Gigabyte 7dxr or Epox 8K7A+

Hello everyone! I'm ready to buy a new system (AMD 1.4GHz) and had decided to get an Epox 8k7a+ mobo because I read such good reviews on it. But recently I have heard of people having some type of 5V power problems and recommending the Gigabyte 7dxr mobo. The Gigabyte costs $50 more (has Promise controller instead of Highpoint, Creative Sound instead of AC97, etc..). Is the promise controller better than highpoint?

I don't want to spend to much, but like everyone, want a solid stable mobo that is easy to setup (including the RAID). I don't really care for a lot of fancy features like the dual bios on the Gigabyte to influence my descision....so:

1). Which board do you experts recommend? and why?
2). Does the Epox 8k7a+ have enough room to fit just about any size CPU HSF?

Thanks for your help!

First let me say that any issues with the epox board are very fixable if they even happen to you. If you have an AMD recommended PSU or a non recommended brand name PSU with a lot of oomph you should not have any problems. People tend to blow this stuff way out of proportion. Some folks reporting problems have crappy power supplies, or defective ones, others are cranking up their systems in attempt to try to give NORAD a run for it's money or something. But there are some folks that have the problem stock out of the box too so go figure
I have never owned a gigabyte board so I cannot comment on it either way. I do know that my epox is a great board and I'm very happy with it and the price was right. I thought I read somewhere that the highpoint controller was a better choice than the promise one but I might be mistaken maybe somebody else could confirm or deny this. If you search around the forums you will see that overall people are generally very happy with this board. They are actually hard to get right now since many shops have them on back order. Oh as for the on board sound, It does not matter to me because I disabled it and used a real soundcard instead

I have a millenium glaciator HSF on mine and it fits great, its a pretty hefty HSF. It fit and it has not detached and pulverized my video card so far so good..

Welcome to the forums Forrest, say hi to Lt Dan for me and good luck!

I love epox! lets see there's epox creole, epox salad, epox scampi, fried epox, baked stuffed epox.... .....