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During
Installation........
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The folks at Chaintech have done their homework in regards to the component
placement on the SK8T800. The way the capacitors surrounding the CPU socket are
arranged leave a very skim amount of clearance between them and the Swiftech
MCX-6400V once it's installed.
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Same thing
goes for the DDR sockets as well. The fins of the MCX-6400V come very
close to the heat spreaders on the Corsair TwinX 1024-3200XL PRO. One thing to
keep in mind here, the Corsair PRO series of DDR have activity LEDs in the heat
spreader which do increase the height of the RAM module on the motherboard.
Into the BIOS..........
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The
Phoenix Award BIOS is used on the Chaintech SK8T800 and has the usual menu
settings and functions. One BIOS function that is missing is a Hardware Monitor,
leaving no way to monitor CPU/System temperatures or double check voltage
levels. This isn't because the option just isn't' available in the menu, its'
because the motherboard has no in-place sensors. Once Windows was up and
running, Motherboard Monitor among other hardware testing/monitoring tools was
not able to read any voltage level or find any temperature sensors.
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The
Standard CMOS features offer this typical solution of handling multiple drives
connected in OTHER than a RAID array. With multiple hard drives connected across
both the Parallel and Serial ATA connectors, it will be necessary to identify
WHICH hard drive to boot from in the Advanced chipset menu. The Advanced Chipset
menu also gives users the option of enabling the RAID functions of the board in
either a RAID-0 or RAID-1 configuration.
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I realize
that not every motherboard that rolls off of a production line is done so with
the intent of being An Overclocker. In the BIOS Frequency/Voltage control menu,
there are only three settings. The CPU Clock is the bull's-eye for the
jump-right-in Overclocker but unfortunately there are no supporting features
here to help maximize overclocking success. Prime ingredients such as CPU and
Memory voltage are essential to high-scale overclocking and are missing on the
SK8T800. Obviously, this board is aimed at OEM and entry-level users who have no
intent to Overclock their system to an enthusiast level, but do have the option
to apply a slightly higher CPU Front Side Bus, from 200-233 (in one MHz
intervals) keeping in mind that the board has no AGP/PCI lock.
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The DRAM
configuration menu holds settings that will allow a fair degree performance
optimization. These are very basic settings that even the most anti-overclocking
computer users should find comfort with and bring tweaking into their own
vocabulary. With the many different RAM manufacturers suggesting different
timing optimizations based upon chipset selection, settings such as this are
vital to guarantee 100% compatibility.
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