X-bit labs

Review of Soltek SL-86SPE-L Mainboard on i865PE Chipset (page 3)

Category: Mainboards

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

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

In fact, this is not the only thing where Soltek tried to save on production costs. Take a look at the South Bridge. The mainboard is equipped with the regular ICH5 South Bridge supporting two ATA/133 channels and two SerialATA-150 channels, but no RAID. This way you can connect up to 6 separate drives to this mainboard (two SerialATA drives and 4 Parallel ATA drives), but you will never be able to build a RAID array with them.

The USB 2.0 ports are also implemented in a very interesting manner on Soltek SL-86SPE-L. Since the rear panel of the mainboard is standard, there are only two USB 2.0 ports on it. The remaining 6 USB 2.0 ports implemented in the ICH5 South Bridge are present only as connectors on the PCB for the additional ports placed either on the front or on the back panel of the PC case. However, there are no additional brackets with the USB 2.0 ports in the box with the mainboard. so, if you use Soltek SL-86SPE-L as is, i.e. without purchasing any extra brackets or panels, there will be only two USB 2.0 ports available. To tell the truth, this is not enough for today. I assume that Soltek should have taken care of it and provided SL-86SPE-L with the rear panel brackets featuring extra USB 2.0 ports or modified the design of the back mainboard panel, so that more USB 2.0 ports could fit in there.

By the way, I would like to note that due to AMI BIOS used in Soltek SL-86SPE-L, this mainboard, just like that one from ASUS (see our ASUS P4P800 Mainboard Review), can recognize such USB drives as flash-drives, external drives, ZIP-drives, card readers and the like as a floppy. It automatically implies that you can access these drives from DOS or any other operation systems, which do not usually support these devices. Besides, this feature also allows booting the operation system from any of these devices without any difficulty.

Six-channel sound support on Soltek SL-86SPE-L is implemented via Realtek ALC650 codec, which is today’s most widely spread solution, which is nevertheless getting more and more obsolete. Anyway, even though the quality of this six-channel sound is not bad at all. SPDIF Outs, however, are not designed on Soltek SL-86SPE-L, probably for economic reasons. Also note that the same Realtek has another, more advanced solution aka ALC655, complying with AC97 2.3 spec and ensuring higher sound quality.

All in all, Soltek SL-86SPE-L doesn’t boast very rich features set. However, it definitely doesn’t determine our verdict about this product. Soltek positions this solution as a relatively inexpensive mainboard for overclockers. Thus, not so long ago Soltek’s marketing departments announced that this mainboard worked stably at 300MHz FSB. But we all know very well that the manufacturers often claim more than they can really implement. So, we are going to check the overclocking friendly options offered by Soltek SL-86SPE-L. But before that, let’s take a closer look at the PCB design.