DFI seemed to spring from almost nowhere with their LANParty range of performance hardware, which saw them transformed from a budget motherboard manufacturer into a mainstream choice for the most seasoned of overclockers. The NF4 SLI-DR is their current flagship AMD motherboard and comes in by far and away the largest box I have seen for a motherboard. Opening this box up reveals no fewer than 4 other boxes, all packed with goodies. We will come to these on the next page, but first let’s take a look at the board itself.
The DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR has a very different layout from the two boards we have examined thus far. Rather than having its memory to the right of the CPU socket, DFI have chosen to keep it situated at the top of the board, rotated 90 degrees from the norm. Initially I feared that this may cause compatibility issues with larger coolers, since the CPU socket is that much further down the board. These were quickly dispelled when the gigantic Zalman 7700Cu fitted on without any problems. The rest of the board’s layout is superb, with the IDE and floppy connectors on the right hand edge where they should be, the PSU connectors well away from the CPU socket and the supplementary 4 pin Molex plug easily accessible.
The hotter MOSFETs on the board are cooled by huge aluminium heat sinks that are securely soldered to the board rather than utilising the normal inefficient thermal tape. As with the Abit board the clear CMOS jumper is easily accessible to the right hand edge of the board, next to the four main SATA RAID enabled ports. A further 4 SATA RAID ports are provided by the Silicon Image 3114 chip.
There are a total of five fan headers on the DFI board, but only one of these is RPM controllable from within the BIOS. There is also a whopping six USB 2.0 ports on the standard I/O plate at the back, though this does come at a cost to legacy ports. Two gigabit LAN adaptors are included on the SLI-DR, one of which uses the Marvell 88E8001 controller, the other using a Vitesse VSC8201 controller.
As with the Abit board, audio on the DFI comes on a separate circuit board, though this time installing it will not cost you a PCI plate. The so-called Karajan audio module has the Realtek ALC850 chip on the separate board, so you don’t have to install it if you don’t want to. DFI also claim that by separating the chip from the main PCB, noise is noticeable reduced. As well as 7.1 regular outputs, the audio also features digital coaxial SPDIF ports (both in and out) as well as optical SPDIF via the front panel.
SLI configuration on the DFI is handled quite differently from the other boards in the group test, Rather than utilise a card selector, or use a hard wired setup like the elegant Asus solution, DFI have opted for a large bank of six jumpers. When these are set to the top set of pins, the board is in single video card mode. Move these to the bottom, and you enable SLI. As with all boards apart from the Asus, the DFI does not have a huge amount of room between PCI-E slots, so make sure your video cards have good case ventilation.
