Soltek SL-86SPE-L 865PE Motherboard

Company: Soltek
Product: SL-86SPE-L
Street Price: Unavailable
Date Reviewed: May 27, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

Bundled Features:

There are not many extra bundled features with the Soltek SL-86SPE-L. Included with the package are the basic bundled features like manuals, driver and utility CDs, IDE cable, and floppy cable. Two Serial ATA cables are provided but no power adapters for the Serial ATA drives like the IC7-G, 9CJS, and 8PE800 Ultra all have. No additional USB ports or audio jacks are present. This is a very stripped package. Since the motherboard only has two USB ports on its I/O configuration and the chipset supports up to eight, Soltek could have added a least a few more USB ports. Many devices are using USB such as hard drives, digital cameras, keyboards, mice, and 6-in-1 card readers. It is safe to say that most enthusiasts have over two USB devices and will be very disappointed that no more ports are provided.

Board Layout:

The motherboard layout is good with only a few common mistakes seen on most motherboards. The 20-pin ATX connector is at top right of the motherboard. This is a very good placement since it keeps the cable out of the way of almost all the components on the mainboard. IDE connectors are directly below the ATX connector. They are placed high enough on the motherboard so that the drive cables can reach the ports, even in full tower cases. Also there are a total of six PCI slots while some recent mainboards only provide five.

The AGP slot on this board is close to the DIMM slots. If you wanted to remove the memory, the video card would have to be removed as well. Our Radeon 9700 Pro is a fairly short card and did not reach all the way to the DIMM slots, but a longer card, such as the GeForce FX5900, would cover up most of the slots. This can be incredibly irritating for the enthusiast who takes out memory all the time or does a lot of testing. We will consider this a minor flaw since many other manufacturers make the same mistake.

Like most motherboards we have reviewed of the 875P and 865PE chipsets, Soltek has also decided to go with an active cooling solution for the Northbridge. The extra cooling might help in overclocking and also prolong the life of the chip. When we removed the cooler, we found a thermal pad being used to help the transfer of heat from the chip to the heat sink. A higher quality heat sink compound could have been used, but is not that cost efficient since it would only really benefit overclockers who want every extra MHz.

The Serial ATA connections are just to the lower right side of the ICH5. The floppy connector is right above these. The CMOS jumper is sandwiched between these connections and also uses the shorter jumper. This is somewhat a poor design since the jumper is not easily accessible. With Serial ATA cables plugged into the ports and the floppy plugged in too, the jumper will be very hard to access. This may not affect the average user who doesn't not reset the BIOS but will affect overclockers who constantly have to reset (due to unstable overclocking parameters).

Soltek marked the proper pins for the cases front panel connections. This makes connecting all the cases buttons and LEDs much easier than having to refer to the manual. The correct pins are clearly marked in nice big letters, which are clearly visible.

There are three sets of USB headers that show that the SL-86SPE-L will support six more USB devices but an extra bracket must be used. Also there are pins for adding the other bracket available for full 6-channel audio. It would have been nice, if all this was included in the bundle.