PCB Design

The design of the EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra isn’t too complex as it has very few additional controllers and a standard number of connectors and slots. Nevertheless, EPoX’ engineering team didn’t manage to improve the PCB layout in any way. On the contrary, they even added a few pretty unsuccessful issues. Let me explain what I mean here.

First, the ATX power supply connector isn’t in the best place. It is right behind the CPU socket, and the attached power cable hangs above the processor cooler, hindering the air flow. By the way, we have the new type of the connector here – with 24 pins. The additional 12V power connector is located next to the main one, behind Socket 939.

Second, EPoX’ decision to remove all the connectors from the area in front of the DIMM slots seems absolutely unjustified. The FDD and IDE connectors on the EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra are too close to the PCI and PCI Express x16 slots.

Third, the placement of the PCI slots to the left of the PCI Express x16 slot doesn’t seem right, either. If a pretty powerful graphics card is installed, its cooling system will block the nearest PCI slot, so the user will have only two PCI slots left, which may be insufficient for the today’s systems.

Among minor flaws, we could mention the difficult access to the Clear CMOS jumper when the mainboard is already mounted into the system case.

Well, EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra definitely boasts some great advantages. The mainboard carries an integrated diagnostics POST controller, a very helpful tool for localizing hardware problems. Next to the LED-based POST indicator, there are reset and power buttons that help to use the mainboard when you use it outside the system case.

Although EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra looks very ordinarily – the mainboard doesn’t have that many colored slots or connectors, and its textolite is of the traditional green color – the manufacturer made sure that the owners of transparent system cases will be pleased. There are three very bright LED indicators on the mainboard that indicate if the chipset, DIMM slots and CPU are powered. They are not very useful as indicators, but make the mainboard more appealing visually.

On the mainboard back panel you find the following ports and connectors: two PS/2 ports for the keyboard and mouse, one serial and one parallel port, four High-Speed USB ports, a network RJ-45 port without diagnostics LEDs, six audio jacks, an optical/coaxial SPDIF output. One more serial (COM) port is available as an onboard header, so you can use it, too.

The chipset is cooled by a large and flat heatsink with a fan like those used on graphics cards. This proves to be enough for cooling nForce4 Ultra chipset, even though it boasts pretty complex architecture.

The CPU voltage regulator is a three-channel one on EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra. The MOSFETs in this circuit are not cooled at all, but they do not get very hot during work – the air stream from the CPU cooler is enough for cooling them. The capacitors you see onboard come from the Taiwanese HER-MEI and the Japanese Sanyo. So far we haven’t heard any complaints from the users stating that there are problems with these components.

Lastly we would like to mention that EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra allows installing massive coolers, even the new gigantic coolers from Zalman, as all large components and slots are moved away from the CPU socket. You can only face actual problems if you are using DDR modules of a non-standard size, like the PRO series modules from Corsair.