUT it does go into dual channel mode... any ideas?

Edit: I do have WinXP btw

 

[dwdty9]

Hey, board works great!! Thing is, The fan is damn loud!!! Is there a way to install a quieter fan or heatsink on this mobo? I do not do any overclocking. Just wondering!!

 

[Odeen]

Stupid question about the new Chaintech fan:

Did Chaintech send you a fan to bolt onto the existing heatsink, or did they send you a brand new HSF assembly? (which requires pulling the original heatsink, which requires redoing the thermal grease, which requires removing the motherboard, which is a pain...)

I'm getting errors after about an hour of Prime. It's either my PSU (Allied, 350W, 16A on 12v rail, but it's full 24-pin) or my chipset is overheating (the heatsink gets HOT quickly). CPU is a 3200+ Winchester, all speeds and voltages set to stock (1.4v CPU, 2.6v RAM, 200mhz FSB, 200mhz RAM (auto timings), 100mhz PCI-E, 5x multiplier). RAM is a pair of Kingston PC3200 512mb's, which ran 225mhz for the previous owner.

 

[dwdty9]

they sent me a mobo with the fan on already.

 

[GadgetBuilder]

rhrg: The VNF4 requires a PCI-express card. It will NOT work with a PCI card.

dwdty9: The NF4 doesn't really need a heatsink unless you're overclocking or your room temp is very high. Get SpeedFan and monitor your temps - the first temp is the CPU, the second is the NF4 (the sensor is close to the NF4). The Winnie CPU's run under 35C and the NF4 generally is under 38C on the VNF4. SpeedFan can control the CPU and chipset fans independently so try slowing the fans down to reduce noise. I have the older VNF4 without a chipset fan (38C) and run the stock AMD CPU fan at 45% which makes it inaudible except under heavy load when it runs 100%. SpeedFan can be a little tricky to set up, see:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=1560184 for a hint which may be helpful.

Odeen: SpeedFan might be helpful to you too because it will allow you to monitor the temperatures so you'll know if your overclock is causing a problem.

SpeedFan automatically locates all the possible sensors on a mobo, some of which are not actually installed on the VNF4 so use configure to disable the ones with weird readings (like 127C).

 

[boggled]

Flashed the MB bios, but it still did not work.

I had to flash the two hard drive bios.

I found rev. BANC1B10 and BANC1BM0 both work OK with MB.

It is the first time I ever have a HD bois compatibility issue.
A Diamond Max 10 SATA150 with bios rev: BANC1980 K,G,C,A on will not work properly on this MB.

Thank for your help though.

 

[the cobbler]

rhrg: The VNF4 requires a PCI-express card. It will NOT work with a PCI card.

That's not exactly true. It just won't boot without a PCIE card installed. But when a PCIE card is present, you can add a PCI card and set it as your primary display.

 

[digitalica]

Originally posted by: boggled
Flashed the MB bios, but it still did not work.

I had to flash the two hard drive bios.

I found rev. BANC1B10 and BANC1BM0 both work OK with MB.

It is the first time I ever have a HD bois compatibility issue.
A Diamond Max 10 SATA150 with bios rev: BANC1980 K,G,C,A on will not work properly on this MB.

Thank for your help though.

Please check your Private Messages.
i need those firmwares too

 

[cpush]

is there a new revision out on this board? anyone know how it is currently?

 

[najames]

I have 2 of them here. Working on board #1 as I type. I can't tell you much about it yet, it does have the active cooling. It says Chaintech VNF4 Ultra M101 431 on the board, revision, don't know. Running with Mushkin 2x512 budget green RAM, defaulted to 2.5-2-4-8 (right numbers not sure of the sequence) right now. I can't reboot since I am installing Linux. Next board will get Corsair valueram.

