The DX48BT2 box is a black box with the Intel Extreme Series logo on the front. The main features of the motherboard are listed including support for 45nm Core 2 processors, ATX form factor, DDR3 1600/1333/1066MHz memory and Dual PCI Express 2.0 slots. The rear of the box gives a detailed description of the mainboard features along with a picture of the board with arrows pointing to each feature.
The software bundle on the DX48BT2 is pretty extensive as the Intel board comes with Intel’s Desktop Control Center, which has overclocking options for the CPU, lists the voltage for the CPU and MCH, shows the FSB, Memory PCI Express bus and PCI bus speeds, total memory and memory timings. Here you can also see the temperatures for the CPU and CPU Load.


Diskeeper 9 Home Edition, DivX for Windows, TypePad, Skype, Norton 360 and Norton’s Antivirus are the included bundled software with the DX48BT2. Diskeeper allows the system to automatically defrag the hard disks on the system. DivX is a popular video player of .avis and other media. TypePad is a hosted blogging service used by Wil Wheaton on his Blog. Skpe is a free internet based telephone service. Norton 360 protects the computer with security backup and restoration software.

The included accessories are as follows: a single SATA cable, a rounded IDE cable and that’s it. Intel bundles tend to be short on the accessories and this board is no exception. I prefer retail motherboards to have more accessories as that means less needed purchases from the local computer store for the average consumer. As the DX48BT2 is Intel’s flagship product, including more SATA cables would have been better than the single one included. Of course if you are upgrading your computer, those cables are redundant.