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- Date:
- Thursday , May 02, 2002
- Author:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Soltek SL-75DRV5 Mainboard Review
Soltek's latest KT333 chipset board is certainly a head turner because of the Mardi Gras colored PCB, but features like Anti-Burn Shield II are really what got us interested. All shields full, phasers on stun, make it so...
Many folks have asked us why we have not covered Soltek mainboards here in the past and the answer is a simple one. Their sales and support here in North America have been less than tremendous. Still, they have been gaining traction here in the USA and their products are becoming easier to find, so we decided that it is time to take a look at their products. Soltek is a Taiwanese company that has been building mainboards since 1996 with offices and production in Taiwan and mainland China and boasts a production capacity of 300,000 mainboards per month.
Certainly support and service are on the minds of many of you, and here is what Soltek has to say.
No matter from where you purchase SOLTEK mainboard, we provide immediate technical support, RMA and other services. We attribute our long history of customer satisfaction to our fast response time and our willingness to work closely with our customers.
Due to us having little experience with Soltek boards and not much feedback from our readers, the jury is still out on whether or not they live up to their claims. With that said, let's take a look at their latest mainboard based on the VIA KT333 chipset.
Features:
The Soltek SL-75DRV5 is the board we are reviewing here. Below you will find a chart of its basic features. For a complete overview of the specs, please visit this Soltek webpage for the full rundown. If you are unfamiliar with the VIA KT333 and what it brings to the table, I would suggest a quick read over our KT333 technology preview.
CPU | AMD Duron - Athlon - AthlonXP |
Chipset | VIA KT333 / VT8367 + VT8233A |
FSB | 200/266MHz |
BIOS | AWARD PnP |
Memory | Three 184-pin DIMM / ? max 200/266/333 memory bus |
Expansion Slots | 1 AGP, 5 PCI Slots, 1CNR |
Onboard IDE | 2 ATA 133 controllers |
USB | 4 USB 1.1 |
AGP | AGP 2X / 4X |
Audio | AC'97 |
As you can see, compared to today's trend of putting more add-on components on a mainboard, the Soltek SL-75DRV5 is really bucking what is popular. This could very well appeal to many folks out there that like as little "extra stuff" on their mainboard as possible. The tradeoff there is that that the enthusiast folks that see things that way generally want a high performance mainboard that offers tweakability.
The Board Layout:
No doubt a bit eye-catching. The PCB color is unique from what we are used to seeing when they get dressed up. The nickname of this board is the "Purple Ray", as you obviously see why.
The sight of dipswitches will scare off many overclockers, and this header surely needs to be noticed on this board. This is how you will be changing the multiplier on your AMD CPU if you have unlocked it. Of course, you can set it to auto-select and it will use the default multiplier on the CPU. Not very handy for hardcore tweakers, as there is no selection in the BIOS.
The Socket A is well placed at the top edge of the board where it has come to normally rest. Still, if you are going to place the Socket A there, we always consider it unwise to place the ATX header below it, as you end up pulling the ATX harness across the HSF unit causing air flow problems if you are not careful. Still, it may be a bit less evident on this Soltek board, as there is a pretty good space between the CPU and ATX header.
Also, next to the ATX header is the now familiar six MOSFETs we are used to seeing on three-phase power mainboards.
The VIA KT333 northbridge is actively cooled like many others now days. Soltek did take the time and effort to install the heatsink with a nice layer of compound that was very well applied. You will notice in the second picture that our chipset is marked with a "CD" in the serial number. We are hearing that the "CE" revision of the chipset is much more robust, and we will touch on that later.
The Soltek KT333 board comes equipped with 3 slots for DIMMs. Also the DIMM voltage is adjustable, just as almost every OCer requires with the picky DDR Ram on the market. The voltage is adjustable from 2.5v to 2.7v, with 2.5 being default using a double set of jumpers right on top of the white floppy header seen in the second picture above. The AGP voltage is also adjusted via a jumper configuration.
Again, we see a scary header full of dipswitches. This time they control the Front Side Bus. Unlike the first row of dipswitches, this one can be turned off and the FSB can be controlled from the BIOS.
IDE header placement is well done. They have turned the headers so they lay parallel with the AGP slot. This has become increasingly important, as we are seeing some GeForce4 Titanium series cards get in a bind when extending over the IDE headers, but thankfully not in this case.
Worth noting is the VIA southbridge that natively supports ATA133 hard drives. No aftermarket RAID add-ons on this board to get in the way.
Another feature that is becoming less and less popular, one made famous by ABIT, is the addition of a two prong header that supports a thermal sensor. For those of you that want to monitor a particular area of unit in your system, this can of course be a very nice throw in. The sensor to utilize this feature was included in our package.
While not at all popular in the USA, the mainboard is also equipped with a smart card reader header. An additional USB1.1 backplate is included with boards, but not ours. The header was present on the board and could certainly be utilized though with an aftermarket front jack panel system, though.
Two channel AC'97 sound is equipped on the board as well also. Ours worked fine and would certainly provide you with the sound you need for games and such, but it's a far cry from the quality of sound that can be had now days with other boards.