DFI LanParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G Motherboard Review...

[One4yu2c]

"Every seafaring scallywag knows that the only way to truly sail the seven seas is in the Flagship, and when it comes to the Silicon Sea, enthusiasts are equally demanding. AMD's newly chartered AM2 territory marks the destination for Captain DFI and their flagship NF590 SLI-M2R/G motherboard. Will it be smooth sailing, or will we witness a mutinty from an overclocking crowd with high expectations?" - Paul Lilly

http://www.hardwarelogic.com/news/12...006-10-18.html

[stinger608]

Yes, very nice review Paul!!! That looks to be a awsome Mobo, and when the time comes to upgrade? to an am2 sytem, I will keep this board in mind.

[polobunny]

Good review, I couldn't hold a laugh when I saw the cat in the picture. How?! :P
I like the SATA and power placement, and one IDE seems to be the "standard" now for AM2 boards. =/
The fan is somewhat deceiving however, experience says fans are bound to break sooner than your other components and make noise. A heatpipe cooled chipset would have been great, but on the other hand i've seen some heatpipes that didn't dissipate the heat very well, so i'm not very worried by this one. The northbridge placement might stop you from putting a passive cooler on it if you have a SLI setup.
I can see the RAM slots being a problem with certain CPU coolers blowing the air there or simply big coolers.

Something else, you overclocked the 3800+ X2 to 2.8ghz, but didn't run any bench with it? Instead you used 2.66ghz, why?

[Jokerswild]

Nice write up. The lack of a second IDE is something I didn't know about the new boards so I guess everyone has to update to sata or run just 1 HDD and 1 Disc drive. I guess they'll be doing away with IDE totally pretty soon.

[Tyreal]

Thats one sick motherboard. :D
I'm with Polobunny on this one. I like to see companies using passive heatpipe solutions on their motherboards instead of these heatsinks.

[Capper]

Those Sunon fans DFI usesd are excellent....in two years I have yet to have one fail, and they do their job very well, and very quietly. I'm not a huge fan of the heat pipe cooled boards.....every single one I've used has had one issue or another, and the boards do not cool well unless used in an ATX case.
As we've touched on before, our focus is not overclocking, its more geared toward the features that a product provides. We run our bernchmarks at a variety of settings that users will typically see.....we do this to be a bit different, every other site on the net has gotten to basically be the same.....the exact same benchmarks at the exact same settings......plus they typically use componets (ES) that most of you aren't privvy to, and then when you buy that product based on their results, you blow a gasket because you can't acheive the same.

[One4yu2c]

Originally Posted by polobunny

Good review, I couldn't hold a laugh when I saw the cat in the picture. How?! :P

LOL - once a cat gets it in their head that they want to be in the thick of things, it's a losing battle to try and shoo them away. It's so much easier to just incorporate him into the pic rather than toss him off the table only to have him jump back up in the middle of a snapshot.

Originally Posted by polobunny

I like the SATA and power placement, and one IDE seems to be the "standard" now for AM2 boards. =/

Yeah, and you know, my real gripe here is with the optical manufacturers. Granted they don't need the additional bandwidth that SATA provides, but good grief, we as users also don't need to be tied to ribbon cables and master/slave jumpers. SATA has been out a long time now and I'd like to see opticals other than the pricey Plextor offer this interface.

Originally Posted by polobunny

Something else, you overclocked the 3800+ X2 to 2.8ghz, but didn't run any bench with it? Instead you used 2.66ghz, why?

Rich pretty much summed it up. Everyone's overclock is going to vary, so instead we focused on DDR2-667, DDR2-800, and DDR2-1066 benches to try and cover the three types of RAM most users will typically be purchasing (hopefully no one is still picking up DDR2-533 these days). Since DDR2-1066 is not supported by AMD, it requires an overclock to hit that speed. The difference between that (2.66GHz) and 2.8GHz is going to be negligible, so we ran w/ the 2.66GHz benches, though we could have gone either way with it.

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by One4yu2c

Yeah, and you know, my real gripe here is with the optical manufacturers. Granted they don't need the additional bandwidth that SATA provides, but good grief, we as users also don't need to be tied to ribbon cables and master/slave jumpers. SATA has been out a long time now and I'd like to see opticals other than the pricey Plextor offer this interface.

I hear ya. The use of SATA is not necessary for optical drives, but it would be great to see more drives available. Those silly ribbons are so last century.

Originally Posted by One4yu2c

Rich pretty much summed it up. Everyone's overclock is going to vary, so instead we focused on DDR2-667, DDR2-800, and DDR2-1066 benches to try and cover the three types of RAM most users will typically be purchasing (hopefully no one is still picking up DDR2-533 these days). Since DDR2-1066 is not supported by AMD, it requires an overclock to hit that speed. The difference between that (2.66GHz) and 2.8GHz is going to be negligible, so we ran w/ the 2.66GHz benches, though we could have gone either way with it.

Ah that's what I meant. I just saw the 2.8ghz screenshot but no benchs so I was wondering if it was an error or anything. A 3800+ X2 @ 2.66ghz should be more than enough for most users anyway, right? :P

Most northbridge fans won't make a problem when they're always in the same position (mobo seated in ATX case) but if you reseat it in a desktop case after a year, watchout. I'd say alot of fans will fail the noise test. I agree this situation could fall in the "exceptional case" section, but it's a problem nevertheless.

As for the heatpipe coolers, I'm not a fan either. To be exact, i'm partial. Like you implied alot of heatpipes are not very well built and this can lead to instability of the board, see death. I would still like to see a better placement for most northbridges as they're often found just right of the first or second PCI-e 16x on AMD boards somehow. With a better placement of it you could technically install a passive cooler (or watercooling) and have your 120mm case fan(s) slighty blow on it.

Something other things I saw, the heatsink right of the PCI-e 8x could get in your way as it is just a bit too high. Not that I use any PCI-e 8x component though. There's also a fan connector (fan4) crammed between the PCI-e 1x and PCI-e 8x. That's a very weird place to put a fan connector is you ask me. The 4 pin power connector just up of the primary PCI-e 16x is close to it, and the fan connector at the bottom (fan5) is a bit too close to the last PCI.
I normally try to space my PCI/AGP/PCI-e cards the most I can in a computer to steer away from heat issues or interference (56K modem for instance) and this one would be hard to reach if I had to disconnect/connect a fan.
Nothing dramatic obviously.

I like the add-on sound card since alot of people are now getting external sounds cards. I also like to see they used a digital PWM from Volterra, quality.
A question for Paul, did you check to see if the mosfets heatsink just aside the PWM was very hot?

Cats, what about cats. Oh yeah, they rule their world. :P

[One4yu2c]

No real hot-spots on the motherboard, but then again, it's an open air test bench with two large 120mm fans blowing across.

Getting back to the OCing chat, I've updated that page with some benches in the form of a table, comparing it to the 2.66GHz OC. WorldBench 5 and Super Pi 32M are omitted for the time being, until they get a chance to finish.

[polobunny]

Interesting table. As you said little to no difference, and you need to fiddle with the memory to accomodate the CPU OC.
Games don't like slower memory very much. =P