Design is very much a subjective thing but I rather
like what Chaintech have done with the 7VJL. As I mentioned
earlier I'm not someone who buys for looks before performance
but if we have both here in one package then I for one will
be happy. The actual PCB is a dark brown colour rather like
you'll find on Creative's sound cards. The six PCI slots, IDE
and floppy connectors and RAM slots are all yellow and it's
a stark yellow at that. If I could change anything I'd probably
make the yellow a little more orange and less striking but it
still works well for me.
Click For a Larger Image
The North Bridge cooling of of the passive variety
(no fan) and is achieved with a fairly large gold coloured sink
on top of which is a gold coloured embellishment (for want of
a better word). It's purely decorative but again it does add
to that unique look. The ATX power connector is well positioned
alongside the DIMM slots (top left in the photo below).
Click For a Larger Image
The gold theme is even carried over to the rear
connectors which for the record feature an RJ45.
We've come to expect it these days but even so
it's reassuring to see a three phase power circuit used.
It's not really an essential but I'd have liked
to see a dab of thermal grease under the North Bridge sink.
I only really removed it to confirm the stepping and unsurprisingly
it's a "CE". Needless to say a quick squirt of Nanotherm
was applied before the sink went back on.
The South Bridge is the regular "CD"
revision VT8325. You can actually get a more accurate idea of
the PCB colour from these two photos.
The socket clearance is really not that great
with one or two capacitors straying a little close. The socket
is also rotated with the lugs located towards the board edge
which can be a mixed blessing. In my case it made our SLK-800
a real bitch to fit due to the clip being close to the underside
of the PSU but unlike on the Epox 8K3A+ it left enough room
to reposition the fan clips in-situ afterwards. The four HSF
mounting holes remain as you can no doubt see.
And just to prove they've left no stone unturned
the few jumpers that are onboard are of the extended variety,
something I've been whining about for way too long now.
Along with three fan headers and an AGP retention
mechanism what we have is a very well considered layout that
should please most users. As with just about all 6 PCI slot
boards you'll need to remove most of the longer graphics cards
to add or remove memory which can be a bind.
The functionality matches the looks and so far
things look promising. Let's take a poke around in the BIOS.
