Features and Layout I
EPoX now add a 12v 4-pin auxillary power connector to the board. The forerunner to this board, the 8RDA+, did without. We'd have liked it further up the right-hand side of the board because trailing wires are never a good thing. EPoX feel no need to passively cool the MOSFETs like some manufacturers are now doing. A passive heatsink is always appreciated here at Hexus. The only niggle we have is whether the heatsink can provided sufficient cooling in the face of the extra Vdd available from within BIOS. EPoX use a decent 3-phase power design to provide the CPU with clean voltage.
The socket has a generous measure of room around for larger coolers. You can see that EPoX keep the four mounting holes around the socket. This allows you to mount larger air coolers or waterblocks with relative ease, as the standard ZIFF socket's lugs aren't up to the job. We're always sceptical of in-socket thermistors as a means of reading the CPU's temperature correctly. EPoX do the right thing by having a couple pieces of plastic below the two sets of lugs. Most people use screwdrivers when attaching coolers on and one errant flick could mean that your new motherboard is history. The little patches should help counter this. The socket does seem to be a little close to the edge of the board. Thankfully, it's rotated such that wider coolers shouldn't be impeded.
EPoX make dual-channel running simple. Simply insert two modules, preferably equal size and manufacturer, into the green slots. The twin memory controller nature of the nForce2 means that running a single module is really missing the point. The AMD CPUs may be not be able to use dual-channel memory as efficiently as the Pentium 4 due to their double-pumped FSB design, but extra bandwidth ensures that the CPU is fully satiated with bandwidth at all times. The 8RDA3+ doesn't feature the integrated GeForce4 graphics core on this model, so it's a SPP NB. The 6.4GB/s of bandwidth, at DDR-400, allows a compliant motherboard to run on-board duties reasonably well. Two fan headers are just visible at the top-right of the above picture.
The original 8RDA+ had a full complement of 6 PCI slots. EPoX dismiss one of these on the 8RDA3+. The level of overall integration shouldn't need more than a few PCI slots. One of the advantages of missing out the first PCI slot is the gap between the 8x AGP slot and the first PCI slot. There's sufficient gap to mount a large cooler on an AGP card. We're adamant that you could install a GeForce FX5900 Ultra and still use the first slot, assuming you could install the card without the double-height backplate. The nForce2 Southbridge, which we'll talk about a little later, needs external physical layers to route its functions properly. Realtek, the masters of physical layers and CODECS, provide the single-chip RTL8101L (centre) and RTL8201BL (upper left) 10/100 Fast Ethernet PHY transceiver.
Why two ?. The nForce2's MCP Southbridge supports an Ethernet controller from NVIDIA, so another is discretely required for dual net duties. The 8101L installs during Windows XP installation, but the 8201BL requires nForce2 drivers to function. Two network connections give rise to simple networking. This is not strictly the same as NVIDIA's DualNet, as that one uses an integrated 3COM controller from the MCP-T.
The bottom of the board plays host to a number of headers. GAME, 2 COM ports, the third fan header, and three FireWire connectors. I like this location because they're all grouped in one portion of the board. Why are the COM ports here and not integrated on the backplane ?. We'll answer that question when we look at the back panel. Three FireWire ports and only a 2-port cable. Really should have been 3, shouldn't it ?.
