Intro

Over the past few years, I've watched first one manufacturer then another win the hearts of computer performance enthusiasts. I remember when Abit was the kickass board, then Asus won over followers, Gigabyte jumped in there for a while, Abit again, then MSI. Today, there is a new name competing for the head of the motherboard manufacturer line, and that name is DFI. A few years ago my brother called and asked me to help troubleshoot a problem he was having with an Intel rig and I asked what type of motherboard it had, and he said "DFI." I responded with a resounding "DF Who?" Given the amazing technology that DFI builds into their enthusiast boards today nobody, not even the greenest n00b, should be asking "DF Who?".

The board that DFI sent me is targeted directly at performance enthusiasts who enjoy seeing just how out of spec they can run their equipment. With options like the ability to over volt your RAM to 4V, on board power and reset buttons, 5 fan headers and of course the UV reactive components, it is easy to see who DFI is marketing this board towards. Hell, just look at the picture on the box of a young guy with a windowed case sitting at a LAN party sucking down Mountain Dew and Bawls and you can figure who DFI wants to sell the LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR to.

Specs

Let me give you the specs right up front so you can see what this board is about:

LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR

CPU
- AMD Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 / Sempron Socket 939

Chipset
- nVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Scalable Link Interface)

Front Side Bus
- 2000MT/s HyperTransport interface

Memory
- Four 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM sockets
- Supports dual channel (128-bit wide) memory interface
- Supports up to 4GB system memory
- Supports PC2100 (DDR266), PC2700 (DDR333) and PC3200 (DDR400) DDR SDRAM DIMM

SLI or Single VGA Mode

SLI mode
- 2 SLI-ready graphics cards (use identical cards) on the PCI Express x16 slots.
- The graphics cards are connected via the SLI bridge.
- The bandwidth of each slot is x8; when the graphics cards are connected via the SLI bridge, it runs at x16 bandwidth.

Single VGA mode
- 1 PCI Express graphics card on the PCIE1 slot will run at x16 bandwidth.
- The other PCI Express x16 slot (PCIE4) will run at x2 bandwidth.

BIOS
- Award BIOS
- CMOS Reloaded
- CPU/DRAM overclocking
- CPU/DRAM/Chipset over voltage
- 4Mbit flash memory

Power Management
- Supports ACPI STR (Suspend to RAM) function
- Wake-On-Events include:
- Wake-On-PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse
- Wake-On-USB Keyboard/Mouse
- Wake-On-LAN
- RTC timer to power-on the system
- AC power failure recovery

Hardware Monitor
- Monitors CPU/system/chipset temperature
- Monitors 12V/5V/3.3V/Vcore/Vbat/5Vsb/Vchipset/Vdram voltages
- Monitors the speed of the CPU fan, Fan 2 and chipset fan
- CPU Overheat Protection function monitors CPU temperature during system boot-up

Audio
- Karajan audio module
- Realtek ALC850 8-channel audio CODEC
- 6 audio jacks
- 1 CD-in connector
- 1 front audio connector
- S/PDIF-in/out interface

LAN
- Dual Gigabit LAN - Vitesse VSC8201 Gigabit Phy and Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit PCI
- Fully compliant to IEEE 802.3 (10BASE-T), 802.3u (100BASE-TX) and
- 802.3ab (1000BASE-T) standards

IDE
- nForce4 chip supports two IDE connectors that allows connecting up to four UltraDMA 133Mbps hard drives
- NVIDIA RAID allows RAID arrays spanning across Serial ATA and Parallel ATA
- RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 0+1

Serial ATA with RAID
- Four Serial ATA ports supported by the nForce4 chip
- SATA speed up to 3Gb/s
- RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 0+1
- NVIDIA RAID allows RAID arrays spanning across Serial ATA and Parallel ATA
- Four Serial ATA ports supported by the Silicon Image Sil 3114 chip
- SATA speed up to 1.5Gb/s
- RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5

IEEE 1394
- VIA VT6307
- Supports two 100/200/400 Mb/sec ports

Rear Panel I/O Ports
- 1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 mouse port
- 1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 keyboard port
- 2 S/PDIF RCA jacks (S/PDIF-in and S/PDIF-out)
- Karajan audio module (6 audio jacks)
- 1 IEEE 1394 port
- 2 RJ45 LAN ports
- 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports

I/O Connectors
- 2 connectors for 4 additional external USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 1 connector for 1 external IEEE 1394 port
- 1 connector for 1 external serial port
- 1 front audio connector for external line-out and mic-in jacks (on the Karajan audio module)
- 1 CD-in internal audio connector (on the Karajan audio module)
- 1 S/PDIF connector for optical cable connection
- 1 IR connector
- 8 Serial ATA connectors
- 2 IDE connectors
- 1 floppy connector
- 1 24-pin ATX power connector
- 1 4-pin ATX 12V power connector
- 2 4-pin 5V/12V power connectors (FDD-type and HDD type)
- 1 front panel connector
- 5 fan connectors
- 4 diagnostic LEDs
- EZ touch switches (power switch and reset switch)

Expansion Slots
- 2 PCI Express x16 slots
- 1 PCI Express x1 slot
- 1 PCI Express x4 slot
- 2 PCI slots

PCB
- ATX form factor
- 24cm (9.45") x 30.5cm (12")

Package

The LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR board ships with plenty of gear, but little in the way of software. There are a pair of yellow rounded ATA cables and a rounded floppy cable, four yellow SATA drive cables with SATA power adapters, the I/O plate, extra jumpers, a jumper puller, the ever-important SLI bridge, a short manual, SATA driver floppy and an installation CD. The yellow ATA and SATA cables will glow when hit with UV and go along with the bright theme of the board itself.