PCB Design and Functionality

DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard looks extremely beautiful thanks to a very successful combination of dark textolite and yellow-orange connectors:

Attractive looks is definitely a good consumer feature, however, we are mostly interested in the applied aspects, so let’s take a closer look at the chipset cooling system. Although it has become significantly simpler compared to the chipset cooling on DFI LANPARTY UT and LT mainboards, it cannot be called weak or primitive at all. It is very good that the chipset North Bridge heatsink uses secure screw-on retention instead of weak plastic clips like much more massive heatsinks on some DFI LANPARTY UT or LT mainboards. The chipset South Bridge is cooled with a small plate-heatsink. The chipset North Bridge is topped with a larger one. Plus there are two more heatsinks on MOSFET transistors.

This is pretty standard structure for contemporary mainboards. The only puzzling part is the heatpipes connecting all these heatsinks together. There is one heatpipe coming out of the base of the North Bridge heatsink and leading to the side heatsink on MOSFET transistors. The second heatpipe originating from the center of the North Bridge heatsink leads to the heatsink next to the rear panel connectors. It doesn’t make any difference for most processor coolers, but the widely-spread tower-coolers are usually installed to direct the airflow towards the rear panel and the exhaust fan there. Therefore, it seems much more logical to send most of the heat to the heatsink at the rear panel and have the heatpipe originating at the base of the North Bridge heatsink lead there, instead of making the side heatsink the primary one. However, even this particular cooling system design proved efficient enough during our practical tests, although the side heatsink felt tangibly hotter to the touch than the one at the rear panel.

DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard has four-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry built with high-quality components. All power connectors are very conveniently located. And so is the Parallel ATA connector provided by JMicron JMB368 controller. Overall, the top part of the mainboard PCB is very well put together, no complaints here.

The bottom part of the PCB also looks pretty good. A few small things worth pointing out are a not very convenient location of the FDD connector and DIMM slot clips blocked by the installed graphics card. As for the advantages, they are quite numerous: color-coded front panel connectors, Power On and Reset buttons, POST-indicator, horizontal Serial ATA connectors, three PCI slots besides two PSI Express 2.0 x16 slots and one PCI Express x4 slot.

The rear panel has PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse, six USB 2.0 ports, network RJ45 connector provided by Marvell 88E8053 PCIE Gigabit LAN controller, an optical and coaxial S/PDIF and six audio-jacks provided by 8-channel Realtek ALC885 codec.

The Clear CMOS jumper is barely visible between the coaxial S/PDIF and the first pair of USB 2.0 ports. It is a jumper, and not a button, which is a pretty doubtful and even useless solution. It is pretty easy to find a button on the case rear panel if you need to clear CMOS. However, it is simply impossible to accomplish if there is a jumper instead of a button. Remember, that it will be barely seen through the thin slit in the I/O Shield. In this case it is much easier to use a similar jumper right on the board, which is luckily still there. Trying to save a few cents, DFI engineers have simply ruined a great solution that should make overclocking easy and quick.

Clear CMOS jumper on the rear panel is the only seriously annoying drawback of DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS PCB layout. It is called EZ Jumper, which should be coming from the word “easy”. However, it should in fact be called HD Jumper or DF Jumper from the word “hard” or “difficult”, or even IP Jumper from the word “impossible”.

The PCB layout schematic reveals a few more advantages, which we haven’t yet mentioned in our review. Among these advantages we should point out a laid out COM port, six fan connectors and a set of jumpers for setting the base FSB frequency.

Overall, DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard looks pretty attractive. Even after a closer look at it, there is no concern that its functionality may be limited in any way. The manufacturer did its best to make the board more affordable for the end-users and you can notice it from the missing additional controllers, such as the second (or even fourth) network card, IEEE1394 or WiFi. The only thing they added to the functionality of the Intel X48 Express chipset is the Parallel ATA controller. You may wish there were eSATA there, but its absence is not too bad. The chipset cooling system is a bit simpler, but it is efficient enough. Other than that DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard has everything LANPARTY UT or LT mainboards have, which is a very pleasing fact.