Soltek K8TPro-939: Moving A64 to 939
by Wesley Fink on October 28, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Board Layout: Soltek K8TPro-939
Recent Soltek Pro boards have sported black and purple as their color scheme. The K8TPro-939 continues that design with a black board, purple slots, and coordinating purple cables.
The basic layout of the Soltek is excellent, better than most recent 939 boards that we have evaluated.
The ATX 20-pin and the 4-pin 12V connector are in near ideal locations on the K8TPro-939. The bulky 20-pin ATX is located on the preferred top right edge of the motherboard. This location on the board edge rarely interferes with processor air flow. The 4-pin 12V is also best on the upper right edge, but on the Soltek, the 4-pin power connector is placed between the CPU and IO ports. While this cable is smaller, it still needs to be routed past the CPU with care. This is not a great location for the 12V, but we had no real issues in our case setup. A better location would have been the top board edge or upper right board edge. Soltek did get the bulky 20-pin out of the way and that is more than what many designs do.
The CPU socket is in the top center of the board. PCI slots are below the socket and memory is to the right of the CPU. There is plenty of room around the Socket 939, so most Heatsink/Fans should work fine. The only possible problem is the tall capacitors that line the left edge of the socket, which may interfere with large spread HSF designs.
The IDE connectors are in our preferred right edge of the motherboard, but they are below mid-line where they may be a reach in a full tower case design. Most case designs will have no issue with this location, however. The four SATA connectors are in the same area and they should be an easy set up. The only potential problem with the SATA location is that the long PCU cards in PCI slot 3 may be a tight fit with SATA drives connected.
The floppy connector is the only glaring fault in an otherwise decent layout. The location at the bottom right edge of the motherboard is terrible, and is a very long reach in most any case. In a full tower case, you will have to find a super long floppy cable to reach this location. Since many users no longer even use a floppy drive, this won't matter to them, but if a floppy drive is still part of your build, this location will be a challenge in some cases.
The Soltek arrangement for the AGP and 5 PCI slots is pretty standard. With most users skipping over the slot next to the VGA card for better cooling, this leaves 4 usable PCI slots. With a standard-width video card, you could use slot 5 in a pinch.
The option headers are mostly lined up at the bottom of the board edge, an out-of-the-way location. The audio connectors are an exception, located in the middle of the PCI slots. If you still use or need audio cables, you will have to be careful routing them in this busy area. A better location would have been above the PCI slots.
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manno - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
Son of a $@#!Any way what the heck is up with the Halo #'s? Is this so shady under the table stuff between MS, or Bungie, and nvidia? If so that sucks, and I hope that we don't see anymore of it in the future. Any info on that?
-manno
manno - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
bob661 - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
> In fact the majority of PC users are not> overclockers.
Very true. And the majority of PC users have no idea who Anand is. Online reviews are mostly read by PC users in the know or those that want to be in the know. The average PC user has no clue about these review websites and heads down Best Buy when it's time to purchase a new computer.
PrinceGaz - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
Last page, second paragraph- "With 2.6GHz as a target, it is easy to see that we would need a 289 setting for the 3500+,"...That should be 3000+. The rest of that sentence is correct.
Myrandex - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
typo: We suspect that the answer has to do with the cist difference between the VIA and Realtek solutionsAlso, on the first page a picture doesn't load.
Omega215D - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
I know I posted this before but why is there no news on the Elitegroup's Dual PCIe (for graphics) with an AGP Express port on the bottom? This should appeal to those into "future-proofing" by including both old and new. Of course it'll be on a 915 chipset.....Boonesmi - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
hopefully they will have quick bios update that fixes the agp/pci lock (i dont really care about 4 dimms)... if they get it fixed quick it will probably be my next board :)newegg has an eta of 11/8/2004 which is about when ill be buying, so make sure you update this review if the agp/pci lock gets fixed
Beenthere - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
While a BIOS upgrade will likely fix the AGP lock and (4) DIMM 2T issues, I doubt either is a BIG issue for most PC users. Yes overclockers may have an issue with the AGP lock and no doubt it will be corrected, but not everyone is an overcloker. In fact the majority of PC users are not overclockers. It's OK to point out the AGP lock and (4) DIMM issues for those who care, but it ain't worth getting an ulcer over. From the review it sounds like these are life or death features, which they are not.In regards to PCI-e Mobo reviews, the results are going to mirror AGP Mobos as the nF4 chipset is just an nF3 with PCI-e instead of AGP graphics. The only PCI-e Mobos that will show any major difference from a similar nF3 or K8T800 PRO Mobo are the SLI dual graphics card versions. If you're looking for one of these you better have real deep pockets and be willing to wait awhile.
MDE - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
Why do you guys keep whining about floppy port location? Honestly I think the bottom of the board is a pretty good location, especially since I almost never use a floppy drive (just for RAID drivers). It's easy to get at when you do need a floppy drive plugged in and doesn't interfere with anything else, helping to avoid the tangle of cables around the right side of the board that's so common with "properly" laid out boards.Gnoad - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
Alot of us still want AGP. I'm sick and tired of mobos being manufactured without the most important part functional: the agp lock. Nforce3 150 pissed me off, and we have it here again. I really don't want to use the k8n neo, so this is a big dissapointment to me.