Epox 8KDA3+(nForce3 250Gb)Review!

[Mem]

Link.

Epox does a good job with the 8KDA3+. Some of the minor complains we have is the lack of active cooling on the nForce3-250Gb and some overclocking options. Feature-wise, the board is very good offering RAID5 and eight channel audio. Performance level of this board is also on par with the rest of the high-end boards.

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[3LEMENT0]

Nice.... waiting for ABIT, ASUS and GIGABYTE for their NF3GB with firewall....

 

[Mem]

New review here .

Our particular board reached an amazing 290 MHz motherboard clock speed. I suspect that better Northbridge cooling may have allowed it to go even further... On that note I hope that future revisions of the 8KDA3+ have mounting holes around the NF3-250 chipset, it gets quite toasty during operation!

If you're looking for a wicked fast AMD Athlon64 motherboard look no further than the Epox 8KDA3+!

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[Megatomic]

Why would Epox design a mobo with no holes around the chipset??? Reminds me of early NF2 boards that came with no holes around the CPU socket.

I hope Epox fixes that, they are (or were) a contender in my short list for which NF3-250Gb to buy.

 

[Mem]

Like all other nF3-250 based boards, stability was not a problem on the 8KDA3+ either. Although we do feel that active cooling on the chipset would help in the long run as it got quite hot during overclocking..

Taken from the T-break review in my first post,I would have to agree it does need a fan on the chipset,however if you don`t OC you should be ok.

 

[Megatomic]

I saw how weak the chipset cooler they used was. I'd find something better, the Zalman NF47J comes to mind passively. There are some other active NB coolers that also rock but I like passive NB cooling. But I don't want to bond a heatsink to the NB chip. :|

 

[tch65721]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
I saw how weak the chipset cooler they used was. I'd find something better, the Zalman NF47J comes to mind passively. There are some other active NB coolers that also rock but I like passive NB cooling. But I don't want to bond a heatsink to the NB chip. :|

I like the Zalman chipset coolers but look at the placement here. Hard to tell for certain but I doubt there is anything you can do to enhance northbridge cooling on this board. Maybe I'm wrong but it appears to me that if you try you'll give away the first three PCI slots. Chaintech Vnf3-250 seems to have the same placement issue. I wonder if all manufacturers will have it in the same spot?

 

[wicktron]

Originally posted by: 3LEMENT0
Nice.... waiting for ABIT, ASUS and GIGABYTE for their NF3GB with firewall....

i wouldnt hold your breath on abit.
if you remember, they had a fallout with nvidia recently (a few months ago). so dont expect any nforce3 based mobos from abit. if it comes, then great.

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: Mem
New review here .

Our particular board reached an amazing 290 MHz motherboard clock speed. I suspect that better Northbridge cooling may have allowed it to go even further... On that note I hope that future revisions of the 8KDA3+ have mounting holes around the NF3-250 chipset, it gets quite toasty during operation!

If you're looking for a wicked fast AMD Athlon64 motherboard look no further than the Epox 8KDA3+!

I don't understand why Northbridge cooling shoud be an issue when you can lower the HTT, and I have yet to see any evidence of a significant difference in system performance between a 600 and 800 HTT..

If it is a cooling issue, what's stopping them from sticking a small fan on the chip?

 

[Mem]

If it is a cooling issue, what's stopping them from sticking a small fan on the chip?

Probably the extra cost,besides any serious overclocker will do their own mod .

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: Mem

If it is a cooling issue, what's stopping them from sticking a small fan on the chip?

Probably the extra cost, besides any serious overclocker will do their own mod .

Oh, I agree.. I just didn't get the point, of a hardware site, that seems concerned with overclocking issues, bringing it up as some kind of a problem where serious overclockers are concerned; especially since the voltage options on this board are a joke as far as serious overclocking is concerned..

I have noticed several of the mobo makers are limiting voltage tweaks on these boards, and I can only assume, they are seeking some semblance of AMD guideline certification, and are not overly concerned with the needs of the overclocking crowd at this point..

 

[schmoe]

Just to caution anyone that is thinking about buying this motherboard. I've bought it without consulting the website (I usually do more research) and found that the EPoX DDR400 issue is real and needs to be addressed. I don't believe this motherboard can support DDR400 (or the board that I got is faulty). I ordered the 8KDA3+ and a pair of OCZ enhanced bandwidth DDR400 512MB DIMMs and attempted to get it working with just one of them (at first). No luck. It will fail at the same point in the WINXP/2K installation. You can get past the CD boot program, but when you reboot using the harddisk it will show you a BSOD in about 5 minutes of continuing the installation (past the CD Key screen).

I DID manage to get it working for DDR333 (at least past the same point in the installation that kept giving me a BSOD). I hadn't tried tweaking the timings of the memory (only the frequency). Once I figured out that it was the frequency I accidentally jammed the second DIMM in backwards and fried the memory module... so I RMA'd both the motherboard and the DIMMs. I was going to RMA anyway, since the EPoX board didn't run as advertised (1 DDR400 DS DIMM plugged in).

I like the automated RMA system at newegg.com ... though the extra time and $12 bucks could have been better spent on a mouse pad (or something).

Once I get the new motherboard/DIMM I'll run it through its paces and give some feedback on my luck.