DFI ICFX3200T2R/G (RD600/SB600) Motherboard Quick User Review

[kempez]

I was going to do a full review and perhaps I shall in the future..perhaps

Pics are FragTek (****) and mine

Box Front
[IMG]http://www.***********.net/gfx/articles/2007/01/14004508161l.jpg[/IMG]

Box Back
[IMG]http://www.***********.net/gfx/articles/2007/01/14004510925l.jpg[/IMG]

Box Contents
[IMG]http://www.***********.net/gfx/articles/2007/01/14004510619l.jpg[/IMG]

Motherboard Left
[IMG]http://www.***********.net/gfx/articles/2007/01/14004511701l.jpg[/IMG]

Motherboard Bottom
[IMG]http://www.***********.net/gfx/articles/2007/01/14004511624l.jpg[/IMG]

Motherboard Right
[IMG]http://www.***********.net/gfx/articles/2007/01/14004511306l.jpg[/IMG]

Motherboard Top
[IMG]http://www.***********.net/gfx/articles/2007/01/14004511742l.jpg[/IMG]

As you can see the board is very well laid out. One major thing I've found is that the PWM heatsink gets in the way of my Apogee mount which meant initially my temps were appalling. I replaced this with some Swiftech VGA sinks and all was well.

The sideways SATA ports are great and everything is on the edge of the board like it should be.

Full Screen Boot Logo
[IMG]http://www.***********.net/gfx/articles/2007/01/14004512709l.jpg[/IMG]

BIOS

First boot into BIOS is very scary. Now I'm not a newbie when it comes to motherboards and loved the awesome tweakability of the 939 SLI-D, but this things BIOS is just scary.

I dare anyone to look through it and not be overwhelmed at first.

Luckily there are good guides out there now or I'd have been umm screwed

If you're a tweaker then you'll be happier than a pig in muck. Volt tweaking is HUGE and there is a LOT of voltages to adjust, all with a good range and all that help in some way.

Timings are great too with a huge range unlocked by Oskar. The main ones are the ones that make the most difference, but hey tweak some of the others to get more stability

FSB options are also great...basically all you need to OC C2D

Build Quality

Now I've never found this but a lot of people find DFI build quality to be a little lacking. Looking at the ICFX3200 it looks very solid. Everything is high-quality, from the Digital PWM to the quality Jap capacitors.

One major niggle:

Thermal Paste Horribleness:

[IMG]http://www.***********.net/gfx/articles/2007/01/22192131886s.png[/IMG]

That was the paste applied as standard! VERY bad. I replaced this with Arctic Ceramique and temps were better, but not a huge amount.

The NorthBridge is severely lacking a fan. With no fan on it it shoots up to 85°C+ when overclocking and putting some decent voltages in it. With a fan it stays around 55-62°C.

Fair play to DFI for not putting on heatpipes strewn over the board: personally I'm not a big fan of the "all in one solution" at all. However I feel that they have put on a cooler that isn't up to the job.

I am planning on getting the Thermalright Intel NB heatsink for it and running that with a fan.

Overclocks

On my terrible stepping E6600 B0 Retail (need hella volts to get anywhere):

Both below are 100% Orthos/Bench/Gaming Stable:

[IMG]http://www.***********.net/gfx/articles/2007/01/24231651894s.png[/IMG]

As you can see running the RAM asynch is very effective. You can pretty much use any RAM and set it to what you want and it just works...period. That's better than any other board I've used with Core2Duo.

This is actuially running at 1.55v @ 3373, which is 0.025 less than on every other board I've tested this chip on (and is Orthos stable)

I don't have screenies of other higher frequency RAM but it certainly does benefit Sandra Scores to run the RAM at higher bandwidth.



I managed to get my 6400 @ DDR1004 no problems and it's now stable.

Beware though if you're doing this you'll have to tweak your RAM a bit.

ALWAYS remember to enable "Software reset clockgen" under performance options or the board won't post until you do a proper CMOS reset (power off, battery out etc)

Like I said this is a brief overview asd lot's of people have asked me about it.

For more info on some of the options check this guide

Conclusion

Pro's

+ Great Tweaking Options
+ Lower volts for overclock
+ Great looking
+ General good build quality
+ Recovers very well from bad overclock
+ Stable @ stock and overclocked
+ Great memory asynch options

Con's

- Bad Thermal Paste Application
- Insufficient chipset cooling
- Will be confusing if you are new to BIOS

Personally I love this board now after an initial period of being scared of it

It's a great board and if DFI/yourself sort out the chipset cooler then it is undoubtedly one of the best/if not the best out there.

Would I buy it again: yes I certainly would

[Clunk]

Thanks for this mate

Quick question regarding the ram.

Lets say that you have a cpu that is happy to sit at 3.2 @ stock volts, but any higher mhz, it needs 1.65 etc, and you want to run some fast ram, can you actually set the ram to whatever you like and leave the cpu at 3.2, individually clocking each one, rather than using, say, a 4:5 divider? Did that make sense?

Chipset cooling has never been a DFI strong point One thing that has seriously puzzled me is why they chose the hook method of securing the chipset cooler? Fitting a waterblock to those is a right pain, so looks like the HR05 would have to go on it!

Any problems with soundcards so far?

I'm sure I'll think of more questions, but that'll do for now cheers

[kempez]

Yep you can set the CPU overclock to be whatever you want

Then what you do is set the RAM to run manual and then set it to anything below like 658 - DDR 1316 or whatever. You do tend to need to put some volts through the chipset to do this though. For example I set manual on, then set DDR533 (you have to pick one setting), then set 501 and away I went (to go fiddle with timings and volts for a day or so)

As far as the Karajan module is concerned I only used it for a short time and it was ok. It's the Realtek ALC885 High-Def codec so I'd imagine it's not too bad. I've got an X-Fi so I used that almost straight away.

HR05 looks good, although I'm tempted to stick this CM Blue Ice cooler in I have and see how that does.

[Clunk]

Ah I see

About the soundcards, I was meaning any compatability issues with proper sound cards. I really struggled with every sound card I tried on the 939 dfi boards, and that included terratec, m-audio and auzentech and a mate struggled with an x-fi, Im hoping these will behave a bit better!

I saw a thermaltake (i think) chipset cooler a while back (spirit 2 or something) and it had hooks, which had screws on them, so you tighten them down and it pulls the hooks up, they would work for the chipset block I have, might be worth a look.

[Clunk]

Any developments on this? Have you been tempted to throw it out of the window yet? Any really annoying features cropped up?

[kempez]

Originally Posted by Clunk

Any developments on this? Have you been tempted to throw it out of the window yet? Any really annoying features cropped up?

Nah not really. My X-Fi works smooth as a peach and I've settled on my OC of 375 x 9 for the moment. Lowering vCore steadily (down to 1.54 atm) and still stable. Loving having a DFI again

Not really tweaked with the memory a lot, but this is my main rig and I need it stable to do reviews on etc so I've left it running aSync @ 1T 4-4-4-12 @ 400MHz. Seems fine

24/7 folding, some gaming and whatever i throw at it

Still thinking about adding this CM Blue Ice, waiting for Bacata to get my damn Thermalright NB cooler and my Swiftech Apogee GT