Bundle and extras
The LANPARTY range is also known for its oversized bundles. There's not a whole lot that DFI chooses to leave out. Let's take a look.
Huge is an understatement here. A usual box encompasses a standard motherboard and a few essential extras. The gap in the right-hand picture is where the motherboard box sits. The package weighs in at around the 3kg mark. We now know what the motherboard looks like, so here's the rest.
The cables are UV-reactive - just like the board's ports. Both floppy and IDE are provided. DFI provides a single FireWire port for good reason. There's two ports available on the PCB itself but the second port will be taken up by the FrontX module which we'll talk about in a moment. We like the two SATA power plugs that extend off a single molex connector. There's also two bland SATA cables included. We'd prefer the newer UV-reactive SATA cables - a perfect compliment to the board.
The custom I/O shield is needed due to the irregular back panel. A GAME port and SATA drivers for the Sil3112A PCI-to-SATA controller complete the hardware side of things. WinCinema, from InterVideo, adds in WinRip and WinDVD support. ASUS and DFI have been firm supporters of this package for a while now. The driver CD contains 5.02.1002 Intel chipset drivers (July 21st, 2003), DirectX 9, and the various software needed to get everything up and running. The installation GUI is easy to use. What we'd really like is a one-click setup that installed all the drivers without any user intervention. We were pleased to see that all the features install without problem.
The FrontX module has been bundled with previous DFI boards. It's modular in nature and fits into a spare 3.5" bay. As standard, there's two USB2.0 ports, a single FireWire port, and headphone / microphone ports. That's why DFI chose only to include a single FireWire extension in the package. There's one on the I/O panel, one via the extension cable and one via FrontX. The 4 LEDs replicate the features of the basic diagnostic ones housed on the PCB itself. A useful, value-adding extra here.
DFI's PC TRANSPO case is exactly what it sounds like. One can fit a regular ATX case into it and carry it around for better portability. Woe betide the person who tries to do this with a Prometeia installed. As always, an above average bundle from DFI. That's one of the hallmarks of the LANPARTY series.
