Any info on 4pca3+ ?

I found out that cunsuspc has the 4pca3+ rev2 boards in stock and wanted to know how this compares to the asus p4c800. I don't need a ton of features, just something that OC's well and is stable. I'm hesitant about getting a board that not many people have much experience w/ but the epox is just so tempting w/ 3.3 vdimm and it's $40 cheaper than the asus. It seemed the older rev was lagging behind other canterwoods in the mem bandwidth department, can anyone comment on weather the newer rev/newer bios have brought it up to the asus level?

I was wondering the same. I think I'll have one of these boards in the next coming weeks though, so we'll see how it turns out for me. :D

Mine was amazing for the first 3 days. This morning i went to turn it on, and it powered up for about 1second and then turned off. If i unplug the psu and plug it back in and then press the power the same thing always happens. I had done no mods, and was giving low volts, and it was cooled very well (65f ambient with big fans).

I wonder if this mobo has some problem that causes it to die very easily. I am gonna rma this board to censuspc.com, which i hear is very easy to do.

OH, before it died the performance was outstanding. My cpu was pretty bad, but with stock cooling/volt i had my 2.4c@290fsb. my bh-5 had 3.13v 2-2-2-6, and my s-sandra bandwith was a little over 6400, and my 3dmark2k1 score with my non oc'd 9800p 128mb was just a tad under 20k.

I have had the privledge of working all the major asus and abit mobos, and this board seemed to be better than them all. I just hope this early random death was a fluke.

Sounds exactly like a short somewhere to me. Try taking the mobo out of the case and putting it back together so you can isolate the problem. I was just about to order this board from census but then I noticed it says DDR 400 ECC Registered? Does this board take registered ram or what?
http://www.censuspc.com/Merchant2/me...y_Code=MOT0021

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Originally posted by SoulEdge
Sounds exactly like a short somewhere to me.

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The same thing happened to me once when I didn't mount my slk900 correctly. The screws I used that went trough the motherboard somehow made contact with the backplate of my case. When I put a large piece of plastic over that it was fine.

so maybe i should kind of screw around with it, maybe take off the cooler and put it back on, and see what happens?

This board doesn't need ecc memory. I had khx 3200 bh-5 2x256 running 2-2-2-6 with 3.12v. If I can't get this board to work I will rma it for another. Before it broke this mobo was outstanding.

I think I get one, try it out.Hopefully it kicks some ass.:D

Just ordered one will report back next week.

me too :D

My old 8k3a was awesome ! This MAX3 is nice, but the 5:4 issue is holding me back. I;ve seen a few peeps with this board at 290-297 at 5:4.

With high vagp voltage the board seems to be able to get almost as high as any board.

hey...did anyone ever find out about that fantom aggressive memory mode? From the most recent bios update list of fixes/changes:

"4) Improved "Aggressive_Memory_Mode" memory bandwidth when the item set on "MAX". 5) Solved Vcore voltage showed wrong when decreasing the voltage value. "

WEll just got it in and my cpu wont do over 260, SNDS. So i put in the server machine to run at stock. Getting a new cpu this week.;)

ah, i`ve got a question for you guys who are running a rev. 2.00 of the 4pca3+ - what`s the max Vcore? 1.85V? pleaaaase :D let this rumour be true...

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Originally posted by kim`grr
ah, i`ve got a question for you guys who are running a rev. 2.00 of the 4pca3+ - what`s the max Vcore? 1.85V? pleaaaase :D let this rumour be true...

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Why would you even need that much? You will kill it...

FYI the ASUS and Abit boards do 1.95v...

I ordered my board last Wed w/ just regular ground shipping thinking it would be here by middle of the week. They never sent me a tracking number but when I talked to census, they said it shipped Fri. I better get it this week, I'm getting impatient. Grrr.....

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...threadid=13319

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Problem however is MAX Vcore setting 1.60 volts, which results in a whopping 1.52V real.
So thats basically only default CPU voltage on an overclocking board which is supposed to... overclock. EPoX has been kind enough to give us Vddr up to 3.30V (overvolts to 3.34) and Vagp up to 2.20V, but apparently they forgot about CPU voltage.

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The max vcore in the bios is 1.85, but the vcore undervolts by something realy high like .05v, so it came out to about 1.8v real, which is more than you need. You just need to check to see how much your board undervolts, and change accordingly.

