DFI LanParty KT400A 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 couple of low light glamour shots of the LanParty KT400A under the eerie purple glow of a black light cathode.

From a layout standpoint it would seem that the LanParty designers did their homework by reading just about every motherboard review on the web and made a list of features that reviewers and enthusiasts wanted like onboard RAID, flexible heatsink options 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.

From a feature standpoint there isn't much more you can ask for.

Overclocking performance wasn't really what I had expected; by raising the FSB on Athlon processors you in effect bypass the CPU limitation of memory bandwidth thus increasing performance. Since the release of the KT400A many reviewers commented on how much better the memory controller is over the KT400 but they also stated that it appeared to be is more effective at DDR333 than at DDR400 or when running in sync with whatever the FSB was set at. I might have missed a setting in the BIOS though it was my understanding that the memory clock for this board was locked at whatever was chosen in the BIOS. Thus, meaning that a 192Mhz memory clock could never be attainable. I believe that this could be fixed with a BIOS update though like I mentioned it could already be there and just not labeled properly.

Back a couple of years ago you would have heard reviewers saying something like "That red PCB would look great in any custom case". Well once again I think it is safe to say if you get a board from the LanParty series you can and will show it off.

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
Heatsink mounting holes
Onboard power and reset switches

Tight clearance around CPU socket
FSB dipswitch overclocking
SerialATA and RAID can't be used together
Difficult overclocking procedure

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