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Layout
Epox 8HDA3+
Green PCB used to be quite ordinary some time ago but nowadays almost no one else than Epox uses it. Green is my favourite colour so if I say that 8HDA3+ looks great no one believes me. However it seems that Epox has chosen not to try attracting case modders out there and so no fancy LEDs or UV-active memory slots or something like that. Works for me at least.
Epox has done some work on 8HDA3+s layout and some components have been moved to not so ordinary places. For example power circuitry is now placed on the very top part of the motherboards PCB and K8T800 chipset have found new place for itself.
AGP & DIMM slots
Some things never change and this time it is how memory slots are placed. They are actually so near AGP slot that installing memory modules while long display adapter is on its place, is at least annoying.
View from lower part of the motherboard
It seems that there is rush hour going on lower part of the motherboard. IDE and floppy drive connectors have been moved from their usual position from upper part of the motherboard to the lower part. Six SATA cables, IDE and floppy drive cables, USB-cables and normal reset and power switches and some other cables all in the same area, I think you can imagine the cable mess.
CMOS clear jumper is placed on the tight spot and although it is accessible, I think that longheaded jumper would have more suitable. Interesting is also that BIOS flash ROM is located behind PCI slots.
View from upper part of the motherboard
Right corner of the upper part of the PCB is almost spacey compared to the lower part. Usually IDE and floppy drive connectors and ATX power chord are found in here, but in this motherboard things are little different. Two memory slots are placed nearer the edge as usual and empty space is used to move processor socket and chipset to the their present positions.
Chipset cooler
Quite cool VIA K8T800 chipset is cooled by little passive heat sink. Heat sink is fastened to its place loosely by tape. So it seems that heat sink is actually more like nice detail than for cooling.
Connectors
Color coded connectors for power, reset and other connectors are nice to have. Many motherboard manufacturers have started to use this kind of little things that helps installation. These color coded connectors are good example, but there is still some minor problems since for example Epox has marked power on connector in black whereas some other manufacturers use red. Some kind of standard could be helpful in this case.
Epox 8HDA3+ has quite unique layout. Most of the main changes compared to more traditional layouts are successful but for example Epoxs way to gather all connectors to one place may cause some problems.
Power circuitry
Power circuitry
Two phased power circuitry is based on Fairchild 5098MTC voltage regulator. There is totally eight RLX labeled 3300uF 6.3V capacitors and four Hermei 2200uF 16V capacitors supporting voltage regulators chip. It is some what interesting that Epox has decided to use two phased voltage regulation since three or four phased are nowadays more common. However two phased voltage regulation is just as good as or even better than three or four phased if suitable components are used.
ATX and 12V power connectors are placed on very left upper corner of the motherboard. In this case power lines are most likely going to interfere with CPU cooler and PSU. So there might be some problems with proper air flow on the processor are but actually nothing to worry about. This is however better place for power connectors as is the area near AGP slot.
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