For the price of the system, as long as it doesn't self fry or something (very doubtful) I'd say it is a lot of bang for the buck so far for a socket 939 system. I am sure other cheaper combos can be had. This is a very quiet PC so far, the video card has big piped heat sinks on both sides, no fans. I'm using a recycled Antec Truepower 430 PSU.

$85 VNF4 Ultra motherboard - Chiefvalue
$113 3000+ CPU - Monarch
$17 generic AMD heatsink/fan - Monarch
$83 - Corsair ValueRam - Chiefvalue
$113 - Gigabyte 6600 video - ZZF
Hard drives - SATAII Hitachi from ZZF. I have 2x160, $89 each, in this box so far, may another 160 IDE I have on hand. Hitachi 80gigs SataII are cheap, about $58 each, there are two models, same thing evidently.

 

[dwdty9]

BTW, the Zalman NB47J northbridge cooler works great with this mobo. I highly recommend it to shut down that noise. But you need a vid card cooler that's quieter as well, or you won't notice it!

 

[Samus]

Originally posted by: dwdty9
BTW, the Zalman NB47J northbridge cooler works great with this mobo. I highly recommend it to shut down that noise. But you need a vid card cooler that's quieter as well, or you won't notice it!

I highly recommend this cooler as well. I have the older revision chaintech board that was nicely passively cooled. I don't know why Chaintech felt the need to go with an active cooler as my board has run fine for months overclocked with a passive NB cooler.

Obviously the Zalman cooler wasn't for the Chaintech, it was for my aformentioned Asus A8N-SLI board that has a nasty loud cooler (same OEM model as the one Chaintech is using now, FYI)

So...if you have the passive chaintech cooler, BE HAPPY, THE FAN COOLER JUST ADDS NOISE.

If you happen to be an unlucky sap with the active cooler, get the Zalman:
http://www.casecooler.com/zablnoco.html

-Tim

BTW: I had problems getting a floppy to work on this board, also. It must be a widespread problem because at least half-dozen people are reporting the same issue. My solution was a external USB floppy, $20 shipped from compgeeks.

 

[Samus]

I tested the new bios, can't tell any differences in overclocking. Cool'n'Quiet works much better, and oddly the RAM timings always default to x.x-x-4-8 now. So if you have CL2.5-3-3-6 memory, it defaults to 2.5-3-4-8.

This isn't such a bad thing, because Timing(T)8 is what Anandtech and others have found to be a peak performance timing. So if you memory can do T5 or T6, who cares, its slower.

All I can think about Chaintech defaulting the TR to 4 would be maybe they found it to be more stable/compatible/faster... This is all memory controller related anyway (on-die with the CPU) so who knows.

 

[cpush]

Has anyone tried a venice yet on this board?

 

[Silversierra]

Originally posted by: cpush
Has anyone tried a venice yet on this board?

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=386956
UncleBob is using a venice on a vnf4ultra. He got it oc'ed to 280htt.

 

[cpush]

ah thanks for the link

 

[Akash]

i have a seagate ST3160827AS drive (basic sata 160 drive with NCQ) and the chaintech bios wont detect the drive for the life of it.. any ideas please help.. though reading the forum i have a newer board with the hsf on the northbridge

 

[Gleo]

Hey all- now I just purchased this mobo to upgrade from my Neo Plat2 9500 softmod. Wanted some more graphics punch.

Anyway, I'm having a couple problems.
1.I'm getting post code 50 when I have my USB KVM switch and a standard keyboard hooked up. ANyone know what the deal is with that? I can continue to boot if I remove my USB KVM cable. ANy insight here?
2.I'm trying to reload WinXp on dual 80gig Seagate drives. Now, I have the latest drivers on floppy and I load them during specify additional drivers. The setup continues on until I get to Starting windows.... then, all of a sudden the motherboard reboots. Now, when I don't specify additional drivers, I get all the way through to the partition screen etc. but then my RAID 0 array is not available.

One item of note. I am using a Antec 550w Atx PSU with a 20-24 adapter.

