EPoX KP6-BS

EPoX's KP6-BS is target as a low cost dual slot 1 motherboard for general users when you try to comapre with the big brothers like Asus's P2B-D. The board that we bought is DOA (Dead On Arrival). Ok... it is not complete dead, is just has no power to the chassis fan connector. And even after a month, we still can't get a replacement from the supplier. KB6-BS is a ATX form factor motherboard that has 4 DIMM slot, a 2X AGP slot, 5 PCI and 2 ISA slot (one PCI/ISA share). The four DIMM slot can hold up to 1GB of SDRAM or EDO memory for 66MHz FSB, of course no mixing of memory type, just in case you asked. But if you would like ECC support, you might want to use EDO memory instead, beacuse this option is expensive for SDRAM. With the tweaking in the BIOS, you might have luck to make the memory runs at 83MHz bus but don't have too much hope at 100MHz.

The board also comes standard with dual UDMA/33 channel for support up to four EIDE devices. If you would like to hook up your UDMA/66 EIDE drives, you will need to get yourself a controller like ABIT's HOTROD 66 PCI UDMA/66 controller.

Setting up the board is relatively a easy process. We poped in two 366MHz PPGA Celeron Processors that is mounted on MSI's 6905 v1.1 slocket. Setting the multiplier is easy with EPoX's ESSJ (Easy Setting Single Jumper) feature. From the motherboard, it shows support up to 5.5x (366MHz for 66MHz FSB and 550MHz for 100MHz FSB). There is a position to Disable ESSJ (DIS.ESSJ) setting and J7, J8, J9 & J10 are mark as reserved (RSD) we beileve you can still set the multiplier with these jumpers. (After asking EPoX tech support for countless times, and still unable receive a respond on this issue. All we get from reply is those jumpers are reserved.) However with today's Intel processor, it is known to be multiplier locked, so even if you try to set it differently nothing will happen. Unless you can find some older processor to play with, otherwise don't worry about it. The FSB is set via the CMOS, for Celeron (Default 66MHz FSB) Processors, you have a selection of 66MHz, 68.5MHz, 75MHz and 83MHz. And for Pentium II / III (100MHz FSB) Processors, a choice of 100MHz, 103MHz, 112MHz and 133MHz is available. But what if you want to overclock your Celeron Processor at 100MHz FSB? You have two choices, if you are using MSI's 6905 V1.1 slockets, you can override it with J1. Or you can override both Celeron processors to run at 100MHz (or above) using J100 on the motherboard.

During our testing, we have found one annoying bug with the KP6-BS motherboard. The soft power button doesn't work as expacted. This seems to be a very well know issue on the net, but after 2 months we still didn't receive any answers from EPoX tech support on how to fix it or even if there are any plans to fix this in the next BIOS release. From various newsgroup, seems like in order for the power off button to turn off power instantly it is depends on a combination of setting in the CMOS as well as a jumper setting. In short, it is not as easy as you think and is not documented anywhere. And even worst, there is no guarantee it work everytime. Some people even went futher to modify their motherboard to fix this problem because EPoX tech support just can't help and people are getting very anoying about this problem. I hope EPoX is reading this and will have a fix come out soon. (Latest BIOS release is 20/05/99 at the time we write). Also worth mentioning is the newer KP6-BS now using 2MB Flash BIOS and we have been asking for EPoX to ship us a new chip for testing and we asked EPoX if this 2MB version will fix the power off problem, but so far no respond yet. Some rumors saying removing C113 (make sure it is a surface mount cap, not C117 Electrolityc cap which is close by) will fix this power off problem.

We have also noticed beside the power off problem there is another potential problem, the capacitors EC13 (next to L10, behind Primary Slot1) & EC27 (Next to L11, behind Secondary Slot1) for the CPU switching power supply are getting pretty hot (I am afraid the the cap might explode if it gets too hot). That sounds like a problem (or maybe poor design) in the switching power supply for the CPU according to someone who is designing power supply. Normally capacitors should not even get warm.

For hardware monitoring, KP6-BS uses National Semiconductor's LM75 & LM78 and runs on I²C bus (which is similar to SMBus). Currently the board revision is 0.2. One of differents from Rev 0.1 and 0.2 is that on Rev 0.2 motherboard, only one "CPU temperature sensor" (LM75) is installed. In fact LM75 is only measuring the air temperature, not the core temperature that most overclockers interested. It is possible to add a second LM75, and is a pretty easy job (if you are experience with soldering iron). When EPoX design this motherboard, engineers did considerate to add a chip to detect the CPU core temperature, but according to the respond I receive from EPoX, it is a marketing decision to go with LM75 because "is is more popular". The chip that can detect CPU core temperature is MAXIM's MAX1617/MAX1617A/MAX1619 (or National Semiconductor's LM84, which is similiar). However adding this chip to the motherboard is not just soldering it to the pad, but also require some modifications. The main reason is because EPoX has connected the orginal pad with a supply voltage of 2.0V instead of the require 3.3V.

Another thing about the temperature sensor chip is that LM78 only has 4 VID pin and it is more designed for Celeron Procesors in mind (although this is suppose to be a dual Pentium II/III board). LM79 (like Tyan's Tiger 100) should be use because it supports 5 VID pins.

EPoX KP6-BS is technically speaking a very good motherboard (also gives the fastest memory access speed among all board that we have tested). But as for customer services and technical support, it is below expiation.

Board Revsion:	0.2
BIOS Version:	9520 (20 May 99)
Number of DIMM Slot:	4
2X AGP Slot:	YES
UDMA/66 interface onboard:	No
SCSI on Board:	No
Number of ISA Slot:	2
Number of PCI Slot:	5
Number of share ISA/PCI slot:	1
68.5MHz Turbo Frequency:	Yes

Overall Score: 80

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