LAN PARTY KT400A - LAN PARTY KT400A
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DFI LAN PARTY KT400A
LAYOUT
Honestly, the first time I saw this board on a webpage I thought it was one of the fugliest I had seen. Actually seeing it in person has changed my mind.
The black PCB combined with the pale green of the UV connectors is pretty cool. I also like that DFI didn't include a bunch of other wild colors to the board. Looking at this board I noticed that this board is closer to the PC99 spec than some others. you find 5 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot. Gone are the ISA and CNR slots.
The placement of the AGP slot ensures that you can use an extended length graphics card without interfering with the DIMM slots. And, the AGP slot has a very nice locking retention clip for the gamer on the go. If you plan on using the header for the 5th and 6th USB ports and some PCI expansion cards, you could have routing problems as it is located between the 2nd and 3rd PCI slots.
Taking a gander at the rear of the motherboard, we find a slew of connectors. From left to right we have the standard PS2 mouse and keyboard connectors. A parallel port stacked on top of two serial ports. Two combination enclosures containing an Ethernet port and two USB 2.0 ports. Rounding it out are the three audio connectors. Additional connections are available through the use of the SPDIF and gameport expansion slot plates and the FrontX I/O box.
There is ample room for connecting the main and auxiliary ATX power connectors. However, care will have to be taken when routing the power supply's main and aux cables around/over the HSF to the motherboard. Connecting the CD-in was slightly troublesome as it and the Aux Audio-in are both right up against the back of the rear panel audio connector enclosure. Two of the three fan headers are located close to the CPU socket and Northbridge so swapping out the passive heatsink for an active chipset cooler will be no problem.
The only real danger area I see is right next to the CPU socket where three tall capacitors and one smaller capacitor are located a little to close to the socket for my liking. Trying to lock down my Volcano-9 was problematic and I had to entirely disassemble it and reverse the retention clip to get clearance to attach securely to the three lugs.
There is a box of dip switches for setting the FSB range of operation. Your ranges are 100+/133+/166+ MHz. Making changes to the FSB dip switches was no problem as there is ample room to flip the switches. (It's the tiny blue box)
By far, the most innovative and useful features on this motherboard are board mounted power and reset buttons. They are easily accessible behind the IDE RAID connectors. They provide you with the ability to fire up the motherboard without having to connect to any front panel case switches. As you see below, I just connected the power supply, the hard drive and CD-Rom and plugged in the graphics card, CPU and memory and hit the power button and I was up and running sans case. The gameport, Firewire, SPDIF, and IRDA headers are all located along the periphery of the motherboard where they can't cause any trouble.
Another plus for this board is that if you want to use one of the Swiftech watercoolers or aircoolers, the mounting holes are there. All of the front panel headers are located along the right-hand bottom edge of the board and are clearly marked.
There are six bright red LED's located on the motherboard. The first one is the "standby power" LED and is located in the upper left-hand corner near the fifth PCI slot. The next one is located in the lower right-hand corner below the third DIMM slot. The last four LED's are for POST diagnostics and are located right next to the onboard power and reset buttons behind the IDE RAID connectors.
ASSEMBLY AND STARTUP
With the exception of my Volcano 9, assembly of the motherboard was a breeze. I initially set the board up on my desk to try out one of DFI's best features. The onboard power and reset buttons work exactly as advertised. I had this puppy up and running in minutes. DFI must really want you to secure this motherboard as there are a total of ten usable mounting holes on the motherboard.
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