The second participant of our cubic SFF PCs test session appeared Soltek platform. In fact, Soltek used the same design concept from Shuttle, but they modified the cooling solution, made a few changes to the external appearance of the system and used a mainboard with somewhat different features set. However, in general the specification of Soltek EQ2000M is hardly very much different from Shuttle SB51G. Take a look:

• Supports Socket478 Intel Pentium 4 and Intel Celeron processors with 533MHz and 400MHz system bus;
• Supports Hyper-Threading technology;
• i845GE ñchipset with ICH4 South Bridge;
• 2 DDR DIMM slots supporting up to 2GB DDR200/DDR266/DDR333 SDRAM;
• AGP 4x slot and 1 PCI slot;
• Integrated graphics core: 256-bit Intel Extreme Graphics;
• 6-channel AC97 sound codec: Realtek ALC 650 with SPDIF In and Out support;
• Integrated IEEE1394 controller: Agere FW323-05;
• One 3.5" internal bay for ATA/100 hard disk drive, one 3.5" external bay for a standard 1.44MB floppy disk drive, one 5.25" external bay for an external ATA/100 optical drive;
• Integrated 10/100Mbit Ethernet controller: Realtek 8100B;
• 200W power supply unit from Achme;
• Six USB 2.0 ports (two on the front panel and four on the back panel of the case);
• Three IEEE1394 ports (all on the front panel);
• Dimensions: 215mm (length) x 188mm (height) x 295mm (depth).

Soltek EQ2000M system, like Shuttle SB51G, is based on i845GE chipset and is designed for Intel Pentium 4 and Celeron processors with 400MHz and 533MHz bus and Hyper-Threading technology (or without it). The differences in the specs of these two systems are the bigger number of USB 2.0 ports and a different IEEE1394 controller by Soltek EQ2000M. However, these were just the specs, and in reality these are far not the only differences between the system from Soltek and the system from Shuttle discussed above.

You can see the Soltek EQ2000M looks not quite like Shuttle SB51G, and boasts a completely different front panel. Soltek designers proved outstandingly resourceful and made a mirror front panel for their system. We should say that it does look very nice, and is very likely to become a hit among women-users, who never miss a chance of checking their looks (guess what they usually use the rear-view mirror of their car for?). At the same time, however, you should keep in mind that fingerprints and dust are very visible on any mirror surface that is why the owners of Soltek EQ2000M will have to  acquire a new handy habit of cleaning there system every now and then. As for the entire case of the system, it is also made of anodized aluminum, just like the system from Shuttle. Although we have to admit that the SFF case from Soltek looks not very neat. The top of the Shuttle system is polished-off very thoroughly, while the upper part of the Soltek EQ2000M case still bears the traces of the milling machine.

We should also point out that the bundle of Soltek EQ2000M is a bit smaller than that of Shuttle barebone system. The Soltek EQ2000M barebone solution includes a SFF case with the power supply unit and a mainboard. The processor cooling solution is not included: Soltek suggests using regular coolers here, such as the ones bundled with the CPUs, for instance. Also Soltek EQ2000M doesn’t include any drives, which means that you will have to buy a CPU, a cooler, memory, a hard disk drive, an optical drive and maybe also an external graphics card and a floppy drive.

The front panel of Soltek EQ2000M carries two LEDs indicating the power and HDD addressing, as well as a few ports. Among the ports available on the very front are: SPDIF In and Out, a Mic and headset jacks, two USB 2.0 ports and three IEEE1394 ports. To tell the truth, I doubt that you really need three IEE1394 ports on the front panel, and I would prefer to have some extra USB 2.0 ports instead.

There are not so many ports on the rear panel of Soltek EQ2000M. besides the usual PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, there are three audio connectors, two serial ports, D-Sub Out for the monitor, 4 USB 2.0 ports and a connector for 10/100Mbit Ethernet. Just like Shuttle, Soltek laid out no parallel port, although there is a special spot for this port on the system case. By the way, I think it could be even better if they also had a DVI-Out for the monitor.