Epox MVP3G-M Super7 Motherboard Review
Last updated: 07/29/03

LAYOUT.  In examining the layout of the board more, the MVP3G-M looks like a redesign of the 51MVP3E-M.  The board is narrower from front to back and Epox has made some noticeable improvements in the resulting layout.  The floppy and hard disk cable connectors, and the core voltage jumpers sit further back in the case making them easier to get at.  The ATX power connector has been moved from the right side, where it was quite close to the power supply in an AOpen HX45 case, to the front of the board where it is easier to work with and where the cable provides a convenient place to zip-tie all of the access drive power cables and the audio cable.  The CPU socket is about 1/2" further back and out of the way of properly tied cables and right where hot air above it will be sucked into the power supply out the case in an HX45 case.  This and the fact that that pesky electrolytic by the left ear of the Socket 7 on the 51MVP3E-M has been moved further to the rear and out of the way, makes it really easy to change-out a CPU and fan with the board in its case.  The DIMM sockets have moved further forward and away from the I/O connectors on the rear of the board, making memory installation very easy.

SLOTS.  The price you pay for a smaller board and a better layout  is the loss of an ISA slot and the two 72-pin memory slots.  There are still a lot of people who would rather not buy a new PCI board or replace their memory when upgrading to an ATX motherboard and case; I see it frequently.  One of the three ISA slots has been replaced with a fifth PCI slot to produce the "popular" 1/5/2 (AGP/PCI/ISA) combination.  I still don't know why this combination is so popular.  Show me a computer with five PCI cards and USB enabled and I'll show you a computer that is probably locking-up with IRQ conflicts.

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