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DFI Lanparty NFII Ultra Rev B Review
Written by Justin B. | Date: 12.07.2003 | Manufacturer: DFI

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Here's a snapshot of the box. The box is HUGE, and below you'll find out why. (That guy's drinking a lot of Mountain Dew..) Just to give you an idea of how big this box is, when it first arrived, it was shipped in a box normally used for computer cases. I wondered to myself, "Man, did DFI send me two boards without telling me?"


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Here's all the stuff that makes the DFI box so huge. In addition to the motherboard, DFI pretty much includes everything. We'll cover each of these little boxes on the 4th page.


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Here's the DFI Lanparty NFII Rev B. The black/green/silver layout looks like an "alien board", but overall very cool, and would look great with any Matrix-themed case especially. One confusing thing about the Lanparty Rev B, is that the board is labeled Rev A. I immediately asked the people at DFI why the board said Rev A when it was a Rev B? I was told that the Rev B is a re-design of the original Lanparty, and it's labeled Rev A to indicate the first internal revision of the second version of the board. I don't particularly agree with it, but that's the story, so don't flip out at Newegg if they give you a "Rev A"; as long as it has the distinctive new features, you're good.


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Speaking of distinctive new features, the Rev B features a passive Southbridge heatsink. Epox has had these for a while and they are nice to have pre-installed, and I'm glad DFI has also decided to include one. Is this a sign that the board is going to be better for OCing? We'll have to see...


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On the DFI board are 5 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot. Much like my Epox 8RDA3+, the slots are strategically placed so that there is empty space under the AGP slot. Most people don't put PCI cards under their AGP anyway, so you're not really losing anything with only 5 PCI slots.


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DFI also includes a 12v power connector. Make sure you have a P4 compatible PSU, though just about every modern PSU is P4 compatible.


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Here's the back panel layout of this board. It has the standard PS/2 and Parallel apparatus, plus 1 Serial port (instead of 2), SPDIF RCA out, dual LAN ports, 4 USB ports (2 are USB 2.0), and 6-channel onboard audio. Nice feature set!


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The socket also has the 4 mounting holes many OCers require. This allows for fitting high performance heatsinks like SLK947-U or SP-97, or pretty much any waterblock. Space around the CPU socket is quite cramped though-- there's not much clearance on the top, which is very bad for people with small cases. One of the reasons I'm not using this board in my HTPC is because the board is flush up against the PSU, and anything but a small heatsink would be a tight fit. Also, the capacitators at the bottom don't help.

Another thing I like on some boards, which the Gigabyte board had, is a horizontal mount for clip heatsinks-- that is, the notches are on the sides instead of up/down. This makes it much easier to get in with a screwdriver to remove the heatsink. Unfortunately, the Lanparty doesn't have this, but nor does the Epox 8RDA3+ or Abit NF7-S.


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As we can see, it's a tight fit even with the relatively small Aero 7+. The SLK-947U has no problems fitting on this board however, like most boards with mounting holes. It might be impossible to fit an SP-97, but we're not sure yet, as we don't have one on hand.

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