In House Review - Soltek SL-75FRN-L nForce2 Motherboard

by **Ian** on Wed Mar 05, 2003 10:04 am

For a change of pace, CDRLabs has taken a look at Soltek's new nForce2 motherboard, the SL-75FRN-L. Part of Soltek's "Golden Flame" family of motherboards, the SL-75FRN-L is aimed at the consumer on a budget. In this review we take a look at some of the features found on the SL-75FRN-L and then see how it performs. Is Soltek's new "Golden Flame" the best bang for your buck? You'll have to read the review to find out.

Soltek SL-75FRN-L nForce2 Motherboard

Don't worry. We're not changing formats here. However, I will say that it is nice to take a break from CD and DVD writers and write about something else every once and awhile.

by **Bhairav** on Wed Mar 05, 2003 12:32 pm

Nice review Ian! Are you planning on buying this motherboard for your own PC? Also, I think Soltek are launching a version of this motherboard with the MCP-T onboard, so Dolby Digital.. here we come

I too own a Soltek (the SL-75 DRV2) and it is a fast,stable motherboard. Not many extras like RAID and/or 6 channel sound, but hey, what is an Audigy for ? :wink:

by **Ian** on Wed Mar 05, 2003 2:08 pm

I know they have a couple with NVIDIA's IGP, but I haven't heard anything from them about the MCP-T. When I talk to Soltek, I'll ask.

by **BuddhaTB** on Wed Mar 05, 2003 2:12 pm

Ian, you plan on reviewing more motherboards in the future? Maybe reviews of some other hardware like video cards, hard driues, and etc.

by **BuddhaTB** on Wed Mar 05, 2003 2:55 pm

I was just looking through [H]ardOCP and I saw this on their news page.

[H]ardOCP wrote:Golden Flamer:
I think the guys over at CDRLabs have grown a bit tired of reviewing CDRs...and I can totally understand that. They are reviewing a mainboard from Soltek. I hope we see them bring the quality of work we are used to from this to their new genre'. Good luck guys!

"With all of these options, overclocking with the SL-75FRN-L was a breeze. I was already running my Athlon XP 1700+ at 8.5x166MHz, so started from there. I set the core voltage to 1.55V and started increasing the FSB by 5MHz at a time, waiting for the SL-75FRN-L to fail to post. Surprisingly, that didn't happen. In the end I was able to reach an FSB of 200MHz, the maximum frequency available on the SL-75FRN-L."

by **Ian** on Wed Mar 05, 2003 3:08 pm

BuddhaTB wrote:Ian, you plan on reviewing more motherboards in the future? Maybe reviews of some other hardware like video cards, hard driues, and etc.

I'd definitely like to. Of course, it depends on time. With the mountain of CD and DVD writers staring at me, waiting to get reviewed, I don't get a lot of time. However, Derek is helping out and has a pretty slick article/review in the works.

by **BoGMan1a** on Thu Mar 06, 2003 2:09 am

Great job! And, very useful as I am trying to set-up my first build-it-yourself system at the moment. I actually looked at that board on the Newegg site ($94) and gave it some serious consideration until I talked myself into the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe so that I could enjoy all the goodies that the Nforce2 had to offer. :lol:

by **Needhelp** on Thu Mar 06, 2003 11:46 am

I'm looking for the -RL version since -L has been released for quite sometime.
It is weird i can't seem to find any -RL version.I hope it will be available in malaysia soon.

by **LPMiller** on Thu Mar 06, 2003 12:20 pm

Very nice job, Ian!

by **dodecahedron** on Sat Mar 08, 2003 10:19 am

Ian, are you thinking of upgrading the motherboard of the testbed computer?

by **Ian** on Sat Mar 08, 2003 1:16 pm

dodecahedron wrote:Ian, are you thinking of upgrading the motherboard of the testbed computer?

Yeah, I have a new test bed here already. I just haven't found a good time to switch over yet.

by **Dartman** on Sat Mar 08, 2003 1:43 pm

One of my first old Pentium boards was a Soltek. They didn't even have any bios updates for it or anything it was so new then. It worked fine, was fairly fast, and had good features for the money at the time, probably about 95. They sent me a bios upgrade right away when I asked them about one.
It wouldn't do the newer dual voltage Pentiums coming out at the time so I replaced it with a Abit IT5H which is still going somewhere I'm sure.
That Abit was really nice

by **dodecahedron** on Sat Mar 08, 2003 1:59 pm

Ian wrote:
dodecahedron wrote:Ian, are you thinking of upgrading the motherboard of the testbed computer?

Yeah, I have a new test bed here already. I just haven't found a good time to switch over yet.

Cool!
what's in it?

by **Ian** on Sat Mar 08, 2003 2:24 pm

Trying to remember...

AMD XP 1700+
AOpen AK77-333
256MB PNY PC2100 DDR
GeForce 2

I'm still thinking of replacing the GeForce 2 with a GeForce 4 with video capture capabilities.

by **Ian** on Sat Mar 08, 2003 2:29 pm

Oh yeah.. finally going to Windows XP too.

by **dodecahedron** on Sat Mar 08, 2003 3:33 pm

sounds nice...

i see you're sticking with AOpen for mobo.
i'm really rusty on hardware...haven't visited AT for ages...

by **Ian** on Sun Mar 09, 2003 2:24 pm

The AOpen boards aren't the most overclocking friendly.. but thats not an issue here. They're stable and I got a good deal on this board. Not to mention, it has onboard USB 2.0.

by **dodecahedron** on Sun Mar 09, 2003 2:34 pm

doesn't it have onboard FireWire too?
i seem to remember that that was a consideration when choosing the AOpen board in the current testbed.

gotta test those FireWire drives...

by **Derek** on Thu Mar 13, 2003 7:48 pm

The Soltek board was pretty neat from what I saw. My only question was the lack of Soundstorm APU and lack of Firewire. With those it would've made a really nice board. I'm helping a buddy build a system and I think he's going to go with an Nforce2 board. Slick stuff.

Derek

Oh, and yeah, my upcoming stuff is going to be pretty neat..

In House Review - Soltek SL-75FRN-L nForce2 Motherboard

In House Review - Soltek SL-75FRN-L nForce2 Motherboard

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