Connectivity
The EPoX EP-5NVA+ SLI has the ability to support four PATA drives on two IDE channels, and four SATA-II drives. Both PATA and SATA support RAID 0 (Striping) and RAID 1 (Mirroring) which is very basic. Interestingly, with the bundled SATA-PATA adapter, you can allow yourself a 5th SATA channel if you need it.
Correction (Feb 27, 2006):
The above statement is wrong. EPoX has pointed out that this adapter is mean to adapt a PATA drive to SATA. So the adapter will install itself on the back of a PATA drive and a Serial-ATA cable used to connect the adapter to a free SATA connection on the EP-5NVA+. Update pictures will be forthcoming. Apologies for this mistake. – Jon.
Two PATA, four SATA, RAID, and a SATA-PATA adapter.
There are two 16x, two 1x PCI Express slots, and two older PCI slots. The one 1x PCI-E slot located between the 16x may become unusuable depending on the size of your video cooler.
The four DDR2 DIMMs support up to a massive 8GB of non-ECC memory in either DDR2-400/533/667 flavours.
The EP-5NVA+ SLI is also capable of handling ten USB 2.0 and two Firewire ports (IEEE 1394a). Six of the USB and two Firewire ports are usable out of the box using the included brackets and back I/O.
The back I/O has six stereo jacks for the 8-channel ALC850 AC’97 audio, the Vitesse Gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 2.0, coax and optical digital audio output, and your legacy device connections.
There is a connection for a thermal probe which is included in the bundle. Also it’s worth mentioning that there are four fan headers on the motherboard, one which is used by the north bridge fan. The CPU fan supports PWM which allows for better fan speed control, but none of the other fans headers have this feature.
