DFI LANParty DK 790FX-B Features

• Support for socket 940 AM2+ CPUs (and compatible 938-pin AM3 CPUs) including Phenom II, Phenom, Athlon and Sempron series.
  
• AMD 790FX northbrigdge
  
• AMD SB750 southbridge
  
• Four 240-pin DDR2 memory slots supporting 667-1,066MHz DIMMs up to 8GB in total
  
• Three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (x16/x16 or x16/x8/x8)
  
• Three PCI slots
  
• Realtek ALC885 7.1 channel premium high-definition audio codec
  
• One Marvell 88E8053 PCI-Express Gigabit LAN
  
• Six SATA 3Gbps ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD as well as one IDE socket
  
• DFI ABS feature

Board Layout

DFI goes with a classic vibrant yellow on black PCB design, with only the alternate orange memory slots providing some contrast. Generally the layout is very good, although as usual for AMD boards the CPU socket is close to the memory slots and this time the nortbridge heatsink is also close to one of the corners too - we found this can interfere with a few heatsinks that have particularly large fans.

Without Firewire included here, the USB pin-outs don't require differentiation and are also yellow - dotted along the bottom - with onboard power and reset buttons separating these from the colour coded front panel pin-out. Surprisingly there's no clear CMOS button - not even a simple, cheap one: it's a job left to an awkward jumper and screwdriver. This is one old school thing we'd love to lose as soon as possible, and cheap momentary switches cost next to nothing too!