Epox EP-4PEA+

Specifications

Package

One thing that immediately gets noticed are the rounded IDE and floppy cables. IDE cable is also eqipped with pull tabs so you can easily take the connector off and you don't have to pull the cable. Rounded cables are definately something that I would like to see bundled more widely. You also get one Serial ATA -cable and rear bracket with two firewire connectors. Because there are some design differences from a standard rear I/O panel Epox also ships a new plate for that. For the same reason there is a separate rear bracket with one serial port and a game port.

As you can see there are many different manuals included for different features like RAID and Serial ATA. Driver cd and a floppy with Serial ATA drivers are also bundled.

Connectors

There are some design differences compared to majority of boards. AC'97 audio connectors are rised up and the game port is missing. Also there is only one serial port available (second on separate rear bracket). RJ45 network socket is shifted to the right side of the I/O plate and there are four USB2.0 connectors available.

Maybe these changes are well justified. Manufacturers usually offer additional USB port via a separate rear bracket but now you don't need that because there are four ports visible on the I/O plate. On the other hand one serial port and a game port is situated on that additional rear bracket but there is a good chance that majority of users will not install that because they don't need those connectors. This then saves one PCI-slot that would have been taken by that bracket.

Chips

More added features usually means more added controller chips. This is also the case with this board:

- Highpoint HPT372 for RAID providing two connectors that support four IDE devices.
- Sil3112a SerialATA supporting two separate channels
- Winbond Smart I/O W83627HF-AW
- Realtek RTL8100B LAN
- Texas Instrument TSB43AB22 for the firewire
- Realtek ALC650 6-channel full-duplex integrated sound

Motherboard connectors

On the bottom left you can see header for the bluetoot module. Not so widely needed these days but when bluetooth keyboards/mouses etc. gets more popular this feature might get usefull. Next to it are the two Serial ATA -connectors and on the right side of them are the two IEEE-1344 firewire connectors.

On the center of the image you can see yellow jumper that is used to clear the CMOS. Two red connectors are from the IDE-raid and next to them is the floppy connector. On the bottom right you can see the diagnostic display. From there you can clearly see what is the problem if your system fails to boot up.

Active cooling

Epox decided to use active cooling on the North Bridge. As a bonus they added some blue leds to the fan and I have to admit, it looks quite sweet. :) Not that these kind of features are needed on the motherboards but this kind of little things make the product more appealing for some reason.

Power connectors

Once again Epox follows its own path. They have moved 20-pin ATX connector to the other side of the board, near the back I/Os connectors. I'm not sure why people usually prefer the other placement over this one because this leaves more space on the front side of the board where all the IDE cables etc. are routed. Many say that running the power cable over the CPU cooler is not efficient and that is true but who says you have to run the cable from there. You can go around the cooler quite easily. Nice to see that at least one manufacturer is on my side on this. :)

IDE + memory slots

By moving the floppy connector Epox was able to make some room so they could move those memory slots a bit. This allows users to operate on their memory modules without AGP card getting to way. Great going Epox! :)

Boot logo

This is the first screen that will greet the user. Again a nice little feature that makes this board to stand out from other boards. You can turn this feature off from the BIOS if you don't like it.

Information

This is another selectable feature inside the BIOS. You can get all the necessary health information on the boot time if you like.

BIOS

For overclockers this board offers some nice voltage tweaks. AGP voltage can be rised to 2.2 volts and for memory you can go as far as 3.2 volts. Maximum value for Vcore is 1.8 volts and while this sounds quite low value, it is still plenty for most overclocking needs. There are only two DRAM:CPU ratio settings 1:1 and 4:5.

CPU volts: default, -0.100 - +0.350 (0.025 steps)
AGP volts: default, +0.70 (0.10 steps)
DDR volts: default, +0.70 (0.10 steps)
FSB: 90 - 200
Mem freq: 1:1 => 266, 4:5, auto

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