Iwill DP400 (Cont'd)

BIOS

I don't normally remember to include much information about the BIOS on my review boards. Other than initial setup, I rarely spend much time in there. Jim, on the other hand, is a BIOS option freak. He reminded me last night to include some more information on the DP400's BIOS, so here you go ;-)

As you can see, there isn't much out of the ordinary in the DP400's BIOS. Other than your standard IDE and chipset settings, you have a nice array of hardware and temperature monitors, a few memory settings (ECC, and speed) and the ability to enable/disable hyperthreading for your "Prestonias". Don't look too deep for overclocking options. They just aren't there.

Layout

The DP400 is a big board. At 12" x 13", its eATX formfactor makes choosing a case an interesting prospect. Fortunately, Iwill's choices for component placement alleviates some of the pain. In my Antec SX1000 series case I have to remove the internal drive bay cages to access the memory slots, but other than that, it fits just fine. Since this board is targeted at the workstation market, a smaller case makes a big difference (I haven't seen many CAD draftsmen with server towers on or under their desks :-). Anything smaller than my Antec case and I fear you're asking for problems though, so consider yourself warned.

I have been really impressed by the heatsink attachment mechanisms of the dual Xeon boards I've looked at so far. Gone are the days of breaking lugs on your CPU sockets as the Xeons use a very simple (and easy) way of attaching heatsinks. Previous Xeon boards I've had simply used a snap-in approach for attaching the plastic heatsink brackets to the motherboard. Iwill, however, adds some peace of mind to the mix by including two metal backing plates that add rigidity and support to the board around the CPU sockets. The black plastic heatsink clips screw into the backing plates, through the motherboard. There is -no- chance that those bad-boys are popping-out unexpectedly.

Power supply connectors? Perfectly placed. I don't use "perfect" too often, but these connectors are right where they should be... At the top of the board, right underneath where the actual PSU would be in a tower (or rackmount for that matter) case. Cable routing has never been easier. Athough, with the inherently long wiring on WTX PSU's, you have to do some creative folding. It's all worth it though if you're in your case messing with memory, heatsinks and the like on a frequent basis. One less thing to worry about. The floppy connector on the other hand...

The floppy connector is the one thing I had a problem with on the DP400. Let me rephrase that. I didn't have a problem with the placement of the floppy connector, but I sure can see how some people would. Iwill chose to locate it at the absolute bottom of the board. In a mid-tower or rackmount case, this may not be a problem at all (it wasn't for me), but in a full-tower case, which I'm sure a lot of potential DP400 users would be looking at, the placement of the flopppy connector would make for a -very- long cable run to the top of a tall case.

I feel like I'm nit-picking when I point out minor faults like this, but after I write a review like this I always get that one email from that one person who asks "Why didn't you say anything about...". Oh. To the one guy with the one email from my last review... The DP400 has six 3-pin fan headers onboard, so you should have all of your RPM monitored case/CPU cooling needs taken care of :-)

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