Evaluation

And so we come to the last page of this article. As you probably might have guessed by now, the DFI UT X48-T3RS was a very mixed bag for us. On the one hand it makes a lot of promises: the board uses only top quality components, has an excellent layout, sports the (arguably) best cooling solution of its time, and uses Intel's very best chipset: the X48. Above all, the board supports the very best memory products out there, up to 2Ghz in an OC'ed condition (or at least, that is what the specifications are telling us). Finally, this board carries the best enthusiast name in the business: DFI, and has the bios signature of the very best engineer that walks the earth: Oscar Wu.

Perhaps the problem here is this: with all these superlatives, maybe the board just had to disappoint. When you've got the best of everything, you expect no less than the best when using it and this is where the board falls short a little. This board is good, can be very good even for overclocking your CPU and memory, but you'll have to find the time to make it work. I'm not talking one or two evenings here, you'll need several weeks, depending on how much time you're able to spend of course. However when all is said and done, I don't think that this board can ever be the best enthusiast X48 board out there, maybe that honor is preserved for the DDR2 counterpart, which seemingly is very good indeed. Of course, the Asus Rampage Extreme will be very hard to surpass, certainly when you confine yourself to DDR3 boards. Myself, I've spend about two months with this board by now, and in the end, my evaluation is that this board still has enormous growing potential. The T3RS could grow into one of the better X48 boards out there, provided that Oscar manages to find enough time to finish that daunting bios.

Finally, as a PC enthusiast I can also tell you that I had a lot of fun with this board: out of initial frustration grew a kind of respect for the board, and also a lot of (almost childlike) satisfaction when you finally find a way for it to behave like you want it to. No, I like this board a lot because it tested my skills or maybe the initial lack thereof ;-) When you expect to get a motherboard that "just works", or offers an easy overclocking experience, you'll have to look elsewhere I'm afraid. DFI has taken the effort to make things a little easier on us, by providing the "ABS" or "Auto Boost System" and a way of uploading settings used by other people, but in my opinion the bios of this board is so complex that other people's settings will not "just work" for you when you try them. One interesting evolution is the fact that DFI now offers a comprehensive bios guide online (accessible through the DFI-club forum), which offers the basics of bios tuning and a little more, and should get you started a lot easier than before.



Conclusions

So have a look at our final take on the DFI Lanparty UT X48-T3RS motherboard :

Great board layout
Very fancy and efficient cooling system, with the help of Thermalright
Full option board with all the bells and whistles and a very complete accessory kit
Great performance at standard settings.
Extremely complete bios providing all the options you'll ever need - and more

Very difficult board to tune and work with
Immature, very complex and partially broken bios
No "auto-recovery" function for failed overclocks
Mediocre overclock headroom, for the time being (awaiting further bios releases)
Compared to the DDR2 (DFI) counterparts expensive and providing less value for money.




For further reading on the DFI X48-T3RS, I'd gladly point you towards the following sites :

DFI Lanparty UT X48-T3RS product page PS: worth a look if only for the revamped DFI site.

OCXtreme site, forum and DFI X48-T3RS forum thread started by OnePageBook (OPB)

OCZ memory settings for X48-T3RS by Praz

DFI-club forum and X48-T3RS forum thread started by RGone

Clunk.org review

Anand's first look (together with Corsair PC3-2133 ram)


Thank you !

At this point a very well deserved thank you goes out to Wendell Smith from DFI, who was kind enough to lend us another high end DFI motherboard for a nice and long test drive, and I hope he will continue his trust in our site as a review platform for years to come.

I hope you liked this little review of the DFI X48-T3RS. Thanks for reading and see you soon!