Conclusion & Final Thoughts.
This has been another highly enjoyable review for me to write, although somewhat more difficult because the LT X48-T2R is identical in almost every way to its predecessor, the LT X38-T2R and I have already reviewed that in a great depth, so there wasn’t really a huge amount left to say here.
Performance wise, I saw a small increase in maximum stable overclocks using air cooling and I was able to use slightly less voltage. At the same time, I was also able to overclock to 3600Mhz at a lower voltage than the X38 board, and less voltage for a given overclock is always welcome in my book.
Wolfdale performance was fantastic and surpassed all my expectations with the icing on the cake being a hefty 5130Mhz overclock - Sure, this isn't what everyone will be striving towards, but the potential is there if you feel the need!
The shipping
BIOS played nicely for 99% of the time, and it was only when right on the edge of memory stability when the overclcock recovery failed and a
CMOS clear was required. This is par for the course when you are giving the
RAM a bit of a torturing, and most people will not even get to this stage. I have asked DFI if it would be possible to have a “hotkey” or similar where the
NB strap can be reset at the same time as the
FSB, as this was the only area of the
BIOS that I felt needed a slight improvement. As things stand, you can reset the
FSB by pressing the Home key at start up, but if your need for pressing it is caused by going too far with the
RAM, then quite often, it won’t let you into the
BIOS.
While we are on the subject of the
BIOS, I will just say that it can be a bit daunting at first, but they have made it so that it will run out of the box, and you can overclock to relatively high levels with a quad core with just a few small changes, or if you want to, you can go the whole hog and start tweaking to get maximum overclocks.
I found that the X48 handled 8GB of
RAM impeccably, and I was able to run 4x2GB modules at 1066Mhz with relative ease – Something I didn’t really expect.
As the layout is the same as the X38, the previous gripes still apply. There is nothing major, just a couple of small things such as the memory slots being too close to the
PCI-E #1 – The workaround for this is to
use PCI-E #2 slot instead. This works perfectly with no ill effects, and I would recommend this to anyone who wants to free up some room in their case.
The other possible layout issue for some is that some larger coolers, such as the Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 will not fit in the upright position (blowing out of the rear fan) when using the “Heat Minator” heatsink on the NorthBridge. The Heat Minator can be easily modified, and this just involves filing/grinding the front edge off, and this stops the big Thermalright’s heat pipes from catching on it.
Other than those minor issues, the DFI LT X48-T2R was a pleasure to use and it performed solidly and reliably across all the tests that I conducted.
The other good news is that DFI boards are now freely available in the UK at various outlets, and at the time of writing this, DFI’s X48 is over £20 cheaper than the comparable Asus board.
To sum up - This is another great motherboard from DFI, and if you are looking for an X48/DDR2 motherboard this is one to keep an eye on.
Pros.- Excellent Overclocking & Tweaking Capabilities.
- Awesome Wolfdale Performance.
- Great BIOS again.
- On board cooling is more than adequate and can be run passively.
- On board cooling isn’t joined together by heat pipes, so you can water cool the NorthBridge and keep the PWM & SouthBridge heatsinks in place if required.
- On board power/reset switches are very handy indeed.
- Incredibly user friendly for an enthusiast board.
- Sub zero friendly.
- Works well with a full set of 2GB Memory Modules.
- Looks stunning.
Cons.- RAM slots can be obscured by a graphics card in PCI-E1 slot.
- NorthBridge heatsink design can be incompatible with some large CPU coolers.
- No USB2/Firewire PCI bracket.
Memory Testing
- Needless to say that this wasn't too stable, and I could only get as far as a CPUZ verification before the system started to become unstable.