DFI LANParty UT nF3-250Gb: Overclocker's Dream
by Wesley Fink on September 8, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Board Layout: DFI LANParty UT nF3 250Gb
DFI has never been afraid to use stand-out colors on their LANParty boards, and the black and yellow of the LANParty UT will certainly stand out in any side window case.
The basic layout of the DFI is excellent, with most everything in the best place in most case designs.
The ATX 20-pin and the 4-pin 12V connector are separated in the DFI, but the locations still work reasonably well. The bulky ATX connector is on our preferred far right edge on the upper half of the board. The 4-pin connector is on the opposite side of the CPU, at the very bottom edge of the CPU socket. The 20-pin ATX is clear of other connectors and should not interfere with air flow. The 4-pin requires a little more care with its near center board location, but the 4-pin is easier to route than the thick ATX cable.
The CPU socket is in the top center of the board. PCI slots are below the socket and memory is to the right of the CPU. There is plenty of room around the Socket 754, so just about any heatsink/fan should work fine. We had no problems mounting a Zalman 7000 on the DFI.
The IDE connectors are in our preferred upper right edge of the motherboard, where they rarely interfere with other connectors. SATA connectors mirror the nF3-250 Reference Board in that 2 are between the AGP slot and the CPU, and 2 are near the lower right edge of the board. The arrangement looks worse than it functions, since the SATA cables are very small. However, SATA connectors are still far too fragile for our liking and anything that gets them away from "high-traffic" areas of the board is preferred. You need to be extremely careful changing a video card or replacing a HSF so that you don't push and break off the SATA connectors between the AGP and CPU. The other 2 SATA connectors are better located near the right edge so that they are out of harm's way.
The floppy connector is ideally located on the upper right edge of the board. It is good to see DFI paying attention to the floppy port location, since many nF3-250 boards put the floppy at the bottom of the board - a difficult location for most full tower cases.
The LANParty UT has 5 PCI slots. The AGP slot uses the common "push to release" lever that works fine with most cards, but can be a real pain with very large top end cards like the nVidia 6800 Ultra. The headers are generally in out-of-the-way locations. However, if you need to use an audio cable with your optical drives, the location at the bottom of the board can be an impossible reach in some tower designs. Like the disappearing floppy, audio cables are rarely required any more, but if you need them, this location can be a challenge in some case designs.
A lot of thought went into the DFI nF3-250Gb board layout. While there are a few things that could be better, overall, the board was easy to install and set up. Most users will be very pleased with the layout.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
54 Comments
View All Comments
leexgx - Thursday, November 4, 2004 - link
the 939 AMD cpu will only be my upgrade path (unless i wait and some thing els comes out)my NF7-S v2.0 mobo has 2x faster mem speed then an s754 so in my view it be an Downgrade if i whent to it
my upgrade (dream at the mo :)
MSI K8N Neo2 (waiting for the nForce4 ultra to comes out) or something like it (but nf4 chip)
3500+ 939 (mite even wait for the 4000+ or the FX55 to come down in price)
2x 512 ddr 400 OCZ low latency stuff (or other stuff that mite run better then OCZ)
MiLaMber - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
HmmWhy on earth bring out this board for s754 NOW??
Do they honestly think ppl would have waited this long for s754? They SHOULD have made it s939.
I see this as lost revenue for DFI.
Fantastic board yes, but for those who are looking to currently upgrade, will there be many who opt for this baord over a s939?
I wish they had brought it out as a s939, as I would forget about buying an MSI K8N Neo2 in an instant.
Its all well and good having the best board, but you need to have some savvy to, and think about when the introduction of your board will result in the greatest revenue!
And thats just plain common sense.
tchuyev - Monday, October 25, 2004 - link
So... using 3 SATA disks in a RAID0 array (using SATA ports 2 & 3 + 1 or 2, along with 2 * 512 OCZ PC-4200), I can't overclock the motherboard any higher than 240 FSB, right ?Using both the nForce & Marvell SATA controlers with the same 3 SATA disks on a RAID0 array : is it more likely to cause a performance drop - comparing to 2 disks on ports 3 & 4 - more than anything else ?
In my case, wouldn't it be thus better to go for a Silicon Image 3114r instead, like on the Asus K8N-E Deluxe ?
Thanx a bunch ;)
GGiovanni - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
Is there any detail regarding the memory DDR616 bandwidth since this mb uses on single channel setup? I'm interested on bandwidth when oc , not only low CAS o other tweaks.Happy Buddha - Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - link
Opps! Looks like I have double personality and they bot want to know what RAM have you bought.=:p
Happy Buddha - Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - link
#47 - What RAM stick are you using?!? I have never seen a review on the Net that was able to pull these timing @245mhz Fsb..Happy Buddha - Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - link
#47 - What RAM Stick are you using? I have never seen any review out there that have been able to push these timing at 245Mhz FSB...eva2000 - Monday, September 20, 2004 - link
awesome review.. just got my DFI Lanparty UT NF3-250Gb 3 days ago and posted results at http://i4memory.com/showthread.php?t=142 with my AMD64 3400+ @ 11x 245HTT = 2695mhz and ram at 245mhz 2-2-2-6 1T !JustAnAverageGuy - Sunday, September 12, 2004 - link
"With our stock 3200+ and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, the DFI is one of the better 2nd generation 754 boards. Standard performance tests demonstrate the DFI LANParty UT is very competitive with other recent Athlon 64 boards in Direct X 9 games, which is all we would expect. UT2004 and Far Cry include results from Socket 939 and Intel 775 for comparison. Since both the 939 and 775 results were with faster CPUs running an nVidia 6800 Ultra AGP 8X/PCIe, it is remarkable that the scores are as close as they are."I nearly missed that paragraph. Perhaps you should make it stand out a little better?
Cygni - Thursday, September 9, 2004 - link
If it does come in around that price point, DFI will move ALOT of these things...