Any thougts? BTW, this ram has been gooc for months but I'm checking it now with memtest just in case.
Thanks

 

[Gleo]

Ok new drivers helped with step 2. Now I just have to figure out what is up with problem 1

 

[GadgetBuilder]

Originally posted by: Akash
i have a seagate ST3160827AS drive (basic sata 160 drive with NCQ) and the chaintech bios wont detect the drive for the life of it.. any ideas please help.. though reading the forum i have a newer board with the hsf on the northbridge

Hi Akash,

I have a Seagate ST380817AS SATA drive on my older VNF4 (passive chip cooler) and it works fine with the original BIOS, I haven't tried updating the BIOS yet. Although my drive has NCQ, I turned it off based on problems reported on some other NF4 systems (plus NCQ may reduce disk performance in single user systems).

Does your disk spin up? Is it recognized in BIOS at all?

 

[feelingshorter]

Anyone knows how to set the PCIE 16x/PCI bus on the vnf4 ultra board to not go up with the FSB (HT)? Or does it do that automaticaly. I got latest bios andeverything but i keep getting errors on prime 95 when trying to overclock a mere 200mhz on my winnie 3000.

 

[Gusdawg]

This is a repost of what I said in the Venice Overclocking thread...

-=General Info=-
CPU Model Number: ADA3200DAA4BP
CPU Code: LBBLE 0515APAW

-=System Info=-
Motherboard: CHAINTECH VNF4 ULTRA
BIOS Revision: 3.0 (3/15/05)
Memory: 2x512 Corsair Value Select PC3200 DDR400 2.5-3-3-8 1T
PSU: 420 Watt Turbolink LC-A420ATX, stock with ASPIRE X-Dreamer 2 case
Cooling Type, Brand, Model: Air, AMD Retail CPU HSF

-=Stable OC Info=-
Max Stable OC: 2736 MHz (42C Max Under load)
Prime95 Blend Test: Manually Halted after 28 Hours and 10 minutes
HTT and Multiplier Used: 304 * 9
Actual VCore: 1.45V (I set 1.45 cpu-z shows 1.44)
CPU Temp in BIOS (Idle): N/A
CPU Temp in OS (Idle): 30C
CPU Temp Under Load: 42C

Even though 2736 is rock solid, I plan on running 2754 since everything but Prime95 Torturetests works just fine.

The powersupply I have does undervolt quite a bit (11.52 on the 12 volt line, 2.82 on the 2.9 for ram!), The ram cant handle prime95 more than six hours over 222.5MHz at 2.9v. CPU temp isnt bad, The AMD retail HSF does the job nicely... can use better case cooling though. Under load the CPU reaches the case temperature and stabilizes (42C). I am confident I could get more out of this CPU with additional voltage options on the motherboard. I need faster ram to really take advantage of the 10x multiplier. My next task is to find the fastest working memory settings since I have to settle for 196 MHz ram speed if I want max cpu speed.

 

[arcanej]

One problem and one question:

First, I can't get my dvd-rom to work properly with this board. While XP will recognize the drive, I get an error every time I try to open a cd (if they cd has auto-run on it, I get an error along the lines of "is not a valid win32 application"). I've reformatted and made sure that I am using NTFS so I don't know why I would get a win32 error. I can only install programs on this computer right now through my usb drive or online.

Second, how do I update the bios with the bin files available on Chaintech?

 

[GadgetBuilder]

What optical drive are you using? Have you checked for updates to its firmware? Optical drives are ATAPI so most of the intelligence is in their firmware.

Windows' ATAPI driver should work fine if the drive's firmware is OK so there is a possibility of a drive hardware problem; has this drive worked OK previously?


Info on how to flash the Chaintech bios:
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=373815

 

[Akash]

i just got a 300gb same seagate drive.. the drive isnt reconized at all in the bios..
hopefully the seagate disk is bootable so i can turn off ncq on the drives