Product: 8KHA
Manufacturer: Epox
Homepage: www.Epox-UK.com	BUY ME!
Date: 17.09.01	£116.99 / $169.05 from our online Store

Things are running smoothly in the Chillblast dungeons. The new reptilian crew are placid (they need the warmth of the sun to function, so keeping them under control is easy) and the street prices are decreasing. Thank god for the free market! So, with a spring in our step, we skip up the stairs to accept another package from our now jaded (apparently LSD isn't that much fun if you don't know it's in your lemonade) courier. He now wears sun glasses perpetually but the doctors reckon his photophobia will subside within the next few years.

The review gods seem to be smiling upon the Chillblast residence/crack house since they have managed to wangle us another motherboard to review (little woohoo everyone). Once we unwrapped the little beauty from it's mandatory bubble wrap suit, we became confused - since when did Epox become a fashion house!!?! They seem to have sent me the season's latest accessory - a natty little hand bag. With pride, I stepped out to do a bit of shopping. The looks I got! It appears that even the luddites appreciate my style as I received no end of admiring stares. It wasn't until I returned home and realised the reason for all the attention. DOH! I was using it as a hand rather than shoulder bag!! Check it.

I know, I know, it looks obvious now, but in all the excitement I got confused (or was I drunk?). I soon tired of this soft furnishing and rang Epox to complain that they had sent the wrong thing. I was taken aback when they informed me that I had been strutting about with the motherboard over my shoulder! Oh well, it was a pretty poor bag - you couldn't put anything in it.

Once I had regained my perspective, I decided that I love the design and the innovative approach of Epox. They have matured in a very short space of time and are responding to the market. They manufacture high quality products while paying attention to the smaller details associated with them. It is a novel approach to the usual motherboard packaging and is frankly, fun.

Let's unpack the beast...

Epox include IDE and floppy ribbons, manuals, drivers & software and also the USB extension.

Specifications

You can check out the full specs, through this link. The Epox 8KHA is their second DDR board, coming hot on the heels of their market leading board, the 8K7A. This board is based on the VIA Apollo KT266 chipset as opposed to the 8K7A's AMD 760 chipset. The VIA solution allows Epox to offer a cheaper option with similar performance (as we shall see later).

Layout

The physical set up of the board is close to that of the 8K7A with a couple of minor changes.

The first and most noticeable change is the socket position. It has shifted down toward the DIMM slots and also rotated 90* clockwise. The power input has been placed above the Northbridge. The last difference (that we noticed) was that there are three DIMM slots as opposed to two. Nice for those of you that splashed out on 128 MB sticks and want to get more memory.

As with the 8K7A there is active cooling for the Northbridge (VIA KT266) chipset which is now a common feature on all overclocking motherboards. The fan used is a good quality Coolermaster 40mm and the wire is neatly looped around a couple of capacitors. As Epox put it, they have paired the VIA KT 266 with the VIA VT8233 super Southbridge to give the board high quality sound, super I/O and the most essential of overclocking tools, the hardware monitor.

The sound is integrated AC-97 which isn't anything special. If sound really matters to you, go for a PCI card but those that complain of CPU usage from the on-board sound should have a re-think, is your CPU really stretched so far that 4 or 5% makes any difference? Answers, not on an e-mail.

We are now au fait (ooh look at me, I can type french phrases) with Epox's P80P Debug (POST) Card onboard design with LED display. That means there is an LED that displays numbers that correspond with what's going on during the boot sequence, so if there is a problem, the LED will show you what's wrong. Nice, a better option than bleep codes or nothing at all. Luckily, we have had no problems with either the 8K7A or 8KHA range so the LED has been left to its own devices.

The next little "upgrade" for the 8KHA over it's brother is the multiplier setting facility. The 8K7A's multiplier is set through switches (either on or off) on the motherboard. This was an improvement over jumpers but on the 8KHA you do all the overclocking in the BIOS (another little woohoo).

Installation

We had just checked out the new aluminium case from Epox so here is how it looked in the case motherboard. Just need to get some more screws from our little Epox screw case (came with the case), hmm which size to use? Perhaps the ones with the little clay like washers. How I love the screw case!! =))

We had put in all the test components so we are literally locked and loaded, the AK is under the bed..

Looks pretty much like a motherboard, full marks - it is. There are no jumpers to set to let's fire it up.

BIOS

We've ascertained that all the overclocking is controlled by the BIOS which is always a bonus as there is no need to keep the case open after installation. Mr. Finger can do all the work

The latest BIOS was the 8kha1809 version but we had a small, heart-stopping moment whilst flashing - it froze (gutted). Luckily, it hadn't actually started the flash procedure so we re-booted and decided to use the slightly earlier (by a week) 8KHA1802. Extract onto bootable floppy, power on and hit alt+F2 then sit back. Nice and easy, ppl. Once that was done, we entered the BIOS to check out the lie of the land. It was pretty flat.

