..:: Introduction ::..

As with the recent and continuing trend, today we’ll be evaluating a motherboard from a new manufacturer, Chaintech. For quite some time, Chaintech wasn’t the most popular enthusiast supplier, and weren’t unto popular with the performance crowd. Chaintech succeeded in building solid, reliable products, but it wasn’t too long ago that they came onto the scene in a big way with their Zenith and Apogee mainboard product lines. These boards offered stellar aesthetics, performance, overclocking, and weren’t too hard on the pocketbook to boot. The Chaintech Apogee A865PE motherboard is on our review list today, and it will be the last of the Apogee line. Chaintech will soon be replacing the Apogee series with the new Zenith Value Edition products. This new product line will offer fewer accessories to keep pricing down, and to satisfy the enthusiast users looking for cheap, solid overclocking without the extra bells and whistles.

..:: Chaintech A865PE Specifications ::..

Processor

• Supports Intel Socket 478 CPU with Hyper-Threading Technology
• Supports Intel Pentium4/Celeron system bus at 400/533/800MHz
• Supports Intel Prescott CPU

Chipset

• North Bridge : Intel 865PE
• South Bridge : Intel ICH5-R
• LAN Chip : Realtek RTL8100C
• Audio Codec : C-Media CMI9739A
• I/O Chip: ITE 8712

Memory

• 4 DDR DIMM 184-Pin Slots
• DDR400/333/DDR266 DDR SDRAM

Expansion Slots

• 1 x AGP 4X/8X
• 5 x PCI
• 1 x CMR
• 2 x UDMA/133/100/66
• 1 x FDD
• 2 x SATA
• 4 x USB 2.0

Back Panel I/O Ports

• 1 x Parallel, 2 x Serial
• 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
• 1 x Audio I/O (Line In, Line Out, Mic In)
• 4 x USB 2.0, 1 x RJ-45 Port

Other Features

• Value Pack 2003 Software
• Apogee Overclocking Utility