Accessories & Software
Hardware Accessories
The accessory package of the V915P is very minimal with only the bare essentials. There are two SATA data cables, a “Y” SATA power splitter, an IDE and floppy cable, manual, and software. The only thing in the box that is not typical is a small syringe of white thermal paste. I’m not sure why Chaintech decided to included thermal paste seeing that everything else is pretty plain, but it’s in the box none-the-less.
The documentation is worth mentioning since it’s a bit unusual. Whoever wrote the manual really took the time to make it friendly and fit for a novice and experts too embarrassed to ask. It explains a lot of details and gives reasons why you would enable or disable certain features (like the “Delay Prior to Thermal” setting) makes the manual useful. The manual does use an unusual amount of clip-art which is pretty humourous in its excess. But I suppose I can’t fault Chaintech’s attempt at making the manual more useful and friendlier.
Chaintech’s writer goes overboard with the clipart CD. 🙂
Software
Chaintech’s software bundle consists of two discs: drivers, and bonus software.
The driver disc includes all the drivers needed to get the components on the board up and running (LAN, audio, chipset). There were some tools I did not find which were BIOS flashing tools or a system health monitoring tool.
Bonus software disc includes some useful tools like Norton Antivirus 2004, and Photoshop Album SE. The disc also contains Wasay’s ProMagic software, which some of you may recall is the same software that deleted one of my partitions during my testing of Soyo’s Dragon 2 motherboard. I can’t believe that such software is still being bundled. Be warned! Do not install ProMagic unless you take the necessary precautions and/or understand the use of the software.
The CD also has Wasay’s ImageIt software, which only supports FAT16/32 partitions and only 8.3 character filenames. You will definitely find better drive cloning and backup tools from other vendors.
The “bonus” software is pretty mediocre and the inclusion of Wasay software leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
