Though EPoX makes plenty of enthusiast-oriented motherboards, we've actually never reviewed one here at TR, so I was anxious to get my hands on the EP-8KRA2+. If I had to succinctly describe the EP-8KRA2+, I'd have to call it old school. Not only does the board bundle in plain old IDE RAID, it's also one of the few KT600 boards to dress in a classic shade of Printed Circuit Board Green. Green may not be the flashiest color for modding enthusiasts looking to show something off through a case window, but it's remarkably distinctive in the sea of multicolored boards currently on the market.

The EP-8KRA2+ is laid out on a full-size ATX board with plenty of room for extra IDE ports and six PCI slots. The board lacks an auxiliary power connector, and its single power plug is located a little too close to the CPU socket for my picky cable routing tastes, but overall things are spaced out nicely.

There's plenty of room around the EP-8KRA2+'s CPU socket for larger heat sinks, but no retention mechanism holes to help keep bigger, heavier cooling systems secure. Although Athlon XP processors feature internal thermistors, the EP-8KRA2+'s CPU socket sports its own temperature sensor just in case.

Despite the board's six PCI slots, there's enough room between the EP-8KRA2+'s AGP and DIMM slots to facilitate easy DIMM swapping. Only those running longer graphics cards should have to pull their graphics card to swap memory modules.

The EP-8KRA2+'s four IDE ports are nicely lined up along the edge of the board, and the Serial ATA ports aren't far away. With all four IDE ports in use, things will get a little crowded around the bottom of the board, but that's what Zip Ties are for.

A passive north bridge heat sink keeps the EP-8KRA2+'s KT600 chip running cool, silent, and free of worry over potential fan failures. I've actually had a couple of north bridge fans die on me over the years, and while the failures have never released the magic smoke or fried any system components, they were detrimental to system stability under load.

The EP-8KRA2+'s port cluster is pretty standard fare. With only three analog audio ports, rear and center outputs must share ports with line-in and mic inputs.

Like many of EPoX's motherboards, the EP-8KRA2+ has a two-digit post code display that makes troubleshooting a breeze. Personally, I've never enjoyed deciphering BIOS beep codes to get to the bottom of motherboard boot problems, so the post code display really does it for me. This feature probably saves EPoX's tech support team plenty of time, too. I can imagine the joy tech support jockeys must feel knowing they won't have to ask troubled users to hold the phone up to beeping motherboards that refuse to boot.