DFI LAN Party UT NF680I LT SLI-T2R Motherboard Review

In the Enthusiast hardware world "custom" is the name of the game. This is not a hard and fast rule but when you look at what people do to get the best performance you cannot deny that enthusiasts like to change things. It might start with something simple like watercooling or something extreme like voltage mods, either way the system is no longer stock. DFI happens to be one of the few companies that will spend the extra time to design many of their high-end products from scratch. While they often miss the initial launch window DFI has the unique advantage of addressing many of the requests and complaints from the enthusiast community in hopes of creating a superior product.

In this review we will be looking at the DFI LAN Party UT NF680I LT SLI-T2R, This motherboard is built around the nVidia 680i LT chipset for the Intel 775 line of processors (Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Celeron D, Pentium D 9XX/8XX) and comes with a variety of features including, support for 1333Mhz FSB processors, 2x16 SLI (true 16 lane SLI), 46 individual lanes of PCI Express, and SATA2 + nVidia RAID just to name a few.

The motherboard photos below illustrate a standard Intel board layout. DDR2 memory slots to the right of the processor socket, Northbridge and Southbridge chips are in the standard locations, and 7 expansion slots are found below the processor.

Color wise this motherboard follows the standard LanParty color scheme and features a black PCB and UV reactive expansion slots and connectors. The back is pretty plain but does have a few electronics attached in various locations.

This motherboard ships without Northbridge heatsink attached, rest assured the motherboard comes with one however for the motherboard to fit in the shipping box it had to be removed. We'll get to the Northbridge heatsink a little later in this review.