The vdim overvolts also quite a bit, about .03v for me.


soul--> That is talking about the rev1.x...the rev2's have 1.85, and there was a bios update that allows the rev1.2's to go up to 1.85v also.

Just got mine today !

Its stable at 285 5:4, hopefilly 290 after tweaking. My old MAX3 would only do 270 at 5:4 :D

It DOES go up to 1.85 VCORE.

Someone needs to e-mail epox about the phantom agressive memory mode, and the agp/pci lock bug(supposedly turns off above 300fsb, but you can manually set the agp/pci to somewhere close to like 72/36 and it should work)

Guys, don't trust the BIOS/Winbond monitor/MBM/anything else, trust a multimeter. ;) If you actually measure the Vcore under load on the rev 1.x 4PCA3+ it's 1.58 V when set to 1.60 V, nowhere near as bad as the 1.52-1.53 it reports. I'd wager that this is the same for the rev 2.0. :)

On the downside, my second one of these just died. Actually I've had three (all rev 1.x), the first one was DOA... :mad: The replacement better be rev 2.0 or I'll be pissed! :D

gouda: Mate good luck. I emailed EPoX tech support about the Vcore issue with rev 1.x boards... the reply I got was so :rolleyes:!!! It's like they hadn't even used the board, bloody useless! :rolleyes:

Epox needs to shift a little more effort over to the intel side. They are very concentrated on amd, but seem to neglect intel. With just a few little fixes and tweaks I could see this board being the best intel board out there for oc'ing and performance. If there realy is an agp/pci issue that is gonna kill this board for me. I am not going to even consider going back to nvidia, so if I see problems with 300+fsb with video issues and they don't fix it fast I am canning this board for a p4c800. I don't think it will be an issue with the 2.6c though being that 310 would be just about the highest I think I could possibly get, so it should be ok...but I want to get a realy realy good 4ghz+ 2.4c sometime, and as of right I don't know that this board could do that for me.

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Originally posted by gouda96
if I see problems with 300+fsb with video issues and they don't fix it fast I am canning this board for a p4c800.

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Well if I can't get a straight swap tomorrow, I'll be getting a P4C800-E Rev 2.0 instead, that's for sure! :)

The rest was spot on the money, great post! :toast:

I am not giving up on epox just yet. I will give them until my rma period is almost up to fix it. Then I am done. Everything else on this board is so damn perfect that I would hate for something that could easily be fixed in a bios update to ruin it. As long as it doesn't affect my oc with my 2.6c and ati card I will run with it for a little while. If it hurts my 2.6c oc then I am just going to toss it. 340 fsb is one thing, but if I can't do 310 then I won't deal with it.

thanks guys, I know that running a p4 @ 1.85V will kill it rather quickly.

all I wanted to know is that 1.7V REAL are possible, so the MAX information was just to be sure.

<< gonna order one ;)

Well setting it up with a 9800pro some buffalo 3700 that will do 2226, and a nice 60gb raid 0.
Cpu should be here on Friday.:D

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The replacement better be rev 2.0 or I'll be pissed!

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Well with Epox boards, later is not necessarily better. I tried both the Rev. 1.0 and Rev. 2.0 8RDA+ and kept the 1.0. It had higher true voltages and overclocked just as high as the 2.0 with default VDD of 1.56 whereas the 2.0 needed 1.8. The Rev. 2.0 also had the can't-boot-above-1.90 VCORE bug.

I had similar experiences to Retrospooty: same CPU did 277 on the 4PCA3+ and <265 on the IC7-MaxIII. Also 5:4 and VDIMM issues on the Abit board.

The 4PCA3+ loves BH-5/BH-6 and ADATA PC4000. I've run 250, 1:1, 2-2-2-5 with XMS3500 and DDR478, 2-2-2-5 on SanMax BH-6, at 3.2 volts. The ADATA does 282, 1:1, 3-4-4-5 at 2.9 volts, CPU limited.

I have a Rev. 1.1, 1.2, and 2.0 4PCA3+, but have only run the 1.1. I've heard of both it and the 4PEA+ mysteriously dying. I haven't run my 1.1 long enough to notice anything. A 4PEA+ is in my internet rig, loaded to the hilt and running DDR466, 2-2-2-5 at 3.0 volts. So far so good.