DFI LANPARTY LGA775 Showcase: The 925X-T2 & 875P-T
LANPARTY 875P-T: The Board & Layout
When designing the LANPARTY 875P-T, DFI obviously put a lot of thought into the board's layout and connector placement. With the exception of a couple of a headers that aren't in ideal locations, this motherboard's layout is near perfect...
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Just like the other motherboards in the LANPARTY line-up, this 875P-T is built upon a dark PCB with UV reactive orange and yellow connectors. Because it's based on the i875P chipset, it uses standard DDR1 RAM and AGP graphics cards. There is a single AGP slot, and 4 PCI slot available, along with two SATA ports, two IDE ports, and a lone floppy connector.
ATX power connectors are located at the upper-right corner of the board, adjacent to the DIMM slots, and the IDE and floppy connectors are located along the front edge of the motherboard. The i875P Northbridge is outfitted with a large aluminum heatsink, but the ICH5R Southbridge is bare. and like the 925X-T2, the LANPARTY 875P-T also has a pair of power and reset switches mounted to the board.
Audio duties are handled by the Realtek ALC655 chip which is a 16-bit, full-duplex AC'97 Rev. 2.3 compatible six-channel audio CODEC. Gigabit networking duties are handled by a Marvell Yukon 88E8001 32-bit ethernet controller. Unlike the 925X-T2 though, the 875P-T has only a single ethernet controller. The externally accessible rear I/O cluster houses a pair of PS/2 ports, 5 audio jacks including S/PDIF ins and outs, a single 9-pin serial port, a parallel port, 4 USB ports, a single Firewire jack, and as single RJ45 LAN jack.
The only concerns we had with the LANPARTY 875P-T's layout relate to a pair of extra USB headers. These headers are located between PCI slots 1 and 2, and slots 2 and 3. If you install an additional bracket with USB ports, the cables will have to be floating around right in the middle of the board. We would have liked it better if these headers were located along the bottom edge of the board to make it easier to hide the cables, and keep the internal case wiring clean.
