EPoX 8HDA3+ Socket 754 Motherboard

Company: EPoX
Product: 8HDA3+
Date Reviewed: October 27, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

Conclusions:

The EPoX 8HDA3+ is a nice motherboard. It has plenty of nice features to satisfy enthusiast although it does lack IEEE 1394 FireWire support. On the plus side the board has a huge amount of storage capacity supporting two IDE channels and six SATA channels thanks to the Silicon image chip and the native support provided by the chipset. Another notable feature is the dual LAN support (10/100 and Gb). The performance of the system is good but the offset that we had in FSB would explain why the board will score higher than other boards on the same chipset..

The few complaints that we do have about the board is the 7MHz offset. This maybe not seem like a lot but you have to figure that it will run the memory 14MHz over its rated speed as well as overclock an Athlon 64 3200+ by 140MHz. We had very nice results overclocking this system and the voltage options are satisfactory for overclocking. They could go a touch higher for more extreme overclocking but that may be done with a future BIOS update.

We did have a few gripes about the layout but the only one that really bothered us was not having the four holes around the NB. As enthusiasts, we are always testing out after market coolers and the thought of having to use a thermal adhesive is not appealing.

Availability in the US right now is non-existent. The board is not scheduled for a full release until November. There are other boards based on the K8T800 that you can purchase but EPoX is taking their time to make sure everything is ok before it is officially in stores. As we review more boards, we will be able to better show you the pros and cons of all of the Socket 754 boards but for now, the EPoX 8HDA3+ is going to be a strong competitor.

So stay tuned for our next Socket 754 review. We have many more on the way and at the end of it all, we should have a nice roundup.