Nvidia nForce3 Ultra Motherboard Roundup --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

EPoX EP-9NDA3J (The Bad)

With such a simplistic board, you would have expected to have at least a decent design. However, the EPoX EP-9NDA3J's board layout was far from ideal. In fact, calling it a mistake won't be too far off the mark since the design actually hampered one of the board's major functions.

Firstly, let us tackle some minor problems. Both ATX power connectors were located at the top end of the board, behind the CPU socket. We've reiterated the problem of this positioning many times before, but there is a silver lining for the EP-9NDA3J. Notice that the CPU socket is closer to the front, leaving plenty of space around the ATX connectors. With good cable management, you can possibly string the ATX cables along the top of the board and dropping down towards the connectors bypassing the socket area entirely.

Very inconvenient positioning for both ATX power connectors. Good cable management is needed to help reduce air flow problems.

Another problem was the close proximity of the DIMM slots to each other. There was little to no spacing between the slots which would inhibit the installation of thick memory modules. From what we were able to notice, there was actually enough space along the upper edge of the board to properly fit in IDE and floppy connectors. Sadly though, they were also misplaced, resulting in reduced drive installation options for larger casings.

DIMM slots are too close to each other inhibiting installation of large memory modules and proper air flow. Notice the space at the side of the board could have been better utilized for primary IDE connectors instead of capacitors.

Without sufficient space, both IDE connectors are located along the bottom half of the board.

One glaring fault in the board layout turned out to be the positioning of the two SATA connectors. The EP-9NDA3J had both connectors placed in between the MCP cooler and the AGP slot. In the course of our testing, we found that there was a possibility you would be unable to even install a SATA device. Our testbed used a Gigabyte GeForce FX 5900 XT and the combination of MCP and graphic card coolers hindered the insertion of the SATA cable. Considering that the cooler on the Gigabyte represents the standard GPU cooling solution today, this poses a very serious problem if you do intend to use SATA hard disks. The only way to work around this is to hunt for SATA cables that sport thin, small and simple connector heads. Amusingly, even the SATA cable provided by EPoX wasn't up to the task as shown in the photos below.

About the only advantage the EP-9NDA3J had in terms of board design was ample spacing between the AGP and adjacent PCI slot. There was enough space to use a full double slot graphic card without sacrificing a PCI slot. Ironically however, due to the SATA issue, this is a physical impossibility.

Sporting a low but rather large active MCP cooler, the EP-9NDA3J has its pros and cons.

Horrible SATA connector positioning may just prevent you from installing any SATA devices unless you force the cable in.

One of the good points the board has is the ample spacing between AGP and PCI slots, but be mindful of the SATA issue.

Then we come to the few system issues that the board suffers from. After much testing, we narrowed down incompatibility problems to specific PCI and memory combinations. Installing network cards in the last two PCI slots while running dual channel DDR prevented Windows from even booting up. Either freeing up the PCI slot or running single channel would ease the issue though Windows still displayed erratic behavior such as problematic device recognition and stalled shut downs. Installing the network cards in the top three PCI slots alleviated the problems entirely. Furthermore, when we performed our PCI torture test, the board would work flawlessly with all PCI slots filled as long as no network cards were installed in the bottom two slots. We were unable to troubleshoot this problem further as the BIOS did not provide any options for resource allocation and management, another bad point for the EP-9NDA3J.



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