Whatever will they bundle next?
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Chaintech's Zenith 9EJS1 was able to distance itself from the rest of the 845PE-based competition thanks to its complete complement of peripherals and its imaginative bundle. Now that nearly everybody is stacking boards with peripherals and bundled extras, Chaintech's new Canterwood-based Zenith 9CJS must raise the bar again. To stay ahead of the pack, the 9CJS must set a new standard for integrated peripherals, bundled extras, and it must continue to offer competitive performance—a tall order indeed.
To combat its high-end, enthusiast-oriented competition, Chaintech armed the Zenith 9CJS with VIA's 7.1-channel Envy24PT audio controller, a 5.25" drive bay port panel/card reader/remote control, and support for overclocked front-side bus speeds up to 1600MHz. Can this board and its slick package of extra goodies set the standard for Canterwood-based motherboards? We'll find out.
The specs
Like most high-end motherboards, the Zenith 9CJS is packed with features. Check it out:
| CPU support | Socket 478-based Intel Pentium 4 processors |
| Form factor | ATX |
| Chipset | Intel "Canterwood" 875P |
| North bridge | Intel 875P |
| South bridge | Intel ICH5R |
| Interconnect | Intel Accelerated Hub (266MB/sec) |
| PCI slots | 5 32-bit/33MHz |
| AGP slots | 1, 4X/8X AGP (1.5V only) |
| AMR/CNR slots | None |
| Memory | 4 184-pin DIMM sockets Maximum of 4GB of DDR400/333/266 SDRAM with ECC |
| Storage I/O | Floppy disk 2 channels ATA/100 |
| Serial ATA | 2 channels Serial ATA 150 via ICH5R south bridge |
| RAID | Serial ATA RAID 0 support via ICH5R south bridge |
| Legacy ports | 1 PS/2 keyboard, 1 PS/2 mouse, Serial and Parallel ports |
| USB | 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports 2 additional USB 2.0/1.1 ports via CBOX drive bay insert |
| Firewire | 3 ports IEEE 1394 Firewire via VIA VT6306 Firewire controller |
| Audio | 8-channel audio via Envy24PT/VT1616 codec analog front, surround, rear, and center outputs front-mounted CBOX mic and headphone ports |
| Video | None |
| Ethernet | 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet via Intel CSA GbE controller 10/100 Fast Ethernet via Realtek RTL8101L |
| BIOS | Award |
| Bus speeds | FSB: 200-400MHz in 1MHz increments DRAM: 266, 333, and 400MHz |
| Bus dividers | None |
| Voltages | CPU: 1.5375-1.6750 in 0.025V increments DRAM: default, +0.1, 0.2, 0.3V AGP: default, +0.1, 0.2, 0.3V |
| Monitoring | Voltage, fan status, and temperature monitoring |
When it comes to features, the Zenith 9CJS gets a check mark next to all the important boxes. There's no integrated video, which is to be expected from a high-end offering, but on-board audio, Serial ATA, RAID, Firewire, and dual Ethernet ports all make appearances. I'll be going over each of the 9CJS's integrated peripherals in detail in a moment. First, let's check out the layout of the board itself.
