Review: EPoX EP-8K5A2+

Performance Conclusion

The performance of this board wasn't really in question. We knew from the 8K3A that EPoX knew how to build an unhindered KT333 board. As you can see from the benchmarks the performance is there and the board liberates the XP2600+ quite nicely.

Just extrapolate back to the SOYO's XP2200+ performance if you need a ballpark performance line for the 8K5A2+ running that processor. It so happens the XP2600+ was around at the time, apologies for not having the XP2200+ to re run the numbers but it's off on Hexus duty elsewhere.

Overall Conclusion

The overall conclusion is a lot more interesting from our point of view since you could have guessed the performance side of things pretty easily. So we validated that and what do we have left? We have a board that's seen a nice feature based upgrade, one that's as stable as before and with a BIOS that tweakers will fall in love with. The new VT8235 helps too.

The bundle is top notch and EPoX go the extra mile these days with their Socket A presentation.

The new features including USB2.0 are very welcome and bring the board up to the feature level of all new boards coming out these days, added to the performance that was there before and your usual EPoX low price, this board is our favourite Socket A board so far, bettering the SOYO Platinum. Only the ABIT AT7-MAX2 is on our Socket A radar along with this board. Well done to EPoX yet again, long may its Socket A boards be as good as this one, we await the KT400 brethren with baited breath. We're happy to give it the EPoX EP-8K5A2+ our HEXUS Editors Choice Award since we'd put one in our own systems without question.

Pro's

Feature set
Price
Performance
Good layout
Presentation
Stability

Con's

None obvious

Overall Score

9.5/10