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EPOX Where are you?

A

AMD_Gamer

Fully [H]
Joined
Jan 20, 2002
Messages
18,287
What happened to EPOX they made some of the best motherboards back in the day.
 
Good riddance as far as I'm concerned. Flakey motherboards at best.
 
They always lured you in with the low price and decent performance, but they just never lasted long term.
 
_Sin_ said:
ditto. I had a few diff epox boards back in the day, they all suffered from bubbling capacitors.
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2x ditto. As for this reputation for "good" support that I've heard about, I wouldn't have been so annoyed by the failure due to capacitors if they just sent me a replacement board right away. I had to wait for them to get and "repair" my board and send me a new one. My PC was therefore down for over a month due to their cheapness.
 
kirbyrj said:
Good riddance as far as I'm concerned. Flakey motherboards at best.
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Yup. I had an old Socket 7, VIA MVP3 (I think) based one that didn't give me trouble, but the other stuff I tried was junk. They seemed to get a little better toward the end, but I just never could figure out why people loved them so much...
 
I had a 8RDA+ I believe, sadly same as a lot of people the caps bulged and it died on me.

Went over to gigabyte and been pretty happy here.
 
EVERY manufacturer has had problems with bubbling capacitors at one point. I personally have seen boards die from all of the big names due to that issue. I had a few epox boards, namely the 8kha+ and the 8kta3, and I know at least one of those boards is still in use in a system today, and I'm pretty sure the other one is too. They were some pretty cool boards IMHO.
 
My experiences with EPoX was universally negative. I've seen everything from blown PS/2 ports on them to bubbling capacitors, and VRMs that just never held up. As far as I am concerned they were crappy boards built from a mediocre company.

Their department also failed at naming things. Model numbers like 8KDA3+ and so on were very annoying. (Foxconn is guilty of this as well outside their Quantum Force line.)
 
8KDA3J here (8KDA3+ but with less features) and yes it does have a few quirks like ps/2 going out randomly. but it's been my main comp for like 4 years and overclocked 2800 newcastle to 2.2ghz for few years now overclocks 3200 venice to 2.5ghz.

oh and the onboard gb lan went out
 
SonicIce said:
8KDA3J here (8KDA3+ but with less features) and yes it does have a few quirks like ps/2 going out randomly. but it's been my main comp for like 4 years and overclocked 2800 newcastle to 2.2ghz for few years now overclocks 3200 venice to 2.5ghz.

oh and the onboard gb lan went out
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I've never seen a board in the 13 years I've worked in this industry that was more prone to onboard hardware failures. (Granted in the old days, not much was integrated into the boards.)
 
I forget the model number, but my first "enthusiast" machine was an Epox Slot A motherboard with a just-released Athlon 750 and a GeForce2 GTS.

I think it may even still be in use by the friend I sold it to. It was as recently as a couple of years ago.

It was a great machine at the time but I certainly like modern motherboards a lot better.
 
SonicIce said:
8KDA3J here (8KDA3+ but with less features) and yes it does have a few quirks like ps/2 going out randomly. but it's been my main comp for like 4 years and overclocked 2800 newcastle to 2.2ghz for few years now overclocks 3200 venice to 2.5ghz.

oh and the onboard gb lan went out
Click to expand...

I had that same board paired with the 2800 Newcastle also. It seemed to fun fine. My cousin has it also, and it's still running. I haven't heard him say he has any issues with it.
 
Hmm, I still have an EPoX 4PCA3+ and an EPoX 3PTA that are running and have no problems. Never had one of their AMD boards though. I had an Asus and an Abit that suffered from bulging Caps.
 
I know I had quite a few of there motherboards back in the day. mostly the 8kta thru 8kta3+pro, I personally never had one of there boards fail.

despite the fact they havent been releasing many new mobos lately (at leased under the epox name) they are still making and selling products under the Ipox name (there industrial brand) mostly atom based stuff,

the last of the motherboards they produced you can find in there store http://www.epoxstore.com/
 
I still have two EPoX 8NPA-SLI motherboards around here, and neither of them have had any issues.

