Reviews for EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra Motherboard

EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra Motherboard

Strengths: Good overclocking options. Comes with round IDE cables. Onboard Gigabit LAN and 8.1 sound with digital outputs.

Weakness: Potential stability issues without BIOS flash.

Purchased this motherboard to build an Athlon 64 3000+ system after researching most of the currently available socket 939 boards. I wanted PCI Express and the nForce4 Ultra appears to be the best overall chipset right now, so that narrowed the field quite a bit. There are less expensive boards, such as Chaintech and ECS, but they didn't have the same features, and not quite as good a reputation as Epox. There are also more expensive boards, such as DFI and Asus, but I didn't think they offered enough to justify the higher price tag. This board appeared to be the best compromise between price and features.
I have owned 2 previous Epox boards with few problems and customer support has been very responsive when there were issues.

Physical installation went smooth, and the round IDE cables make routing inside the case an easy job. There are onboard headers for USB, Firewire, and front audio jacks, if you have those features on your case. Installed Windows XP with no trouble and PC booted up on first try. Everything seemed to be going well, but I did have some stability issues for the first few hours; frequent lockups requiring a reboot. Can't be sure it was the motherboard but after installing the latest BIOS using the online web update utility, stability issues were gone.

Overall, a great purchase and would definitely recommend this board for a cheap, but powerful socket 939 solution.

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Epox EP-9NPA+

Strengths: Fast, stable, feature packed

Weakness: Small, whiny fan

I have always been a fan of Epox boards, and this one hasn't disappointed me. It is fast, stable and feature packed; the BIOS is loaded with overclocking options if you are so inclined.

This board has 1 PCI Express x16 slot, 3 PCI Express x1 slots, and three PCI slots. There are two IDE controllers and four SATA controllers - there are onboard RAID options for both IDE and SATA drives. There are four USB 2.0 ports on the back panel, and three additional headers on the motherboard. In addition this board has a Firewire header, Gigabit LAN, and onboard 8 channel audio.

I have been pleased with the stability and speed of this board; I haven't had any stability problems, and my computer absolutely flies. I only have one complaint - the chipset fan is a small, whiney 40mm fan. I have a very quiet computer, and the noise from this fan was quite annoying, so I ended up replacing the fan with a passive Zalman northbridge cooler.

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EPOX 9NPA+ULTRA

Strengths: Easy to install and go. Great overclocking possibilities.

Weakness: Cheap looking back plate. Vague memory installation description

Got it fast from newegg.com Came with small funny heat sinks for MOSFETs. The board is stable with Athlon 64 3200+ and 1GB 3200 DUAL2 KINGS 2X512MB CAS2 400MHz memory. Had no problems so far.

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9npa+Ultra

Strengths: stable

Weakness: whiny fan, no dual lan, venice voltage reported wrong

My last Epox board was stable so I thought I'd give them another go

So far this board is stable, as fast as any other nforce4 board, reasonably priced. Had no problems setting it up.The sound is ok, not as good as nforce2, nic works, has cpu fan speed control(bios or with speedfan/other software)
bios reports venice core cpu as ~1.48
cpu voltage -.1v and up to +.35 below/above stock(with new bios),
no cpu vid option in bios, lacks 12v sensors
I've noticed it takes a few extra seconds to boot if you set the cpu multiplier
the NB fan is whiny sometimes, flicking it fixes it, nforce4 runs on the warm side..

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Good Motherboard

Strengths: Very good motherboard, fast performance, easy to install

Weakness: Fan noise

This is a very good motherboard and runs my new computer very well. However, the original fan on it is quite loud, but can be replaced easily with a silent heatsink. I am very satisfied.

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epox motherboards

Strengths: none

Weakness: TECH SUPPORT

Epox tech support is a joke. I asked for answers to 3 questions. They never even responded to 2 questions and the USB problem that I had was answered by telling me that theirs works. I am returning the EPOX board and will never buy their product again

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My epox rocks

Strengths: Solid board - no problems whatsoever

Weakness: None apparent

I bought this motherboard a few months ago in order to upgrade my video card.
New video card(PCI Express) needed a new motherboard, which in turn needed a new processor, and i got new memory for the heck of it.
Needless to say, I am currently writing this review months later on this setup and everything runs flawlessly. I used to have trouble with my last board and dust , but nothing here. My box stayed the same, no new fans, so I'm happy.
The price was right , great value - Definitely recommend this board if you plan on going AMD.

