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The feature of the 7NJS once again lives up to the “Zenith” name.
The I/O configuration is
pretty standard fare for a high end motherboard. There are 2 PS/2 ports, a
parallel port, 2 serial ports, a game port, a single LAN port, 2 USB 2.0
ports, and 3 jacks for onboard sound.
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Serial ATA support is provided by the
onboard Promise PDC20376 controller. This controller can drive 2 separate
Serial ATA devices. It also has the capability of providing RAID 0/1 for
standard IDE drives.
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The 3rd IDE connector provides power
users the ability to drive more IDE devices (6) than is the norm. In
addition to the 2 rear USB 2.0 ports, there are 2 additional headers
onboard that can be accessed for a total of 6 USB 2.0 ports courtesy of
the ICS 1893Y-10 chip.
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Firewire is supported through an ACR slot and a firewire riser card which
is included in the hardware bundle. The ACR slot also supports modem,
audio, LAN, or Dolby AC3 Decoder.
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Onboard audio is provided by C-Media’s audio controller, the CMI 8738 HRTF,
delivering 6 channel sound. Once again Chaintech provides all the
necessary hardware necessary to maximize the user’s experience.
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As a side note, the use of the CMI audio controller is somewhat of a
disappointment. We would have expected the use of the more robust nForce2
APU which features “SoundStorm” technology. According to Chaintech,
licensing discussions are underway, but not yet finalized at this time.
The board is well laid out with the possible exception of the ATX
connector. The potential for the PSU’s wires to interfere with the
heatsink/fan is there. Some care should be exercised.
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In addition to the ACR slot, expansion is
provided by way of 5 PCI slots and a universal AGP slot (with AGP lock)
that will accommodate 4X and 8X AGP. Power users will be glad to
know that the 7NJS includes mounting holes around the CPU socket. There is
sufficient space around the socket area to accommodate the largest
heatsinks and water blocks on the market.
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Another plus for the power user is the use
of a heatsink/fan combination to cool the 7NJS’ Northbridge. Overclocking
(especially overclocking by way of very high FSB speeds) will produce
excessive heat on the Northbridge, which will adversely impact system
stability. One word of caution though; the HSF provided does not have any
thermal interface material applied between it and the chip. Chaintech does
provide a tube of thermal paste, and we do encourage you to use it or some
other thermal interface material of your choice, such as the Arctic Silver
compound we used.
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The 7NJS has 3 184 pin DDR DIMM slots,
accommodating up to 3GB total memory.
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