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DFI LanParty Dark X48 Motherboard Review

Author: William West

Published: Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Introduction

DFI has blessed Ninjalane with another awesome board in their arsenal of big bad motherboards. We are looking at the Lan Party DK”Dark” X48-T2RS board. DFI has moved the midrange boards to a whole new level with the Dark Series by giving you all the options of the UT/LT Series boards with only a few minor alterations. One of these changes is by using analog power regulators. The UT/LT boards use digital power regulator that costs more to make. Many people like this idea also for the analog power regulators as they seem to run cooler at times.

DFI also has given the DK Series the classic LanParty color scheme instead of the traditional green/yellow colors found on the UT/LT line. Not that we are complaining, the orange/yellow is timeless in our opinion.

The DFI LP DK X48-T2RS board is build around the Intel X48 chipset. This chipset is the redefined version of the X38 chipset. The X48 has all the same features as the X38, but is better for overclocking. The DFI LP DK X48-T2RS also is one of the lower priced X48 out on the market to this day. This is a huge plus for DFI. The board is packed with overclocking goodies, and is lower priced than most.

So far DFI looks to have a winner on its hands.

Just like the X38 chipset. The X48 has the exact same features. So looking at a run down of the chipset will give you a “Deja Vu” feeling. The X48 chipset is able to use DDR2 and DDR3. It is also able to give motherboards two full 16x PCI-E 2.0 slots for video cards. This allows the X48 to be Crossfire ready from the get go. Good news to ATI fans out there.

The DFI LP DK X48-T2RS uses the chipset of the Intel X48 and ICH9R. The X48 on this board utilizes DDR2 1066 RAM, and 2 x 16x PCI-Express 2.0 for video cards. Then when we work our way down to the Southbridge we run into the ICH9R. This gives us the 4X PCI Express. It also gives you 6 SATA with RAID options. RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 are all the types of RAID you get. Also DFI used the JMicro JMB368 PATA controller to allow for 2 PATA legacy devices to hook up to the board. DFI LP DK X48-T2RS uses a Marvell PCIE Gigabit LAN Controller, and 8-Channel Realtek ALC885 High Def Audio. In the end DFI did not change much on the X48 version to the X38 version.