Chaintech NF4, board installed!

Hi guys! Been having trouble with my account so I registered this one until it can be sorted... phew feels good to be back. Anyways.... before the beta bios I could only do 225 bios but with clockgen I could chug along at 270 no problems. 270*10 is the max of my newcastle on air (pretty damn good I think). I was going to get around to dropping the multi to max out the board but haven't been in a rush as *9 will undoubtedly leave my cpu below 2.7GHz unless my new GSKill LE's can do 300. :) But now I have this beta to try. I will be reporting!

I hope the timings stick. You know I had to change tRCD with ntune all the time, but only clockgen would let me go from 225->270 so I had to use BOTH! ARGHH! Hopefully both the timings stick and I can get more HTT loving straight from the BIOS. Wish I had more to report, I guess I was just busting to post again! There's no place like home.

oh yeah, don't set trcd or else board goes wack, leave at auto and change by A64 tweaker should u choose to do so.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JNav89GT

no prob,
Yeah! I have an XP-120, good sink but doens't fit on the chaintech, does fit on the Gigabyte NF4 4x though

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Too bad about that... It is a SWEET looking HSF, but I was wondering about those caps. I may try and see if an xp-90 would work, where the 120 will not.

it's not an issue of the heatsink not clearing, it's the clips not being able to latch as the mount borders right on the caps and there is no room for the clips to go

Just checked the tracking number and my review sample come on the 25th I will et you all know what I initally get on air with the stock bios as it seems not all are limited to 220HTT.

~Bob

Well 300 at 1:1 seems to run ok except the onboard NIC is junk and wont run well even at 250. Oh well. Here's a screenie, enjoy all, board isn't bad for the price and hopefully chaintech bios will get a bit better. Overall, thumbs up chaintech for getting bios worked on. Too bad it didin't happen sooner b/c alot of boards would have been sold :O

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JNav89GT

Too bad it didin't happen sooner b/c alot of boards would have been sold :O

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I thought all the boards were sold. :D

Hey,

Just some general questions about this mobo.

Whats included in the bundle for cables and stuff? (How many,etc.)

And does it come with the rounded IDE cables?

And whats the onboard sound like on this, is it ok for gaming with 2.1 Speakers or Headphones.

Thanks!

erm no rounded cables. very basic one IDE cable and floppy cable. Maybe a SATA cable too. No manual printed, comes on CD, there is a sheet of paper or two to show you how to hook up mobo headers.

I dunno what I did, but last night my benches really started to take a performance hit. I'm loosing 200-300mb/sec in Sandra at same exact fsb and timings as before and my 3D scores are way off. I will clear cmos tonight and see if that helps :O

Ugh... messed the bios on a rig I'm selling. After this headache I decided to order a saviour and resume my care-free flash flash flash attitude in "4 to 5 business days."

I cleared bios and performance was same. I reinstalled vid card driver and all was better again :O. Dunno what I did, but I'm a pro at breaking stuff :).

Anyway, this is a good budget NF4 board. I applaud chaintech for putting out the beta bios to us. I wish it had come a bit sooner as this was first NF4 ultra board to come out, but floundered in performance b/c of bios limits etc.... Now it is solid, only fix required is the NIC gets wacky at High HTT speeds. Other than that great board!

Also, update!
I can run 3d totally stable with this setup for 24/7 looping 3dmark 2k1 or 2k3. This winchester was not stable on all but one MSI K8N Neo2(which died) at these speeds. I hope these NF4 cure some of the "my winchester memory controller sux" problems

more 300+ HTT 1:1 action with G.Skill LA kit :)

so when will the nic get fixed? or will it every get fixed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by trans am

OUCH> try windows 2k and see if it fixes the install problem texas pete had, unless you need winxp for review purposes, I understand.



What? you need to reset the cmos every time if you oc too high? that's bad..
Have you tried switching the psu switch directly and waiting 30 seconds?

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on a related note, what sli boards have this feature. Im pretty sure the asus doesnt, and the gigabyte does, but have no clue about the dfi or msi.
its an important deature to me cause i am sensitive to dust, and cant go into my case alot.

Hey,

So does the NIC only get screwed up when you try to overclock? Like would it be fine if no overclocking as I dont plan too?

And is there any fan that will fit right over the heatsink and bolt right on?

My board is running 270HTT with no NIC problems on orginal bios (clockgen). JNav is hitting higher so I dont know if thats it. I recently hosed the bios on my infinity so I am waiting for a BIOS savior before trying the beta on my main rig. Anyways, well first off no OC is boring :p, but you will surely not have NIC problems.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ronin

Hey,

So does the NIC only get screwed up when you try to overclock? Like would it be fine if no overclocking as I dont plan too?

And is there any fan that will fit right over the heatsink and bolt right on?

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I have heard reports from some folks on other forums I browse (anandtech) that the NIC can go nuts above 250HTT, BUT I have been running mine at 300HTT for several days now without a problem... I HAVE added a fan to my chipset's heatsink tho, so if the NIC is run off of the chipset (and I think it is) then maybe they are overheating the chipset, and the NIC is the first place they see problems.

Nice... so soon. And after some bad luck, I ordered a Bios saviour and am ready to join the party!

tHANKS JIM, HERE IT IS everyone! just click the link and then click download..
http://www.freefilestorage.net/view....21VN210126.zip

see above post. it's done! see if it works.

I'll give it a go tonight

Only problems I had with other beta was the nic
and also when cold booting sometimes it would default to oc safe mode, I would just need to enter bios and hit F10 to save/exit and was fine

So is this more alpha-ish than the last beta?.... just wondering because it's not on the chaintech site. Been a long time since I even flashed my BIOS in DOS. Those windows utilities worked well for me. Ah well, if I can do it to my VC's I can do it to my board.

I should give it a whirl too. I keep beating around the bush. I am back in NY now, so I should be able to play later, you know i still have to spend time with the lady, before jumping on motherboards. I want to spend time with her. It's been a while ;)
I also got some LA's to play with. will see if they are as good as jnav's

new bios broke the 1T/2T command option in bios, have to use A64 tweaker to set 1T
Otherwise the bios seems ok in the limited testing I have done so far. I am trying the onboard nic again and seems better, but can't say it's fixed yet.