Chaintech SUMMIT SKT600 Motherboard - Articles / Reviews

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Chaintech SUMMIT SKT600 Motherboard

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Nicholas Hart
Kurtis
Chaintech
Jul. 29, 2004

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Board Layout and Features

The SKT600 is a rather unassuming board with its brown PCB and low-profile black chipset cooler. The corners of the board are rounded somewhat which seems to be some kind of new fad. As the name suggests, the northbridge used is the VIA KT600 which will accommodate any Socket A Athlon XP or Duron you care to throw at it. The board will also accept up to 3GB of memory but, unfortunately, does not support dual-channel mode. A VIA 8237 southbridge is used providing ATA-133 support and, more importantly, two SATA ports. No RAID function is available but recent tests on various websites declare such a feature to have a negligible effect on performance anyway. And since this is a budget board, who wants the extra cost of a second hard drive?

The PCI slots are typical white and the AGP slot is brown. AGP 8x is supported so you can be comfortable knowing that even the newest video card will be at home in this system. The AGP slot has a strange little locking mechanism that I found quite irritating. With a 9800XT card in place with its extended fan shroud, I couldn't unlock the card when I wanted to pull it out. I had to actually get a standard screwdriver to slide under the card to release it. This wasn't too big a deal for me while running the system in an open chassis, but inside a case you might have to remove the entire board to get enough room to get at the locking clip.

The CPU socket is kept pretty clear. There are a couple large capacitors at the top and bottom of the socket but they shouldn't cause a problem considering the large size of the Socket A package compared to the die itself. The heatsink mounting holes have a silk-screened circle around them; I guess it makes it easier for them to be seen. Anyway, components are a good distance away so that you shouldn't have to worry about damaging your board mounting that oversized heatsink.

There are two USB 2.0 headers on the board which, with the two ports on the back panel, gives you six possible ports. That number should easily satisfy the USB connectivity needs of most users.

The ATX power connector is located at the extreme top of the board which seems to be a good place to me. Close proximity to the power supply will help keep that large bundle of cables from interfering with any other cables in your system. No 4-pin power connector is needed so you can simply tie that up and out of the way as well.

This board has onboard LAN thanks to a VIA VT6103 controller. It only supports up to 100mbps transfer which might be a little slow for frequent transfer of large files. However, it is more than sufficient for surfing over your average broadband connection.

A C-Media codec handles audio duty on the SKT600. It provides 5.1 channel, AC-97 compliant, surround sound. While not the fanciest sound solution on the block, the sound quality was fine and setup was easy. I get confused when presented with too many audio connections so the three provided here suit me just fine.

The back panel has most of your port needs taken care of with PS/2 keyboard and mouse, two USB 2.0 ports, a LAN port, two serial ports, a parallel port, the audio connectors and a game port.

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Page 2 of 10

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Board Layout and Features
Page 3: Bundle and Extras
Page 4: BIOS
Page 5: Test Setup / Benchmarking
Page 6: Benchmarks: PCMark04 / Aquamark 03
Page 7: Benchmarks: Aida32 / Sandra 04
Page 8: Benchmarks: SpecViewPerf 7.1 / ScienceMark 2.0
Page 9: Benchmarks: Winbench 99 / UT2k3
Page 10: Overclocking / Conclusion

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9 User Comments

1 - Posted by EmoMakesMeCry on July 30, 2004 - 1:39 am

i don't think i've ever seen anyone use a chaintech mobo.

2 - Posted by autodafe20 on August 1, 2004 - 4:43 am

I've never ran across a Chaintech either. From the review I think I'll stick with MSI if any of my friends needs a low end comp.

3 - Posted by Kurtis on August 1, 2004 - 11:21 am

This board only costs $40... Not sure why you guys are acting like it sucks. Its a badass board for $40. Chaintech does have higher-end motherboards just like other manufacturers, this is just their low-end one.

4 - Posted by autodafe20 on August 1, 2004 - 1:28 pm

It's not that it sucks, it's just nothing out of the ordinary for a low end board. I'm used to MSI's and the few I've used have been rock stable.

5 - Posted by playahata123789 on August 4, 2004 - 6:25 am

i really wouldn't go with this board, if possible. a close contender is the shuttle an35n ultra

6 - Posted by Guest on December 1, 2004 - 1:44 pm

I received a Post Code error 75 immediately on boot up. I tried clearing the CMOS and any attempts to enter the BIOS by pressing the delete key failed. I had to enable jumper J6 from its factory default setting of pin 1-2 to pin 2-3 in order to get pass the POST error. However, there is nothing in the documentation that said you have to enable this jumper in order for the MOBO to POST. Otherwise, it is not a bad MOBO for the price.

7 - Posted by Guest on July 6, 2005 - 3:03 am

Got the same error here on the boot up sequence. After setting this jumper everything has worked flawlessly. No crashes what so ever after a few months of constant running games, programs you name it. Not a bad mobo at all for its price.

8 - Posted by Trollius on December 6, 2007 - 3:54 pm

I have locked for a Manual for this Motherboard, but no.
Is there anyone who can help mee

9 - Posted by Kurtis on December 6, 2007 - 4:41 pm

I think you're out of luck, that motherboard is so old and Chaintech's site loads so mind-bogglingly slow... The only thing I'd suggest is emailing Chaintech's support and asking if they have a PDF of the manual.

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