With their AMD CPU based boards, Epox hasn't normally target the mainstream user. Instead, they focus on the enthusiasts by generally providing better options for overclocking. With that philosophy in mind, they?re releasing their nForce4 based 9NPA+ motherboard and we test drive it today and find out how fast this baby goes. Full specs of this board can be found on their website.

Packaging

The board comes in a slightly larger sized white box with a shiny coating which certainly looks alright and should get the attention of a shopper. The back side of the box lists some of the boards features.

Inside, Epox provides one rounded IDE cable along with additional standard IDE and floppy cables as well as SATA cables. Headers for audio, USB and Firewire are also provided. The board has Epox's powerpack that provides a screw driver and some heatsinks that can be stuck on MOSFETS. You also get some value-added applications like Norton Internet Security, Pro Magic Plus and Image it besides the drivers CD. All in all, a decent package.

Layout

The 9NPA+ doesn't necessarily win any awards in the looks department- Epox pretty much uses standard colored components and PCB which is probably done to save some costs. The layout of the board is very similar to their nForce3 based 9NDA3+ with the obvious addition/replacement of slots and connectors that the nForce4 brings with itself. Starting off, the CPU socket has some capacitors to the left but the other three sides are open to facilitate a larger sized HSF unit.

The main and the four pin power connectors are present to the left and a bit below the CPU socket which is not a position that we're fond of and will certainly cause cable clutter. The chipset has active cooling but is placed too close to the PCI-E x16 slot and while this didn't cause any problems with our vanilla 6800GT, you should be on the lookout if you have sinks on the back of your VGA card. There are three additional PCI-E x1 and three standard PCI slots on the board allowing plenty of room for add-on cards.

The SATA connectors are placed to the right of the chipset and next to them are the IDE connectors which doesn't allow for much room to use the SATA connectors. Also, the IDE connectors fall below the PCI x16 slot which is again something you need to be careful about. The floppy connector along with the USB and Firewire headers is placed towards the bottom of the board. The clearing CMOS jumper is present below the first PCI slot which might make it a little hard to get to. In general, we were disappointed by the layout of the 9NPA+ and we think that a little more thought into designing would've certainly helped a lot.