EPOX EP-9NPA+ULTRA Owners

G

Glow

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 20, 2002
Messages
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I'm really curious what do you think of this board first hand? Any complaints, would you rather have bought something else? Do you like the features and does anyone use Magic Screen?
 
I love it.
Stable and oc's great. Good bios features.

With the new bios you can go up to 3.3v on the ram now i believe.
Mine hits 327 HTT no problem, havent tried higher because my venice is peeked out.
 
I think the 9NPA+ is a good value for its price. I was choosing between the Epox and the ABIT AN8 Ultra, but overall I'm satisfied with this motherboard.

It has plenty of overclocking options, which is probably why it is quite popular. My box came with some useful extras like white rounded cables, screwdriver, and MOSFET heatsinks. I actually needed a rounded cable so that saved me $5 or so. The screwdriver is an interesting design. I wish the MOSFET heatsinks were factory installed though like the AN8 Ultra.

Some minor annoyances:

1. The placement of the 24-pin power connector is less than ideal, a lot of reviews of this mobo mention this. But I lived with the similar placement on my old ABIT NF7-S. You'd think that motherboard designers would think of such things by now though.

2. Default auto Vcore was a bit high for my setup, but it's not like you can't set it manually.

3. Not all Japanese capacitors, but hopefully there won't be exploding caps later on.

4. Chipset fan is not silent like the AN8 Ultra, but at least you can mount the Epox upside down if you have one of the cases that arrange it like that. I think the [H]ard review of AN8 Ultra said the heatpipe had problems when upside down.

5. Firewire takes up a PCI slot.

6. The SATA connectors aren't the newer type like on AN8 Ultra.

7. The green PCB is a bit bland if you have a case window.
 
I really like mine. It's green but it still looks nice and quality wise I think it's on par with the very best (asus) boards. I was really suprised how nice the whole package is.

There are not a lot of other options if you need a board that is easy to setup, stable, has no heatpipe (for reverse mount cases) and doesn't cost 200 bucks.

I wish the power plug was on the edge of the board but it's not a big deal and epox defends it's choice by claiming that it is the closest to the processor and the mosfets and thus gives better/cleaner power.
 
I'm still curious any of u use magic screen? Did any of you own any other nforce 4 boards before this one?
 
I think I'm going to get one off newegg.
Hope it doesn't die like those reviews on newegg.
 
I like mine a lot, but the latest bios turns ntune into ntune lite and I lose all the monitoring features for temps and stuff, which i like a lot more than the epox thunderprobe. I'm using the 5322 bios.
 
What tool do you guys use to monitor temps and voltage? I cannot get something to accurately read my +12 volt line. Everest says 11.2 which cannot be right can it? I have the powerstream tweaked with the lights in the back.
 
New Bios available, adds 1/2 multipliers!! I got mine via magicbios.
 
[F8] said:
New Bios available, adds 1/2 multipliers!! I got mine via magicbios.
Click to expand...
how does magic bios work exactly? Also does magic screen even work does anyone use it at all?
 
Magic bios is just a gui to check for/download/flash new bios all in one program. I've never used magic screen, I disable the full screen boot image.
 
Do you guys think this is right? review I don't understand how it would be only 74% they even give the asrock sata 85% :rolleyes:
 
wow I am reading about a lot of people who can't stand the whiny fan. How bad is it?
 
Hmm, check the anandtech review and the hardocp review, as far as the fan is concerned i hardly notice it.
 
Glow said:
wow I am reading about a lot of people who can't stand the whiny fan. How bad is it?
Click to expand...
whiny fan? must be a mistake bc it uses the same fan found on the 9NDA3+ which i hav and is silent and me, im very sensitive to sound....anything over 22dBA bothers me and the chipset fan doesnt so its pretty quiet and cools well
 
nice mobo, i love it 8)

i want to install 2GB ram on this mobo, which better - 2x1GB or 4*512? i heard that's not good to fill all memory slots.

p.s.: is everything ok with 2GB overclocking?
 
Anyone have problems using a sata dvd burner with this board ?
I'm ordering a new system this week and have pretty much narrowed it down to this board or the DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D. Hoping for 3 ghz on air with a new opteron 146. It has a multiplier of 10, so do I have a chance of hitting that speed with this Epox board ? (provided the cpu is up to the task)
:confused:
 
Stereophile said:
Anyone have problems using a sata dvd burner with this board ?
I'm ordering a new system this week and have pretty much narrowed it down to this board or the DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D. Hoping for 3 ghz on air with a new opteron 146. It has a multiplier of 10, so do I have a chance of hitting that speed with this Epox board ? (provided the cpu is up to the task)
:confused:
Click to expand...
u should be able to oc it to 3ghz easily (given that the cpu is capable of it) since the epox isnt that far behind the ultra-d and it has plenty of ram options and voltages....post up the new system wen u get it ;)
 
I have one, I think is one of the best mobos I've tried, only that mine died a month after buying it, but, it was bad luck, it has nice oc options. I personally like the blue leds in the board, and the 80port, those 7-segment displays are great for debuggin'. I tried to use magic screen to setup a matrix code picture, but it failed. anyway I don't like to play with those things that tweak the bios.
 
What sort of readings do you get for +12v on your board using something like everest? Mine seems terribly low, like 11.56, but I'm thinking this is some sort of misreading because I have my PSU tweaked via the pots in the back.
 
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