Tyan is one of the most familiar names known to system builders and ranks right up there in name recognition with ASUS and GigaByte. So, it should be no surprise that Tyan is looking to improve their market share with new products, which offer new capabilities and features.
Over the years, Tyan's products have become one of the many manufactures that white box builders have turned to for their most basic components, specifically motherboards. To maintain their status in the channel's eyes, Tyan is focusing on giving their channel partners choices, specifically when it comes to CPUs. Tyan offers motherboards for both AMD and Intel CPUs and for most of the iterations of each processor vendor's product lines. Case in point comes in the form of Tyan's latest Tomcat motherboard, the n3400B (also known as the S2925), which combines an AM2 socket with the nVidia nForce Pro 3400 chipset for those system builders looking to AMD's latest and greatest CPUs.
For system builders, the n3400B is chock full of features! The $220 ATX sized motherboard supports as much as 8 Gbytes of DDR2 Ram and offers IEEE1394 Firewire, USB 2.0, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, six expansion slots (three PCI-Express and three 32bit PCI), integrated audio, IDE drive support, SATA drive support and a bunch of other ports and connectors.

System builders will appreciate the construction of the board and the quality of the packaging. Tyan's documentation and support information seems to be a bit better than most others, and installation and setup is presented in a concise fashion, without much of the confusion common with the usually poorly translated documentation.
That said, we were able to quickly install the board into an Antec 1200 series case and add the final components for testing. Looking to leverage what AMD's latest processors could offer, we chose an X4 Phenom 9850 black edition CPU and 2 Gbytes of DDR2 RAM from Corsair.
After completing assembly, we booted up the system and were greeted by a blank screen, the system would not boot! We suspected a CPU compatibility problem and immediately switched to an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ CPU. The system booted fine with the Athlon CPU and that gave us the opportunity to flash the motherboards bios to a new version, which enabled us to then use the Phenom CPU. We also tested a triple core Phenom processor in the updated motherboard and found that the triple core (X3 Phenom) worked fine also.
When it comes to a bios update, Tyan could learn a thing or two from competitor ASUS. With most ASUS motherboards, a bios update can be preformed right from the bios setup screen, just copy the latest bios onto a USB Keydrive, plug that keydrive into the system and boot into the motherboard's bios setup program. From there, you can load the new bios from the USB Keydrive.
The Tyan motherboard required a boot to a dos prompt and then executing a batch file to install a new bios. We made the process a little bit easier by creating a bootable USB keydrive with Windows 98 boot files and then copying the bios update program and new bios files to the keydrive. That way, we only had to boot the system from the USB keydrive and then run the batch file. Not as elegant a solution as ASUS, but simple enough for technicians needing to flash the bios on a bunch of motherboards on the bench!
One complaint we had was the lack of help or definitions in the bios setup program, a problem that is shared by many motherboard manufacturers. Isn't about time that bios manufacturers started including definitions for the various options available in a bios and how those options can improve performance?
For testing, we installed Windows Vista Business edition. Installation of the OS was rather smooth and most of the drivers needed were included with the OS. Tyan also throws a driver CD into the box and full driver support for a variety of OSes were included on the CD. The CD has an installation program that makes adding drivers straightforward. System builders will find the Tomcat n3400B proves to be a well manufactured motherboard at an economical price that could quickly make them fans of AMD's latest Phenom processors and proves to be a good motherboard for business desktops, gamers and even server class systems for small businesses.