The overclocking features are in the section. To set the FSB you simply type in the desired figure et voila (oooh look at m....... - well you know). The 8KHA has the same voltage set-up as the 8K7A which allows you to add a certain amount to the default CPU core voltage. The multiplier is also standard format with a scroll down selection.

Apart from the overclocking part, the rest of the BIOS is what you would expect. There are system speed settings for the RAM which take care of the precharge type memory adjustments for those of us who are not too knowledgeable, which is nice.

We had the Phoenix BIOS with the 8K7A and frankly, I prefer old school as the 8KHA has. The Phoenix looked a bit poor but most, I understand, liked it, so I'm sure it will be an option in future updates.

Test Rig

Testing/Overclocking

In true Chillblast stylee, we will test the overclocking ability of this sucker and throw in a some benchies to keep the rabble happy. We will be using SiSoft Sandra 2001 SE Professional (I hope the professional part rubs off on us!) for the memory benchmark and 3D Mark 2000 & 3D Mark 2001 for the graphical testing (only running the default benchmark).

All changes to the CPU speed are, as we have already written, controlled by the BIOS, so it is merely a question of sealing the case sides and holding on tight. Light the afterburners, Wedge.

We decided to tweak the memory settings to run at the highest possible settings so we sent one of the odd-job lizards out to Epox UK's HQ (apparently their offices are made of purest gold and they all sit on diamond-encrusted chairs but the lizard's form of communication is through rapid tongue flicks so that may not be entirely correct) to speak with the technical sage/guru of muchness. His return yielded these settings: stick it to ultra and let 'em rip. I like that.

All we really care about is the speed that you can run your CPU at and so we reduced the multiplier and tested the upper FSB limits. The result was....

A massive 165 mhz!! To be frank, I was expecting to reach about this figure but that is because I have been spoilt by the 8K7A. At 166 mhz, the system was very flaky and it would not boot most of the time. The main complaint is the loss of USB over 138 mhz which is a problem of the VIA chipset. This will be rectified with the new revision - KT-266A due out in a few weeks. This does not mean that you cannot use this board with USB, simply get a PCI card which will be better than the normal (working) USB.

Instead of taking incremental readings (read time consuming!!) we preferred to find our best set-up and then mark it. The settings we ran were 4-way interleave at CAS 2 and the system at Ultra.

When compared to the 8K7A result below, you can see the difference is only 3%!

There is very little to choose between the VIA and AMD chipsets on performance.

Next up was to see what our little AYHJA Y can do straight out of the box.

A rounded 1.6 Ghz was our reward - not bad for a sub £110 CPU =) We managed to get into Windoze (ME) at 1650 mhz but it was only truly stable at 1600 mhz.

Sadly, a heady mix of stupidity, electricity and system components meant that we were not able to test 3D Mark - the moral being "never flick the transformer switch with the power chord still attached" =(

We found that the AMD chipset on the 8K7A ran the CPU very hot at idle, so I took stock speed CPU temp readings for the 8KHA. The CPU was a 1.4 and the cooler was the excellent Dynatron DY1206BH-610. Idle taken 10 mins after boot and full load after 30 mins of Seti@home.

As you can see, the idle speed is very hot but the full load is only 3*C higher. I know the 1.4s run hot but I think that it is the VIA running the idle temp high. Not a big deal really, as most of us run Seti or equivalent constantly so we never really see idle!

Conclusion

This is Epox's latest board and it cements their reputation. It is a fast, well designed and most importantly, highly overclockable. Add to that its low price tag, and we are looking at a surefire winner!

The performance is first class, managing to attain the heady levels of the 8K7A's blistering performance, which is no mean feat. The totally jumper-less overclocking is a great improvement and allows for a much easier experience. You can seal the case up and then decide how fast you want to go today.

The only problem we encountered was the USB shutting down after 138 mhz but this is being rectified as we speak.

Another feature that Epox UK offer is round the clock support. Just go to their site, fill in the support form and they will (hopefully) get the solution to you within 6 hours.

A top grade motherboard with a bargain price tag and great user support. Who can stop Epox's relentless march? More to the point, with product's like this, do we want them stopped?

The final ChillBlast rating is ********

Check out Epox's site at www.Epox-UK.com

BUY ME! £116.99 / $169.05 from our online store

More respect to the Epox team/band for their providing the market with another exceptional product/concert.

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