Chaintech is continuing its strategy aimed on the return back into the glorious times of its 6BTM (experienced computer hardware geeks definitely know what Chaintech 6BTM used to be) with its new mainboards. Sources close to the company reported about Chaintech Zenith ZNF3-150 mainboard with terrific bundle and some capabilities “borrowed” from other mainboard makers. The mainboard will be intended for Socket 754 Athlon 64 CPUs and powered by an NVIDIA core-logic.

Chaintech Zenith ZNF3-150 mainboard will be based on NVIDIA nForce3 chipset, will have Gigabit Ethernet support, 7.1 channel audio, FireWire, Serial ATA-150 RAID and other features provided by the high-end mainboards nowadays. In order to cool down the regulators that supply power to the Athlon 64 processor Chaintech will introduce a special thermal exhaust system – originally introduced by ABIT – branded as RadEX (Revolutionary Active Direct EXhaust).

Even though the idea of exhausting heat outside the computer case belongs to ABIT, who introduced its OTES for graphics cards a year ago, Chaintech made some tangible improvements to this solution by utilizing a modern technology, namely, heat-pipes.

Being made from heat-conductive material, the RadEX heat-pipe contains fluid in its special vacuum tubes. You may learn the principles of its functioning from the scheme:

A – Heat transfers into the heat-pipe;
B – Liquid turns to vapor and flows from the hot side to the cold side;
C – The cold side cools the liquid down with the fan and…
D – …Liquid returns to the hot side of the pipe.

The specifications on the mainboard are as follows:

• Supports Socket 754 AMD Athlon 64 processors;
• NVIDIA nForce3 150 core-logic;
• 3 DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC2100, PC2700 or PC3200 DDR SDRAM;
• 5 PCI, 1 CMR (Chaintech Multimedia Riser) and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• 2-channel integrated ATA-33/66/100/133 controller;
• 1 additional ATA-33/66/100/133 port;
• 4 Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID support;
• 10/100/1000Mb/s Ethernet adapter from Broadcom;
• 6 USB 2.0 ports;
• 3 FireWire (IEEE1394) ports;
• Integrated AC`97 8-channel VIA ENVY 24PTaudio solution with S/PDIF connector;
• Loads of additional functions and technologies from Chaintech;
• Probably, some overclocking and tuning functions;
• ATX Form-factor.

Chaintech also bundles a CBOX3 3.5” panel that provides USB 2.0, FireWire ports and six-in-one card reader. Besides, Chaintech provides a special Multimedia Card for its CMR slot for easier connectivity.

Since nForce3 150 does not support too many additional I/O functions, as I said before, Chaintech’s ZNF3-150 has loads of external controllers onboard in order to proved all those cutting-edge functionality. The same happens to other mainboards utilizing NVIDIA’s nForce3 150 core-logic for Socket 754

Pricing and availability of the ZNF3-150 were not touched upon.