Epox 4PEA+ (845PE): A well rounded 845PE

Epox 4PEA+: Board Layout

The Epox 4PEA+ was laid out fairly well, although there were one or two minor issues that we felt needed to be pointed out.

One of the complaints we had with the 4PEA+ was the placement of the ATX (20-pin) and ATX12V connectors on the motherboard. The main ATX connector is located all the way over on the left-hand side of the motherboard, right next to the I/O ports. This greatly clogs the middle of your case and restricts air flow. You're also forced to unhook the main ATX line before you can uninstall your HSF, which is just an additional annoyance. The ATX12V connector is also located on the same side of the motherboard as the main ATX connector; in fact, the ATX12V connector is placed right next to the main ATX connector. The actual positioning of the ATX12V is pretty common, but placing it right next to the ATX connector is not so common. Something to keep in mind about the positioning of both these connectors is that it's somewhat difficult to unhook them because they're so close together and the nearby capacitors don't make things any easier.

The Primary and Secondary IDE connectors are positioned optimally. Both are located above the installed Ti4600 video card, which is exactly where you want them to be placed since your IDE cables will most likely be able to reach to the upper most drive bays. If both connectors were placed below the video card, not only would it be increasingly difficult to reach those upper drive bays, but the ATA cables would more than likely get tangled up with the video card, causing more clutter.

The DIMM connectors are, for once, placed well on this 845PE-based motherboard. The connectors are just far away enough from the video card so that we don't have to uninstall the video card to add or remove memory. This is a nice improvement over the other 845PE boards we've tested. In fact, the Epox 4PEA+ is the only 845PE board we've used that actually leaves enough room for us.

The general layout of the Epox 4PEA+ is good. The USB and what will eventually be FireWire headers with shipping 4PEA+ boards are positioned well because they are located at the bottom of the board, which is the optimal position to place them because the wires from a USB 2.0 or FireWire bracket won't collide too badly with other PCI cards installed. In addition, the center of your case won't be cluttered with any extra wires because the USB 2.0 headers are placed at the bottom of the board, not towards the middle where a lot of other motherboard makers like to place them.