Before you even opening the box you can't help
but be impressed with design. This is probably one of the classiest
motherboard boxes I can remember seeing with its combination
of matt and gloss black and primarily yellow highlights. Okay
so I sound like some fashion or art wannabe but I really do
like the classy look it gives off even down to its plastic carrying
handle. It's also a large box.....and it needs to be!
Flip open the lid and the first thing to greet
you is a large, folded poster style manual ideal for the more
experienced user to get stuck straight in.
Meanwhile under this resides the board itself.
Even through the obligatory antistatic bag it looks good and
believe me I'm not easily won over by flash looks. Flash looks
are usually added to try to help mask the fact that the product
is crap! We'll see later if that's the case with the Apogee.
Lift out the board and nestled underneath is the
first of the Easter eggs, a "Body Theater" earphone
set, a comprehensive and very well detailed user guide and an
installation CD. We're not finished yet though....oh no!
Lift out the card motherboard tray and there,
behind the trap doors, secret corridors and hidden flaps you'll
also bag yourself a full set (2xIDE, 1xFDD) of rounded IDE cables,
Chaintech's CBOX™ 3.5" USB/audio port replicator and a
full installation of THIZ Linux.
Even though I've opened more motherboard boxes
than I care to deliberately remember Chaintech have done their
work on the psychology of the buyer. They could hove thrown
everything in the bottom of the box and left it at that but
instead it almost becomes an adventure, wondering what you're
about to find under the next flap or panel. I knew what was
in there but it was still a seriously refreshing change from
the usual procedure of fishing out the board, manual and installation
CD.
Body
Theater™
CHAINTECH’s exclusive “Body Theater™” provides you the true
personal experience of surround sound with XeaR technology
brought to you by C-Media!
A Combination of XeaR
and C3D technology, gives you simulated 6 channel sound
to stimulate your PC!
The ultimate enjoyment
of surround sound with custom designed light-weight
headphones only by CHAINTECH!
A simple installation
and calibration lets you ROCK n’ ROLL in a few clicks
Thiz
Linux
CHAINTECH and THIZ Group team up to offer you the latest
THIZ LINUX bundle with fully built-in applications!
THIZ Office Suite,
a complete set of office tools lets you work with
most of MS Office documents!
Enhanced multimedia
functions which record and play MP3, MAV, Audio CD,
VCD, and even create a CD at your finger tips!
Easy-to-install,
network capable, and most of all, MULTILANGUAGE
Round Cable
World’s first “Round Cable”
bundle brought to you by CHAINTECH, an innovative streamliner
ribbon cable provides better overall system stability
and neatness.
Clutter-free
for easy installation!
Improved
air flow inside of your system chassis!
Matching
color lightens up your PC!
CBOX™
Are you frustrated with
the difficulty to reach for those annoying ports behind
your computer? CHAINTECH’s exclusive front panel – “CBOX™”
fits in any 3 1/2” drive bay and brings all of your most
frequently used ports to the FRONT!!!
Easy
to install in any standard 31/2” drive bay in just minutes!
Four
USB ports support the latest USB 2.0 that’s 40 times
faster than before!
Plug
in your headphone and microphone right at the front,
trouble FREE!
The rounded cables look to be very good quality
and they held up well in testing under HDTach coming in a couple
of points behind the Akasa cables and a touch faster than a
standard IDE cable. I know people say there's no performance
advantage to rounded cables but the results don't lie, we consistently
see faster HDD benchmarks on rounded cables than we do on ribbon.
The Body Theater™
ear phones are very futuristic looking but in all honesty they're
not too beefy on the sound and they're a touch uncomfortable
after prolonged use. For somebody who doesn't own a good set
of ear or headphones they're a great inclusion and they're certainly
easy to slip in to a pocket for the trip to your next LAN party
but there are a lot of people who'll simply never use them.
CBOX™ on the other hand
is a terrific little port replicator. To begin with it uses
a 3.5" form factor so at last we have something to stuff
in that second FDD bay. It's also very well made and by that
I don't mean it's hand carved from ivory, I mean it looks and
feels sturdy unlike some of the front bay mounted accessories
you can buy. The four USB ports feel tight and precise and you
also get a microphone and headphone socket. There's even a bag
of mini cable ties to keep the cable tidy as you route it through
to the audio and USB headers. My single gripe is that the cables
may be a touch short on some cases, particularly those rare
beasts that house the floppy bay quite high up. On my Antec
Black Dragon full tower things looked touch and go for a while
but actually with a bit of routing it wasn't as bad as I'd feared.
