DFI Lanparty Blood Iron P45-T2RS Elite Motherboard Review

Included Software

The DFI Lanparty BI P45-T2RS Elite motherboard comes with an installation disk containing drivers needed for the board as well as a few additional programs and tools. Navigating the disk, users will find chipset, audio, LAN, storage, graphics, and RAID drivers. Extra software is found under the Tools page and includes Adobe Acrobat Reader, the Auto Boost II program and DFI’s hardware monitoring program called Smart Guardian.

There is one additional page we would like to share on the Blood Iron install disk since it contains links to various overclocking software including: 3DMark, Everest, CPUZ, SuperPI, OCCT, HD Tach, Stressprime, and Sisoft Sandra. These types of overclocking programs are updated so frequently that it would be pointless to put the actual install files on the disk so DFI simply included the links so users can get the latest version. We think it's a great idea.


DFI’s Smart Guardian is a system monitoring tool that includes system temperatures, voltages, and fan speeds. As part of our usual installation process, we find it is always useful to install Smart Guardian to keep an eye on your temps and voltages, especially when overclocking. There are also different skins you can download for Smart Guardian; above is the default for the BI P45-T2RS Elite.


The Auto Boost System II technology provides the convenience of saving and loading several overclocking settings. It allows users to swap profiles with other users by sending a small .abs file and makes tweaking on such a complex board a little less overwhelming for a novice user. This is also a great program for tech support as they can request your .abs file to help users with settings or just send a pre-tested profile. The ABS program also comes pre-loaded with "upgrade" options for different processors. For example, users with a 1333 FSB CPU could select the 1333 upgrade to 1600 option and enjoy extra performance with little to no overclocking experience. These profiles are designed to be general and to work with most setups; however a user should at least know overclocking basics in case some minor tweaking is needed.

In our testing, the features of ABS II worked flawlessly and we think it is a useful feature for DFI boards. ABS II can really save time when overclocking since all you have to do is simply press F1 on POST to access the ABS utility and the screen will show CPU upgrade information. ABS is also accessible in the BIOS under CMOS Reloaded and in Windows with the included software utility. Please remember to use extreme caution when playing with these settings as hardware damage and operating system corruption is possible if the user goes too far with an unstable overclock.