If hardware makes you drool, look away now
This colour scheme is definitely an acquired taste. Personally, I think it is much better than some of the boards we have seen over the last year, but as with everything aesthetical, it is down to personal preference, so enough of me waffling on, see what you make of it.
The board, as it comes out of the bag - Note that there is no NorthBridge heatsink, just the now familiar (and much needed) IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader), and you will see why, a bit further down.
A nice clear CPU socket area, and as always, will win favour with people that want to insulate that area to protect from condensation for sub zero cooling (Watch this space
).
One niggle I had with the P35's layout, was the fact that you needed to remove the graphics card to remove the
RAM. As the X38 has dual 16x
PCI-E 2 slots, single card users could place the card in the lower slot, but at this stage, I'm not sure how the board will react to this, and indeed if my watercooling loop will allow this. I will check, and report back here.
Let's have a look at the notable features around the board.
Bottom right corner, pretty much identical to the P35;
- Removable BIOS chip (centre left)
- 3x USB 2 Headers (centre)
- On board Reset & Power Switches (bottom left)
- Floppy Connector (centre bottom)
- HD LED/Power/LED/Reset headers (bottom right)
- 8x Angled SATA 2 ports (right)
- Southbridge Heatsink (centre)
- Fan Headers (centre x2, below SB heatsink, and bottom left x1)
- Battery (centre left)
- Post Code Display (left centre)
Note that the SouthBridge heatsink is a seperate unit. This is a really welcome addition to any enthusiast board in my opinion. How many of us grab a motherboard and remove the stock cooling? I know I do, and there have been occasions where I would have used some of it, but it didn't seperate from the main NorthBridge/
PWM/SouthBridge heatpipe assembly, so it looks like DFI have listened to their customers this time.
From another angle.
And another.
Here are the onboard power & reset switches, and these also double up as a
CMOS clearing switch if you keep them both pressed for 4 seconds. You can also see the Diagnostic/
Post code display to the right, which also comes in very handy.
Last shot of this bit.
Moving to the bottom left corner, the points of note are;
- Two - PCI-E 2 slots and another physical 16x slot running at 4x (16x+16x+4x Crossfire+Physics or 16x+16x Crossfire).
- One - PCI-E 4x slot.
- One - PCI-E 1x slot
- Three - PCI slots
Continued below....
DFI LT X38-T2R LanParty - Living Review.
It's flat and it's shiney, but not quite a mirror finish
