Leadtek nForce2 Ultra 400 Deluxe Limited Motherboard

A little over three months ago we brought you a review of the Leadtek K7NCR18D Pro II motherboard. A quick look at Leadtek's motherboard lineup reveals that all of their nForce2-based motherboards share the WinFast K7NCR18x (x varies from board to board) name. The nForce2 Ultra400 Deluxe Limited is no exception. Even though Leadtek calls it something different on its website, the box even reveals that this motherboard is actually a K7NCR18D Pro II with a much better bundle than the original. So, this amounts to a product refresh really. I believe Leadtek is trying to grab the attention of the enthusiast audience by adding such goodies as rounded cables, faster FSB support, and extra voltage tweaking capabilities.

Since this is the "Deluxe Limited" edition of an already released product, I thought it would be beneficial to see what makes it so "Deluxe" and "Limited." So, I grabbed this table from Leadtek's nForce2 Ultra 400 Deluxe Limited product website. It gives you a quick idea of what you get if you spend your hard earned dime on this special edition motherboard.

This tables fails to indicate all the cool features of this mainboard that separate it from the rest of its family. As you can see from the picture of the board above, Leadtek uses a nice black PCB for it. As an added bonus, the WinFast K7NFAL ACR card is even made with black PCB! Leadtek deserves props for going the extra mile and making the add-on card the same color as the mainboard.

In the table, Leadtek refers to the northbridge (nForce2 SPP chip) and southbridge (nForce2 MCP-T chip) as the "platform processors." As you can see, this "Deluxe Limited" version of the K7NCR18D Pro II not only has heatsinks on both chips, it also allows you to change the core voltages of the chips. As if these features aren't enough to appeal to the overclocker in all of us, Leadtek added massive heatsinks to the three-phase power supply MOSFETS. You can see some more pictures of these on the following pages.