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| Packaging |
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The first thing you notice when the board arrives is the sheer size of the
box. It’s HUGE! I don’t mean, “That’s a big box”
huge, I mean “Crap, I hope I ordered just one!” huge. What on
earth would they need all that room for? Well, they’ve actually stuffed
the box with more goodies than a decent Halloween haul. We’re talking
rounded cables, remotes, screwdrivers, card readers, optic cables, faceplates…
everything! It’s like an early Christmas when you open this thing;
alright enough with the holiday references. My point is Chaintech really
does try to provide everything you could possibly need to troubleshoot,
monitor and enjoy your new motherboard.
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The most notable extras are the screwdriver, rounded cables, Cbox3 and the
Handigator. Chaintech is the first motherboard manufacturer to supply rounded
cables with their product. I don’t know why; it almost seems like
a given nowadays, but my hat goes off to them for paving the way and going
that extra mile. Speaking of extra miles, they’ve also made a habit
out of including little gifts such as the screwdriver with the Ultra Zenith.
It’s a handy little thing that stores away in pen form, but can easily
be rearranged into one of four common screwdriver bits as seen below.
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Now we get to the Cbox3, I must say this is one welcome addition in my home.
The Cbox3 includes your standard front port fare, 1 firewire port, two USB
ports, and two audio for headset and mic. That’s not all though, they’ve
also include a Digidoc system display to show both boot codes and processor
temps. I can’t remember how many times I’ve gone searching through
countless books trying to recall what beeeeep beeeeep beep beep means, just
to find out I haven’t seated the ram correctly. Things are much easier
to troubleshoot when you can simply check the error code on the digidoc
and refer back to the old post error code list in the manual. Then we have
the 6in1 card reader. What a blessing! I’ve always been hesitant to
pull images off my compactflash cards as my camera doesn’t allow me
to move them back onto the card if I should ever want to. Now with the built
in card reader, I just pop in any of my memory cards and proceed to do just
about anything I want to that sucker. It’s very helpful for organizing
pictures while still being able to access them through my camera.
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Last but not least we have the Handigator. Now this little thing is pretty
cool; not only does it have all your standard remote functions, but it also
includes dedicated buttons for power, email, www, WinDVD and internet functions.
You can even control the mouse using the large toggle button in the center.
The only downside I encountered is that it is IR and not RF. This means
that I have to have the remote pointed directly at the CBOX in order for
it to function. This can cause quite a dilemma on systems with front doors
such as my Antec. Lucky for me, the IR signal seems to pass right through
the 5.6 inch LCD screen I have mounted in the door, otherwise I’d
be SOL. So who out there’s thinking “that would look terrible
in my aluminum or beige case”? Well I told you they’ve include
everything you could possibly need didn’t I? The Cbox3 also comes
with three replaceable faceplates in black, beige and aluminum to make sure
everyone is equally pleased.
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