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Great motherboard at a great price

Strengths: Good value, great accessories

Weakness: External devices may cause problems at start up, awkward power plug placement

The EP-9NPA+Ultra is a great motherboard at a great price. Most other full-featured nVidia nForce4 Ultra boards are at least $20 or $30 more expensive.

The performance is top notch, and I have been able to overclock the board by 50% (using Athlon64 3000+) with no problems whatsoever without any additional cooling. There are accounts of greater feats of overclocking, and you can try pushing the limits by increasing the clock by 1 MHz at a time.

I especially liked the accessories that came with the board, which includes a screwdriver pen, several mini-heatsinks to attach to chips on the board for additional cooling, and headers for USB 2.0 and Firewire connections. Combined with the already formidable feature set of the board, which includes surround sound and on-board Ethernet, the value is tough to beat.

One minor problem is that the power plug is in an awkward place, making it a chore to keep the power cables from running into the fan blades. But that's a minor annoyance. The only real qualm I have is that the board recognizes external hard drives (this includes an Apple iPod) on start up, and this may cause problems with the boot order and/or drive letter assignments, which are a pain to straighten out, especially since I have two drives, each with multiple partitions.

Otherwise, the board is a good value, and I highly recommend it.

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Nice board with everything you will need

Strengths: good layout, comes with everything

Weakness: chipset fan too loud no 1394 on the back

The board is really easy to setup. Everything is clearly labeled. The round IDE cable is really nice too.

The chipset fan, however, is really loud. The heatsink is too small I think as it is quite hot with the high speed fan.

I would also like to see 1394 port on the back panel, in stead of using that PCI slot bracket (included). If you have front 1394 connection, then you would not care.

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Epox 9NPA+ULTRA

Strengths: Price, Stable, Has all features you really need, Problem free, performance and overclocking potential is top notch. Good bios options.

Weakness: A few layout issues, Not the best tech support(because it seems like it is by email only). Northbridge fan gets loud after a while(might need to seek out a replacement over time.)

This is actually my second Epox 9NPA+ ultra board that I have purchased in the past 3 months. I definitely have good things to say. Part of the reason I love these boards is how problem free they are. Many other brand NF4 socket 939 boards have issues. Both of my 2 Epox 9NPA+ ultra boards had no issues booting up for the first time. Perfectly stable out of box. Board comes with great accessories. Also overclocking potential and performance is great as well. Good bios options.


The only poor things that I thought could be thought out better were a few layout issues. Such as, all 4 memory slots behing so close to the CPU as well as being so close together, that Memory with heatspreaders(like Corsair) have a hard time fitting in next to eachother in dual channel mode. I had to move the bracket on my Corsair memory down on 1 chip, to squeeze them in together.

The ATX power connectors could have been better thought out as well. They are not necessarily in a bad position, but with certain computer CASES, it might cause a problem. This is definitely still a fantastic board. Well worth the pricetag. If you want an ultra socket 939 NF4 board, you should definitely consider this one.

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Pretty Sweet!

Strengths: Rock solid! Nice features and great diagnostic capabilities

Weakness: Only supports one floppy drive (as far as I can tell)

I purchased this motherboard in combination with an AMD Athlon 64 3000+. Over all, it's a pretty nice board. Like many newer motherboards, all settings (cpu clock speed, RAM speed, etc.) can be adjusted in the BIOS. Of course, most users will be quite happy with the factory default "auto" settings, but, if not, tweaking is really easy. The layout of the board is decent in my opinion. I've read reports about the lousy placement of the floppy disk cable slot, but I didn't think it was too bad, although it does seem as though the resulting cable placement might be disruptive to airflow in the case. I tend to believe you can do something about that, however. Actually, I was more curious about the placement of the connection for the front panel audio which is way back on the board, potentially blocking one of the PCI slots.

The only downside for me is the lack of support for a second floppy drive. If it can handle two, I haven't figured out how.

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Life in the Fast Lane:New Boards for the Athlon 64

The nForce4 Ultra is used here, and the maker squeezes every last ounce out of its capabilities: there are three PCI slots, three x1 PCIe slots, the x16 connection for the graphics card, two ATA/100 channels for optical and hard drives, and four SATA-II ports. The Epox has no end of overclocking fun in store; our only issue is that the chipset fan could be a little quieter.

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