PCIe and SLI support for Socket 754, works with mobile 754 processors, and even overclocks well. Too bad they never released a dual core CPU for Socket 754, otherwise I would have kept it as my main motherboard for a lot longer.
 
They always lured you in with the low price and decent performance, but they just never lasted long term.
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Bullshit! I have a Epox KP6-LA still trucking along, not a single cap blown, from 1997/1998. Non stop continuous use, beaten up, abused, never a problem. Rock solid.

Epox made some of the most stable motherboards in the 90's, if not the most stable, period.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
Bullshit! I have a Epox KP6-LA still trucking along, not a single cap blown, from 1997/1998. Non stop continuous use, beaten up, abused, never a problem. Rock solid.

Epox made some of the most stable motherboards in the 90's, if not the most stable, period.
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Unfortunately, they didn't continue that to the 2000's or else they might still be around.
 
Well thats a possibility, but to say NO epox board was stable is a flat out lie which I stated.
 
Still have the 8RDA+ running in my parents PC. (my old PC) But thats after i had to wait a month for them to replace the Capacitor. upgraded from an XP1800+ to a 2500+ and just left it working.. Caps blue 2 years into its life so I sent it in, now its been running every other day or so for something like 4 years. 6 years total I think.
 
enlightenedby42 said:
I forget the model number, but my first "enthusiast" machine was an Epox Slot A motherboard with a just-released Athlon 750 and a GeForce2 GTS.

I think it may even still be in use by the friend I sold it to. It was as recently as a couple of years ago.

It was a great machine at the time but I certainly like modern motherboards a lot better.
Click to expand...

Dam thats like almost 10 years ago.. wow... those were the days...
 
Megalomaniac said:
Still have the 8RDA+ running in my parents PC. (my old PC) But thats after i had to wait a month for them to replace the Capacitor. upgraded from an XP1800+ to a 2500+ and just left it working.. Caps blue 2 years into its life so I sent it in, now its been running every other day or so for something like 4 years. 6 years total I think.
Click to expand...

I contacted Epox 3 years ago to see if they would repair the caps on my 8RDA+ board. They pulled the warranty card and I ditched it.

On the flip side, I have a 8KHA+ board that continues to run problem free to this day.
 
I recall a LOT of manufacturers haveing capacitor issues back in those days. It was a supplier issue, and they all used the same 1-2 suppliers, that had issues.

The board makers fault for not fixing them after the fact, but certainly not their fault on the front end. Crap in = Crap out
 
stiltner said:
I recall a LOT of manufacturers haveing capacitor issues back in those days. It was a supplier issue, and they all used the same 1-2 suppliers, that had issues.

The board makers fault for not fixing them after the fact, but certainly not their fault on the front end. Crap in = Crap out
Click to expand...

ABIT was also struck with the same problem as was ASUS. Though ASUS models seemed to be effected the least by the issue. Still I've never found EPoX quality to be all that inspiring. I've seen too many failures of things like PS/2 ports to consider them good boards.
 
My 3VCA (dual-370 on VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset) ran rock solid for almost a decade, only retired because the crappy VIA chipset didn't play nice with AGP4x video cards. Not my first Epox board, but can't remember the ones before it.

Great products in my experience, and/but never had a reason to use their tech support. That can be a good thing or a bad thing.
 
Dan_D said:
Even the worst companies put out some gems every now and again.
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And great companies put out dogs once in a while too. Epox wasn't close to the 'worst' category, in fact it was consistently among the best in reliability and performance for many years especially during the early Socket A years. The later model 9NPA+ and SLI series were pretty solid too.

Other good model examples: 8K7A+, 8K5A2+, the legendary 8KHA+, 8K7A, 8K3A+

8RDA+ was really the one board (because it was so popular) where bad caps befell its reputation. Then again it hit many manufacturers.

