There’s very little room for argument when discussing an enthusiast’s favorite board for AMD’s socket 939 CPUs- almost everyone preferred DFI’s LANParty series in one model or another. Today, we take a look at the follow up from DFI- their nVidia nForce 590 chipset based LanParty UT NF590-SLI-M2R/g. Lets find out if this new board with an incredibly long name can create a similar magic.

Packaging
Compared to their previous Expert board, not much is different with the packaging of the nForce 590-SLI which isn’t a bad thing. DFI continues to bundle yellow colored UV sensitive SATA and rounded Floppy/IDE cables along with the add-on audio module, an SLI connector and the drivers CD and user manuals. Also included is a quickstart guide as well as a large LAN Party sticker. 

Looks/Layout
Based on a black PCB with yellow colored connectors and slots has become the standard with DFI boards. Adding the yellow UV sensitive cables certainly adds to the look and so do the copper based HSF units on the MCP. While the board doesn’t feature fully passive cooling like recent ASUS and Gigabyte boards, the fan on the MCP is extremely quiet and seems much better than the fan found on older LP boards that had a habit of being noisy.

Compared to the nForce4-SLI expert board, there are some changes to the layout of the new nForce 590 based board, however, DFI mostly sticks to the older design which is a good thing. Lets talk about things that haven’t changed first- The main power connector, as well as the additional 12V connector are placed on the top right edge of the board although they’re a bit further apart from each other which makes it easier to work with them.

DFI continues to place the memory sockets to the left of the CPU socket, which, according to them, impacts the memory drive strength. The number of expansion slots and their configuration also remains the same with three 32-bit PCI slots and a two slot gap between the PCI-E x16 slots. This gap is populated with one PCI-E x4 and one PCI-E x2 slot.

The eight SATA ports, out of which six are powered by the nVidia chipset are bent at 90 degrees and placed in a double stacked configuration. This was a good idea with Parallel-ATA due their firm connection, however, with SATA cables detaching easily, we’re not sure if this will work out well- especially since the SATA cables bundled with the package don’t have any locks on them. The other two SATA ports along with the P-ATA connector are placed next to the power connectors. DFI also moves the USB headers towards the bottom edge of the board- close to the power and reset switches with diagnostic LED while the Firewire header is moved to the left edge of the board.