Epox 8rga+

bios:


(*) can't be adjusted

I must be lucky, because all my nf² boards are equipped latest northbridge revision. This Epox 8rda+ rev 1.1 has a A3 stepping nb too.

voltages:
There's no 12V connector on this mobo to help stabalising the 5V rail.

The 5V rail undervolts, but withing %5 tolerance, with a cheap PSU: avg 4.85, min 4.75, max 4.87v

The mosfets on the 8rda+ get extremely hot if not cooled, and cause a vcore fluctuation up to +/-0.08v at 1.9v! After applying heatsinks on the mosfets and voltage regulator, it provides a stable +/-0.02 vcore.

cooling:
The heatsink is pretty large for a northbidge, but it's not that effective. It keeps the chipset perfectly stable at 1.6vdd and <190FSB, but i'd highly recommend to replace it with a better one if your into serious overclocking.

Unfortunatly, theres no heatsink on the southbridge. While you may not encounter instability at high (+200) FSB at first, i experienced random "clicks" and other anomalities through my speakers. The chip gets very hot at high FSB and it seems like Epox knew about this problem because they have provided standard mounting holes around the southbridge. Placing a small heatsink on it should solve all your problems, no need to cool this chip activly. A tiny 1cm² heatsink keeps the southbridge cool enough to run at 220mhz FSB all the time.