Layout and features
Unlike a number of other motherboard manufacturers, EPoX seem content to stick with a generic PCB colour. The motherboard, being a deluxe version in nature, does have quite a busy layout. The socket has enough room to mount a larger, aftermarket cooler via the 4 mounting holes that sit either side of the ZIFF socket.
The 21-pin main ATX power connector is in something of a strange place, as trailing wires will have to navigate the area occupied by the heatsink, I'd have preferred it nearer the DIMM slots. The main CPU fan header sits in a slightly awkward place sandwiched between the ATX connector and heatsink. Another fan header sits on the opposing side.
3 DIMM slots can house up to 3GB of unbuffered memory, giving you plenty of flexibility in managing your memory requirements. You can fill each slot with double-sided memory should you so wish, unlike Intel's 845-based motherboards. I do like the fact that EPoX have managed to cram in the full complement of 6 PCI slots.
This KT400 Northbridge, manufactured in the 41st week of '02, has native support for DDR266 and DDR333 memory. The 400 appears to be something of a red herring with VIA increasingly shunning support for DDR400 memory. That option is available on this motherboard, but performance was dire. It's nice to see thermal paste in between the NB and heatsink. There's also a version with LEDs placed on a Northbridge fan, dubbed MagicLight. The AGP slot, 8x AGP compliant, comes in a rather strange purple colour.
A lot of the action is centred around the RAID setup. Thankfully, EPoX have the excellent debug LCD on this particular model (it's optional, though). The capable Highpoint HPT372 RAID controller allows you to choose from RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1. It's also ATA133 compatible. I do like the way the power and LED connectors are laid out. They're usually grouped together with little markings. Here you can easily see which connector goes where.
It seems as if every premium manufacturer wants to include Serial ATA (or S-ATA) support on their top-of-the-line motherboards. We see the Silicon Image approach taken here. Capable of 150 MB/s transfer speed, It caters for 2 ports, shown alongside. It can be set to recognise the drives independently of RAID. RAID functionality is offered in both RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring) modes.
The trouble is that no true S-ATA drives are currently available, and only ABIT seem to provide an IDE-to-SATA converter with their motherboards. We'll only be able to truly test the abilities of the S-ATA ports when compatible drives start to surface in volume (Q1 '03). A further fan header and Wake-On LAN (WOL) sits just to the left.
The capable Realtek ALC650 on-board sound CODEC makes its appearance once again. I won't bore you with the technical details, but it's fine for all those that just want to use their PCs as rudimentary MP3 players. You can just about make out the S/PDIF header on the left. It allows you to transfer the audio signal in digital format to compatible decoders.
4 USB2.0 ports, from the 6 available through the VT8235 Southbridge, find their way on to the backplane. The other two are catered for by a header and bracket combination on the PCB. The 10/100 LAN is supplied by the on-board VIA VT6103 IC. This motherboard can also use an optional Bluetooth module if you're prepared to sacrifice the on-board USB2.0 header.
