X-bit labs

Review of Soltek SL-86SPE-L Mainboard on i865PE Chipset

Category: Mainboards

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 06/24/2003 | 11:28 AM ]

One more i865PE based mainboard, which appeared in our lab pleasantly surprised us with the way it looked. Besides, Soltek solution is not too expensive. But will this product become a successful competitor to more pricy solutions?

Table of contents:

• Specifications
  
• Closer Look
  
• PCB Design
  
• BIOS and Overclocking
  
• Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

We continue reviewing the newest mainboards based on i875P and i865PE chipsets. Today we are going to take a closer look at a mainboard from Soltek. We should say that the solutions offered by this manufacturer have been very rarely reviewed on our site before. The thing is that we were not always happy with the quality of Soltek’s solutions, so we didn’t review them often. But we should confess that our opinion about this manufacturer started changing drastically for the better lately. Soltek changed its marketing strategy radically towards aggressive promotion of its products in the mainboard segment. Besides, they provided their solutions with a number of really exciting features and started paying due attention to reliability issues and adequate technical support.

We would also like to stress that one of the major attractions of Soltek mainboards is their outstanding exterior. All of you remember very well the mainboard family called Golden Flame with gold-sputtered PCBs. Now Soltek thought of a new unusual mainboard family aka Violet Eyes. One of the mainboards from this particular family is going to be the hero of our today’s story. We would like to introduce the new Soltek SL-86SPE-L mainboard based on i865PE chipset.

The first question many progressive users ask when they see an i865PE based mainboard is about the PAT technology support. After a very illustrative demonstration of the potential behind the i865PE based mainboard performed by ASUS and their P4P800 (see our detailed ASUS P4P800 Mainboard Review), almost everyone wants to make sure that they get a solution running faster than any the standard i865PE based one. Running a little bit ahead of time, we would like to say that you can also enable PAT on Soltek SL-86SPE-L, though in a not very usual way. Hungry for exciting details? Then go on reading! :)

Specifications

Besides Soltek SL-86SPE-L, you can also come across one more mainboard from the same family. It is Soltek SL-86SPE, which differs from our today’s hero by the absence of the integrated Ethernet controller. Anyway, the features of Soltek SL-86SPE-L indicate that it is an inexpensive mainboard. At present you can find it for around $105-$110. The modification without the network controller will cost another $5 less.

The package of Soltek SL-86SPE-L includes the following software and equipment:

• CD-disk with the standard set of drivers and utilities;
• Powerful System Utilities CD-disk with the additional software bundle including PC-cillin 2002, VirtualDrive 7, RestoreIT! 3 Lite, PartitionMagic 6.0 SE and DriveImage 4.0.
• Two Serial ATA cables;
• One Parallel ATA cable;
• FDD cable;
• User’s manual.

As we see, the accessories set is minimal. Especially against the background of very rich sets offered by such companies as MSI, Chaintech or Gigabyte. However, we shouldn’t forget about the price of this unit. Soltek SL-86SPE-L is a low-cost product that is why it is not accompanied by too many accessories. Although, I assume that such things as an additional bracket with the USB ports could be included. Hopefully, Soltek will take note of our advice in the future.