The PC Perspective Podcast is your weekly stop for the latest PC tech news and reviews! Give it a listen!

Summary

Chaintech is one of the first (and only) to offer a motherboard based on the NVIDIA nForce3 150 chipset for the Athlon 64 platform.  Why this is can be looked at from a lot of different angles, but the short of it is, should you buy this board?

There are a lot of features on the ZNF3-150 motherboard including:

1. Gigabit LAN
2. 7.1 Channel audio
3. 4 Serial ATA Channels with RAID
4. Firewire and USB2.0 support
5. CBox3 - 5.25" front bay device for easy connections
6. Box of goodies - includes rounded cables, thermal paste, a screwdriver and more

The only feature that perhaps is less than wanted is an additional cooling device called the "Radex" that cools stability devies for the motherboard.  Read the detailed review for a explanation on that one...

The performance of the Chaintech ZNF3-150 is on par with the other Athlon 64 motherboards, as we would expect with the on-die memory controller of the Athlon 64 processors.   This 3D Mark 2001 benchmark sums it up quite nicely:

Gamers could go for either the NVIDIA or VIA chipset and their gaming experience will still be great. 

Though in our Winstone tests the Chaintech board did show a bit more performance than the other two boards.

Pricing is one area where Chaintech is usually hurt - their Zenith line usually goes for $160+ price range, as the ZNF3-150 does as well.  This might put a hurt in your wallet and the included extras may not be enough to cover it -- if so, look elsewhere for a cheaper K8 solution.

Overall, the Chaintech board does a bang up job for putting together a complete solution motherboard bundle and though the NVIDIA nForce3 150 chipset lacks features compared to the competing VIA K8T800, their motherboard does not due to their additions.

Read on for a more detailed look at this motherboard.

Click here for the Detailed Review