DFI LanParty NFII Ultra Motherboard Review

You have to ask yourself why bother reviewing an enthusiast style motherboard that is clearly designed to be flashy without taking some flashy pictures? Below are a few low light glamour shots of the LanParty NFII Ultra under the eerie purple glow of a black light cathode.

Like most nForce2 motherboards, and nVidia videocards for that matter, you can't judge a board by performance alone since there isn't much difference between how they perform. So when it comes down to finding the right board you must consider price and features and how they compare to what you are trying to accomplish. In the case of the DFI LanParty NFII Ultra this is an enthusiast centric motherboard with an equally centric feature set that will appeal to just about any casemodder and/or performance hungry gamer. I wouldn't expect to break any speed records with this board considering the overclocking limitation but I'd expect that to go away with an updated BIOS release.

From a layout and feature standpoint it would seem that the LanParty designers did their homework and included the features that reviewers and enthusiasts wanted like onboard RAID, and a wide range of overclocking options. While taking care to avoid many of the common mistakes like not being able to remove memory modules when the video card installed. There isn't much more you can ask for.

I think it is safe to say if you get a board from the LanParty series you can and will show it off, in more ways than one.

Now for my list of good things and bad things.

Black PCB
UV sensitive expansion and memory slots
UV sensitive cables included
Great board layout
Excellent onboard feature set
Onboard power and reset switches

No heatsink mounting holes
No active Northbridge cooling

I would like to thank the people at DFI for helping to make this review possible.