DFI has come a long way in a relatively short time. It’s always been known for making decent, if poorly featured, budget motherboards.
DFI has come a long way in a relatively short time. It’s always been known for making decent, if poorly featured, budget motherboards. This started changing last year when it released an enthusiast KT333 board. This telegraphed a major shift in attitude for DFI, but unfortunately the start faltered when the person spearheading this enthusiast move, Scott, returned to work at ABIT.
It has taken a little while, but the second volley in DFI’s enthusiast push has now been fired with the release of its LANPARTY motherboards. These boards combine the features wanted by enthusiasts with a variety of paraphernalia that will come in damn handy for those who like to lug their PC around.
We dragged the KT400A-based LANPARTY board into the Labs, and after giving it a run to make sure there were no performance issues, we dimmed the lights and fired up our UV lighting. This is because on the LANPARTY boards all the PCI, AGP and RAM slots are imbued with UV reactant glowy goodness. So strap a UV light into your case and watch others gawp in amazement.
It’s a fun little novelty that will appeal to some but not all people. Thankfully there is more to the package than colourful slots. The board also comes with strap that can be used as a backpack for carting your PC around, as well as matching UV reactant rounded IDE cables and a front panel with USB, IEEE 1394 and audio ports.
With a decent motherboard at the heart of the package (even if it is not up to the level of nForce2) and some added extras that people will actually find useful, DFI has showed that it is serious about enthusiasts. There is an nForce2 variant coming that will bring with it cutting edge performance, but for now this is a great package at a very reasonable price.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012