DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS mATX Motherboard Review

Manufacturer Product Page: DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS Motherboard Overview
Product Number: Lanparty JR P45-T2RS
Availability: Now
Price: Approximately $170
Warranty Length: 1 year



Hardware Canucks has reviewed plenty of motherboards over the last few months but this time we have something a bit different for you: the much anticipated micro ATX version of the P45-T2RS Plus board by DFI – the Lanparty JR P45-T2RS! The JR is a micro board designed for overclocking enthusiasts which means we have a typical DFI-style product but in a smaller package. Based off the popular Intel P45 chipset (a follow up of the P35 chipset), the JR allows for high speed DDR2 memory support along with two PCIE 2.0 slots for your CrossFire needs. In addition to one of the most sought after Intel chipsets, the board hosts a number of features common to full-sized boards such as eight channel digital audio, heatpipe cooling, and one of the best BIOS’ in the industry. The price is about average for a P45 chipset board at about $170 and a little above average for a micro board. To make the Lanparty JR P45-T2RS worth the extra dollars over competitor mATX boards, DFI includes most of features, BIOS settings, and overclocking options of a full-sized board.

The Lanparty JR P45-T2RS features quad core Yorkfield and dual core Wolfdale processor support out of the box without a BIOS upgrade and PCIE 2.0 CrossFire support. In addition to CrossFire support, DFI provides high definition audio with the Realtek ALC885 Codec. The benefit to this is users can experience gaming on their micro ATX system in full surround sound. Placed against other micro ATX options, few even compare to the Lanparty JR P45-T2RS in terms of BIOS options and tweaking ability. This is DFI’s plan to make a board perfect for an enthusiast who wants to get every drop of performance out of his micro ATX build.

Another point worth mentioning is the famous BIOS designed by BIOS engineer and legend Oskar Wu. This name has been held in high regard by enthusiasts for many years and is part of the reason many users stay loyal to DFI. The Lanparty JR P45-T2RS has more BIOS tweaking options than you can imagine and features such as CMOS Reloaded are just icing on the cake. One other fairly new feature for DFI is the Auto Boost System (ABS). The ABS technology provides the convenience of saving and loading several overclocking settings in Windows to update your CMOS Reloaded settings. This allows users to share BIOS settings simply by sending their friends a small .abs file that loads into CMOS Reloaded in the BIOS. This saves time and is quite a handy feature for both novice and experienced overclockers.

DFI provides a 1 year warranty for motherboards through Authorized Distributors which means you can approach your retailer before having to RMA your motherboard to the factory in Taiwan (or other support center). DFI also has support offices in the US and Europe with technical staff available to help users in three languages (English, Dutch, and Chinese).

We should also mention right now that the motherboard we used in this review was purchased directly from the retail channel and is NOT supplied by DFI. Take this for whatever you want it to mean but we believe that this will give us overclocking results closer to what you the consumer will experience.