Chaintech 60JV2 i815E Motherboard

by Adrian Wong

 

 






The Chipset Cooler

Chaintech also attached a heatsink to i815E's Memory Controller Hub (MCH). However, it's a rather thin heatsink with no fan attached. It may not provide adequate cooling for hardcore overclocking purposes but it's better than none!

Still, I wish Chaintech would refrain from using hard glue to fix the heatsink to the MCH. A contact in the motherboard industry once told me that they try not to use hard glue because the heatsinks have a tendency to fall off when the heat goes up!
      

    

 

 

 

 


  
       

A spring-clip solution would be better, especially if they use some thermal grease as well. Even if Chaintech don't want to spend money on thermal grease, the spring-clip solution would have allowed hardcore overclockers to remove the heatsink and applied their own coat of thermal grease to the MCH.

    
     

Chaintech 3BIOS

Chaintech is one of the few manufacturers providing a dual BIOS solution for their motherboards. However, Chaintech claims that their 3BIOS solution is actually more than just the standard dual BIOS solution provided by other manufacturers.

The 3BIOS supposedly stands for the three features it supports :-

  • Write protection for the Flash BIOS
  • Embedded Flash utility
  • Peer-to-per dual BIOS functionality

Chaintech also states that with their 3BIOS technology, the two BIOS are independent, full-function BIOS and not just used in a master-slave configuration like rival dual BIOS technologies.

This allows for faster booting in the event of a BIOS failure because each BIOS is independent and can be selected at will. You can also flash each BIOS chip with a different BIOS version for troubleshooting purposes or for different operating systems.

Finally, Chaintech also includes a HDD Instant Recovery utility in the BIOS that makes recovering from a hard disk failure faster and easier. However, because the motherboard was dead, I cannot verify if any of their claims are true, especially the hard disk recovery utility... but I must say if it works, it would really be a useful utility. :)

    
    

The Audio Chip

For those of you who are not interested in spending extra money on a separate sound card, you will be happy to know that the 60JV2 also comes with an audio chip for basic audio capabilities.

It won't be any Sound Blaster Live! but for no frills use, it should be more than enough. But if you ever find the capabilities of this audio chip wanting, you can always turn it off and use a separate audio card instead.

      
     

Jumpers

Although the 60JV2 still uses jumpers, Chaintech has made it easier on the user by using jumpers with flexible extensions. Now, you don't have to use tweezers or pliers to get those jumper out!

The jumpers are also coloured for easier identification so you don't have to go searching for them. All in all, while it isn't as easy as jumper-less solution, at least Chaintech is making it less painful. :)

 

  
 

 

  
     
   

 

  
   

 
     
 

                   

 
   

 

  
 
Last Updated 11-07-2001

All trademarks used are properties of their respective owners.
Copyright © 1998-2000 Adrian Wong. All rights reserved.

  
Visit the new Tech ARP @ http://www.techarp.com/ !