DFI X48 UT-T3RS Motherboard

 

Summarising this review is not going to be easy. While on the one hand, the DFI is clearly a very accomplished board with a very thorough and complex BIOS resulting in some fantastic performance, on the other hand, there are now boards out there that can achieve similar performance without all the stress, grief and mountains of patience required. While on the A64 platform the DFI was king of the overclockers, the Intel market has seen Asus, Abit and Gigabyte make leaps and bounds in the enthusiast market, so now the lead DFI had is all but gone.

 

It has been a while since I had a play with a DFI board and this is my first outing on an Intel DFI so I was particularly interested in if DFI had changed its approach to overclocking compared to my old DFI Ultra-D. Thankfully it has not. The numerous amount of options and tweaking available on this board are second to none. IF you know what you are doing and IF you are an accomplished overclocker then I can wholeheartedly recommend this board. You will simply be blown away with the sheer power that is available at your finger tips and if you can bare the frustration involved in getting to grips with those options then you will have found a new best friend.

 

If however, you are new to the dark arts then this board will scare you (and no doubt your components) witless. It’s all very well having all the options in the world at your fingertips but unless you have some form of understanding of what ‘those buttons do’ then the end result could quite easily be a doomed overclock or worse, fried hardware.  I wouldn’t let my 3 yr old drive my car, much the same I wouldn’t advise a novice to buy this board.

 

I am still unsure as to whether I love the board or hate it. The motherboard on test broke our current best clock for our test Q6600 but the amount of frustration that went with it has tainted the glory somewhat. ‘No Pain – No Gain’ so they say but call me lazy, I’m actually getting quite used to achieving some quick and easy overclocks.

 

 

– Supreme overclocking.

– Thermalright cooling.

– Funky colour scheme.

– Removable Northbridge section.

– Digital PWM.

– Solid caps all round for durability.

 

– EZ Cear switches look basic in comparison to other boards don’t ALWAYS clear CMOS..

– BIOS scrolling. Input method could be better.

– Bernstein Audio. Good but not great for a £200 motherboard.

  

– Poor recovery from a bad overclock.

– BIOS update procedure tedious.

– CMOS clear with dual slot crossfire cards will be impossible without removing the lower card first.

 

 

 

 

Thanks to DFI for providing the X48-T3RS for review. Discuss this review in our forums.