Layout and features
Almost an identical layout to the more expensive Canterwood model. EPoX retain the green PCB colour and some oddly-coloured components. Our first impression is one of a busy-looking board brimming with features. Time to macro in on some of the more important features and layout options used by EPoX.
The usual plastic retention bracket is littered with some of the beefiest capacitors yet seen on a home PC motherboard. We're not great fans of the 4-pin 12v power plug's location. We wonder why manufacturers don't bundle it together with the main 20-pin ATX connector. As is the norm now with each and every Springdale board we've yet seen, the CPU socket is orientated towards the Northbridge cooler. The cooler is identical to the Canterwood's, incidentally.
At least the DIMM slots are colour coded nicely here. Running dual channel memory dictates the use of either both black or green slots, or all 4 slots if you've got enough RAM. The Canterwood and Springdale boards have not only allowed the CPU to be fed with increased memory bandwidth, they have also provided users with the ability to run more system RAM than most previous home Intel boards. Back to the board, the locations of the power connector and main IDE connectors is good. We also appreciate that a reasonable amount of room has been left between the DIMM and AGP slot. Nice so far.
Plenty of action further down the board. Storage galore. Intel's lovely ICH5/R Southbridge provides RAIDing ability to the two SATA ports we see to the right. EPoX don't believe in a SATA-only vision for the current crop of motherboards, so we have a couple of IDE RAID ports fed from EPoX's long-term partner, Highpoint Technologies. The floppy port has been sensibly pushed down next to these ports. One immensely annoying aspect is the location of the clear CMOS jumper. It's incredibly hard to get to, even if you have slim fingers. An ABIT-like jumper would have been most appreciated here. There's more goodies a little further down, though.
Troubleshooting your motherboard needn't be a painful business, that's what EPoX reckon. The excellent debug LCD, one that counts up through various POST codes, is a welcome addition. Silicon Image's Sil3112A is a PCI-bound SATA controller that allows the use of two independent SATA drives. We've seen it on a number of pre-Springdale boards before due to its single-chip design, but its addition along with the ICH5/R gives fantastic SATA support with multiple RAID capability.
Agere are sourced into providing FireWire support. That's one of the omissions that we most keenly felt about the ICH5/R. Agere's controller, the FW323, features a single-chip 3-port controller. You can see the 3 white ports directly below.
Broadcom's PCI-based Gigabit LAN and CMI's 6-channel 9739A sound CODEC round off an impressive package.
A single COM port has been sacrificed for the probable HD15-equipped on-board video Springdale that will inevitably be released in the next few weeks. A single FireWire port would have been nice.
