Soltek QBIC EQ3801: nForce3 250Gb goes SFF
by Evan Lieb on July 4, 2004 10:35 AM EST- Posted in
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For years, Soltek flew by the radar of most enthusiasts, undetected and mostly unloved. In the last year or two, however, Soltek has enjoyed somewhat of an explosion in popularity in many niche enthusiast communities (similar to DFI, actually) due in large part to their great nForce2 motherboards. They had made a good name for themselves on the Intel side of things, but their engineering efforts simply honed in on enthusiasts at a time when those types of users were looking for highly tweakable, reliable, and well priced motherboards. Soltek happened to pick NVIDIA's nForce2 chipset and was hugely successful.It is fate then that, today, Soltek is at it again with NVIDIA's nForce; this time with a next generation Athlon socket and the next generation nForce at the helm. Soltek's nForce product this time is a Small Form Factor, not a desktop motherboard. Nonetheless, Soltek has definitely brought their experienced "tweaker's" touch to this SFF and it will undoubtedly pique the interests of more than a few serious users.
Read on to find out if Soltek can build on their successful nForce reign with their QBIC series of SFFs...
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Inferno - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
I was using clockgen not SoftFSBInferno - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
I have tested the system to 275 max HTT with SoftFSB. This unit also supports the Athlon 64 Mobile CPU's which is rare in a nForce 250GB system.Here is my post of some of my tests @ 275 with a X800 running stock speeds and overdrive off.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=10262635...
P.S. I would have just posted in Anandtech forums but for some reason my screen name is banned since the new forums when into place and no one will help me get it fixed.
Wesley Fink - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
I have corrected what I can in the graphs, but the problem appears to be our graphing engine, and not Evan's data. All of the information is there and has been reentered, bu the update that is going onto our website appears to be scrambling the graph generation.We apologize for the confusion. It will be fixed as soon as possible.
psiu - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
Pics of the case interior are all showing pic4, instead of 7,8,9 (I think).CrystalBay - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
Nice, Please keep the SFF reviews coming.DrumBum - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
is it possible to buy just the motherboard?artifex - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for doing a SFF review!I haven't even read past page 1 yet. But I have to stop and tell you how glad I am you're doing one. I really hope in the future this form factor might see increased coverage (say, for example, in the budget/midrange buyer's guides), but this is a good start. Now I don't have to rely solely on mini-itx.com and sfftech.com :)
p.s. I know this may not be the first one you've done, either. But I'm encouraging you now :)
jcromano - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
Hi,I enjoyed your article very much, but I'm a little confused about exactly what you get for the $270.
Am I to understand that for the $270, you get a case plus STF case fan, a motherboard, a power supply (with fan), assorted cables, and a carrying pack?
Am I also to understand that you get a CPU fan but no CPU?
And am I to understand there is space for a floppy drive, but that the floppy drive itself is not included?
Also, could you say a few words about the power supply that comes with it? That is, if a power supply is, in fact, included.
Thanks much,
Jim
jcromano - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
Pollock - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
"In general, system temperatures were low and no one component was too hot to the touch. This is an impressive feat, as SFFs are notoriously difficult to keep warm."I suspect you meant "as SFFs are notoriously difficult to keep cool."