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DFI NF4 SLI Infinity Motherboard   

     The DFI NF4 SLI Infinity is designed with a very smart layout which puts the most intrusive components far away from the video card slots. Some typical arrangements put the memory slots pointing towards the PCI Express slots which can complicate installing memory if a video card is already inserted into the top-most PCI Express slot. Some boards even put the Media Control Processor directly behind and between both slots. This normally results in a very small heatsink being used to provide passive cooling to the MCP. DFI has chosen to migrate the MCP further down the board and place a small fan atop the heatsink. While it is now behind the PCI slots, in a typical desktop PC the PCI slots are used far less, and even so most cards are compact enough to fit without any physical conflicts.

     The CPU socket is given plenty of clearance to allow mounting larger sized heatsinks. The retention mechanism is sectored with the standard two screw arrangement, but the support on the backside of the board is not permanently attached to the board. Another nice feature is actually what's missing. Surely by now you've noticed that there is no SLI mode switch module between the PCI express slots. This leaves no additional hardware to contend with when you want to set the board up in SLI mode.

     The bottom of the board is crammed with the expected headers and connectors. Four Serial ATA ports are lined up under the two Parallel IDE ports which border the outer edge of the MCP and its cooling gear. On the inside of the MPC, between the MCP and the PCI slot, we find the CMOS battery and clear jumper. The very bottom edge of the PCB is home to the headers for the front panel enclosure headers as well as the three separate USB headers. For those enclosures that don't have speakers in them, DFI has included a buzzer right on the motherboard.