First off as we always do here at TweakTown we take a look at what the board comes packed in as well as what extra goodies you get for your dollars. Let us start with the box that DFI ships the board in. The front is plain white with the model number written in green and the company logo, the back has a full colour photo of the board. We would normally show a picture of the back too, however it was covered in shipping labels.
When it comes to the documents and software we cannot complain on what DFI has to offer here. A single user manual explains all the ins and outs of the board as well as the BIOS setup features, so there is very little chance you will get stuck on a problem with this board. There are three floppy disks with drivers for the Nvidia and Silicon Image 3132 RAID controllers to help you install Windows XP, XP64 and Vista. The CD contains all the main Windows XP and Vista drivers you are going to need for setup.
For the accessories you get, DFI is second only to ASUS, who really puts a great accessory bundle in with its boards. Out of the total eight SATA ports there are four data cables and two power splitters with support for two drives per splitter.
In terms of the parallel cables a single IDE with 2-drive support is included and a FDD cable with single drive support. Both cables are rounded and covered in a UV reactive sleeve giving a nice orange glow under a UV black light.
DFI has elected to use what they call the KARAJAN audio module. This is a small break out module that you plug into the board in order to use the onboard audio system. If you prefer to use a discrete audio card you just simply keep the audio module off the board. An SLI bridge connector is provided to give you the ability to run two Nvidia SLI capable cards in SLI mode.
When DFI ships its board it does not come with a heatsink on the northbridge, you have to install it yourself. DFI gives you a large heatsink that passively cools the chipset.