The worst stay worse. PC Chips, Jetway, later model Iwills (KK266 was awesome).

Most reliable series of boards I ever had? Shuttle.

Most unreliable (and got worse)? Abit, except for the early BX days which were incredible.
 
EPoX was far from the worst. They weren't the most stable and most reliable by a long shot. They were as good as or nearly as good as some of the best boards, but they never exceeded the reliability or stability of some of the best boards of the day. I also found them to have a higher defect rate and some quirks that other boards didn't have. ABIT used to be great until the socket A days. The KT7, KT7 RAID, KT7A, and KT7A-RAID were all junk. They got their act together later on though.

PC Chips, ECS were bad, as were Jetway, and yes IWill was alright then went to shit. I had a great Shuttle board but again they went to shit as well. I don't think they've ever put out anything as solid as their i430HX chipset boards were. For me MSI has always been hit or miss. Until the LGA775 days I found their Intel boards to be sub-par and their AMD processor compatible boards to be among the better choices out there at the time. FIC was shit back in the day as well. DFI was pretty bad until the nForce chipsets hit the market then they turned around some what. I still find some DFI models unecessarily quirky on the rare occasions I get to work with them. For me Intel and ASUS have been the most consistent of all board makers. Yes, they've both had less than stellar models but for the most part they've rarely put out bad products. Gigabyte was never a board brand I liked until about 2 years ago or so. Previous to that I didn't care for their products as I had to replace a number of them for stupid reasons. Mostly due to poor voltage components or insufficient south bridge cooling and voltage regulation. (Socket 478 and older models.) They've really turned around though and I recommend thier boards all the time as I've rarely had bad experiences with them.

Still by far the worst board I've ever seen is the FIC VA503+. Worst board of ALL time in my experience. I must have built 30 machines out of those pieces of shit. Maybe more. All my friends had them and they all needed my help to make them work. I got more than half of them running but it took forever. (Until I memorized all the jumper blocks on the board.) Their manuals and their addendums had incorrect jumper block diagrams and no pattern to their "wrongness" to figure out. So I had to make my own. Even the silk screening on the board was wrong. It didn't help that the bundle's AMD sent us for their equivalent to the "Intel Retail Edge" program weren't actually supported by the board.

That says alot since the second biggest piece of shit has to be the 680i SLI reference boards. Any of you guys that have read my posts and read about my experiences with these boards know how much I hate them. So to eclipse that hatred FIC had to work hard to make the VA503+ the very shittiest board possible. It says something (and not good either) that I remember such an old model so vividly.
 
Dan, Every time you talk about those boards I get a chuckle.

I don't go through boards like most people on here. Knowing that, I had a FIC that lasted me from '96 till '99. Dan is right on most accounts with that board, But wasn't the worst for me cause it actually worked more or less.

MSI K7T Turbo 2 great board. had it long after DDR2 systems were coming out... Posted a 15k+ 3dmark01 score with it, a 2500+ mobile and a 5990Ultra. Damned if it wasn't the most rock stable system I ever had.

ASUS A7N8X, open box from newegg. Took a chance with a $40 board and it was a decent overclocking board, but after a year started loosing USB ports left and right. 2nd worst in my case.

MSI SLI Platinum, this board pissed me off. It would never run as high as other people seemed to get it, acted like a space heater who's northbridge could cook an egg, and never got a chance to SLI the thing. I will say I tolerated this one, and was probably the worst board I purchased.

MSI X58 Platinum, I gave MSI another chance thinking I got a bum board. And after a few bios updates, is a dam solid board. 1st on in the sig, hopefully it'll last me 3-5 years before uograding to the "next big thing."
 
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ASUS P5N-E.

Great overclocker, IMO.

Running e4300 Oc'd to 3.2 ghz on stock volts.

Of course, I am using a Scythe Ninja.
 
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