Mainboards from different manufacturers are becoming more and more like each other. There are several reasons for it. The first and most obvious is that the chipset makers are packing more and more functions into their products. So, mainboard designers receive a typical collection of functions with every new chipset. This collection of features is constantly expanding and now covering nearly all user requirements. The second reason for the mainboards to look similar to one another lies in the wild competition in the market today. Since designing a mainboard is no easy and cheap task, many companies choose to use the reference design from the chipset maker in their PCBs, tailoring it to their own needs. The third reason is the fact that many mainboard makers (or maybe we should call them sellers?) don’t produce their products anymore, but pass the production to special companies, like ECS. And those companies have more money issuing one big batch of the same mainboards rather than a few batches of different ones.

So, we shouldn’t really be surprised at the news that two mainboards selling under different trademarks may in fact be the same. Moreover, the companies’ officials don’t refute the news, but point at the same three reasons, which I have just mentioned.

This all-out unification can be a trap for mainboard makers, though. The user wouldn’t actually care which mainboard to buy as long as they are all the same. Minor differences are hard to notice and, well, do you really bother to read up the specs if you know that the same hardware lies in every package? It is especially hard for the minor players. The retail market is vitally important for them as it promises higher profits, but they cannot rake in more money by increasing production volumes as giants like ASUS or MSI do. This has the following consequence: minor mainboard makers are more interested in making their products attractive, memorable in the eyes of the customer. So, today we will have a look at a product like that from the Taiwanese DFI Company. The mainboard we got for our tests is called DFI LAN PARTY NFII Ultra. As you may guess, it is based on the NVIDIA nForce2 400 Ultra chipset.

Mainboard Specification

This specification table already mentions some features, which will undoubtedly make this mainboard stand out against others. However, we will discuss them later. For now, let’s open the package to see what dainties DFI put there for us.