DFI Lanparty LT X48-T2R
DFI has earned itself an excellent reputation among “elite overclockers” by adding a broad range of BIOS settings to its Lanparty series motherboards. The company is never in a hurry to release new products, however, as it prefers to take its time tuning them to face off with the best its competitors can offer.
Layout and Features
The most striking visual characteristic of DFI’s Lanparty LT X48-T2R might be its green theme, but our eyes hop immediately to the eight-phase digital voltage regulator. We’ve had slightly better overclocking stability in the past with boards that used a similar design.
Also noteworthy is that DFI uses all seven slot positions to fill its X48-T2R with expansion options. But while the board does feature three PCI-Express x16 slots, only the top two have 16 pathways and PCI-Express 2.0 transfer modes. The third x16 slot has only a quarter of its pathways (four lanes), and its bandwidth is further halved by the use of PCI-Express 1.0 mode.
The top two PCI-Express slots are spaced adequately to support huge triple-thick graphics coolers, and typical CrossFire configurations of double-thick cards will still leave two PCI and one PCI-Express slot open for other cards.
Most cable connections are ideally located for use in traditional tower case designs, with the exception of the floppy cable header on the motherboard’s bottom edge. Though required for loading RAID or AHCI drivers during XP setup, DFI likely believes that anyone who uses that installation method will remove the drive when it’s no longer needed.
Of slightly less concern are the eight forward-facing Serial ATA connectors, which could be blocked by the hard drive cages of some cases. The X48-T2R is an enthusiast motherboard, and DFI likely believes that enthusiasts will choose their cases appropriately.
The Lanparty LT X48-T2R uses separate sinks for the Northbridge, Southbridge and voltage regulator, while the Northbridge sink ships uninstalled. The sink supports a 60mm x10mm cooling fan using wire clip retainers, but is large enough to operate without its own fan in systems that have other fans nearby. DFI includes sink paste and a spreader to ease installation, but users requiring additional cooling must purchase their fans separately.
The Lanparty LT X48-T2R’s lower front corner features a post code display, power and reset buttons that are perfect for bench top testing and diagnostics, in addition to the poorly placed floppy header, several fan connectors and three two-port USB cable headers.
