EPoX EP-4PCA3+ Layout and Features
EPoX are not one to push the boat out when it comes to PCB colour. The Canterwood is all about the marriage of speed and features. It's difficult to procure a CW-based motherboard that isn't armed to the teeth with the latest gadgets and peripherals. The retention socket is littered with the usual high-performance capacitors. In this case it's 8 3300uF and 4 2200UF from TEAP. The ZIFF socket features the same rotation as the MSI and Asus boards. We're not to keen on the placement of the 12v 4-pin power connector, we'd have preferred it next to the main 20-pin connector.
The main IDE ports are in a decent location, as is the 20-pin power connector. It always makes sense for it to plug into the board with the notch facing edge of the motherboard. The last thing you want it to pull the power connector out and hit the system memory. The DIMM slots, supporting up to 4GB of RAM, are colour coded for dual channel operation. Two fan headers sit at the top of the board.
The AGP slot supports the newer 8x transfer speed. However, a Radeon 9800 Pro comes very close to making contact with the on-board components. It's not a problem as the card doesn't interfere, just.
Standalone S-ATA and S-ATA RAID0 support is provided by the ICH5/R Southbridge. As you should know, the two ports can be run as independent S-ATA channels with a single drive on each, or they can be combined to form S-ATA RAID0. Further, if you've set the board up in RAID format with a single drive, you can add another RAID0-forming drive through an OS environment (currently only Windows XP). If you decide to run 2 S-ATA drives independently (master on each), you lose out on secondary P-ATA channel). In RAID0 mode, though, you can also have both P-ATA Primary and Secondary channels active at the same time. That's one of the vagaries of the ICH5/R.
The 4PCA3 also features the Highpoint HPT374. First seen on the ABIT i845E IT7-MAX, it supports up to 8 IDE drives through its 4 channels. ATA133, RAID0, RAID1, and RAID0+1 are all offered. A S-ATA version of this impressive controller would whet our lips. Hopefully one may arise in the near future. A couple of USB2.0 headers are present next to the floppy port but like the Asus motherboard, this board ships without the associated brackets. A third fan header provides ample cooling provision.
The AC'97 2.2 CMI9739A 6-channel CODEC isn't quite as clever as the jack-sensing AD1985 found on the Asus P4C800D. It's still a pretty robust solution. It supports S/PDIF out via a header nearby. EPoX provide the necessary add-on card as option on this particular model. It really should have been included in this feature-rich motherboard. The Broadcom 5705 single-chip Gigabit LAN uses the traditional PCI addressing system. Only MSI conform to Intel's CSA (Communication Streaming Architecture) link to the MCH.
4 USB2.0 ports give instant high-speed connectivity. The three sound ports double-up to give analogue 6-channel support. The only negative aspect so far is the lack of S/PDIF connections. We'd have sacrificed one serial port in place of optical or coaxial S/PDIF ports. There's no Firewire (1394a) support even though a bracket is bundled. Strange.
