Chaintech
ZNF3-150: Built with the nVidia nForce3 150 chipset, the Chaintech
Zenith ZNNF3-150 is a socket 754 Athlon64 motherboard with a few tricks up its'
sleeves. For starters, Chaintech have added a unique MOSFET cooling system
called "RadEX" which utilizes an aluminum heatsink in conjunction with a
heatpipe. RadEX keep the on board powersupply IC's cool, and hence lowers the
temperature of adjacent components. MOSFETs can get rather hot in a modern
motherboard, and while there is no performance benefit or penalty for them
operating at a specific temp, there are peripheral advantages. MOSFETs are
soldered to the PCB, and can actually used the copper trace as a heatsink to
maintain operational temperature ranges. Removing this heat to outside the case
through the RadEX cooling system lessons the degree of heat energy imparted to
adjacent board mounted components. To be fair it is gimmicky, but at least
Chaintech's RadEX is slightly more useful than Abit's ducted cooling system.
The Chaintech ZNF3-150
features 800MHz FSB, DDR400 support, AGP8x, a 7.1 channel VIA Envy 24PT audio
system, GbE LAN, ATA133, firewire, and SATA150 RAID.
DFI K8
ALI: DFI had plenty of K8 Athlon64 motherboards to show off, but none
of them will be available for some time, probably not until January of 2004.
This conservative outlook on the Athlon64 motherboard market is derived from
the short supply of A64 processors this quarter, and the immanent changes to the
socket 940 Athlon64 FX processor which will effectively create a Intel
Willamette Socket 423 like situation (ie. the A64FX is already has an obsolete
upgrade path). The DFI K8 Ali is one of very few socket 754 Athlon64
motherboards based upon the Ali M1687 / M1563 chipsets which are
essentially the AMD reference design manufactured under licence. The board
operates at 800MHz FSB and features DDR400 support (just two DIMMs), ATA133,
Serial ATA, USB2.0, 10/100 LAN and 6 channel AC'97 audio.
DFI K8 VIA: The nVidia NF3
chipset isn't as popular as the NF2 was with K8 motherboard makers, so it is no
surprise to find that the DFI K8 VIA is based upon the VIA K8T800 and VT8237
chipsets. The socket 754 Athlon64 motherboard operates at 800MHZ FSB, and
features DDR400 support, ATA133, SATA Raid, USB2.0, 6 channel Audio, and 10/100
Ethernet.