Soltek NV400-L64: Purple, Practical, AND Performance!
by Wesley Fink on August 11, 2003 10:26 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Soltek NV400-L64: Tech Support and RMA
For your reference, we will repost our support evaluation procedure here:
The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first, we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we're not getting the staff on an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we've had with our motherboard. We allow the manufacturer up to 72 (business) hours to respond, and then we will report whether or not they responded within the time allotted, and if they were successful in fixing our problems. In case we don’t receive a response before the review is published, any future responses will be added to the review, including the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.
The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria upon which to base your motherboard purchasing decisions. As motherboards become more similar everyday, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we're interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews, so please do email us with your comments.
Soltek’s RMA policy could not be found by visiting their U.S. website at http://www.soltekusa.com. Soltek lists sales/support operations in Taiwan, Europe, and South America, but there are no listings for offices in the USA. We were told that all RMA requests should be directed toward the dealer who sold you the board. In the event of problems there, requests can be addressed to support@soltek.com.tw. The lack of an identifiable US presence from Soltek is of great concern, but in fairness to Soltek, our requests to their Taiwan headquarters were all answered promptly, and the Soltek staff was very helpful. FAQ’s, downloads, and product information are available at their main site. You will be linked to this main site if you visit www.soltekusa.com.
Technical Support is also available by email, which is listed under "Contacts" at the main site. Soltek's tech support response time was simply outstanding. Soltek Taiwan's response came in just 10 (clock) hours after our original email. The reply from the technical support representative was a sincere attempt to solve our problem, but the advice given showed a lack of technical experience by the support representative. While the advice given was one of the possible solutions to our problem, it would have been third or fourth on the list of suggested fixes by an experienced technician. This is our very first review of a Soltek product, so we do not want to judge the overall quality of Soltek Technical Support on one issue. Their incredibly fast response left a very positive impression of Soltek’s commitment to customer satisfaction. Had the response been more technically savvy in its recommendations, we would rate Soltek near perfect. We continue to be surprised at how good Technical Support can be from some of the smaller companies. The giants in the industry should be embarrassed at how poorly they often treat customers in comparison to responses similar to what we see from companies like Soltek.
Those who cannot find a local Soltek resource should send their Tech Support inquiries to the Taiwan main site. If our experience is any indication, we think you will be pleased at the responsiveness in your communications with Soltek.
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Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link
Hello All!!!I've been buying components last 6 months one at a time, and the Soltek Nv400L was my last purchace.
System Specs:
430 Watt Antec Power Supply
Athlon XP 2500 cpu
512 Corsair Xms c2pt memory-single stick
Ati 9500 pro 128 video card
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card
1 80 gig Western Digital 8meg cache hard drive
1 80 gig Maxtor 8meg cache hard drive
Liteon 522446s Cd writer
Liteon 165h Dvd rom
Philips Brilliance 107p monitor
Windows XP professional
I don' need serial ata, my special editions are plenty fast for the dollars spent, serial needs to mature also. I had a Kt3ultra2, with pc2100 Infineon 512 stick, and a XP2000.
I was concerned about this upgrade, I don't trust cheap boards. Had real bad time with a ECS pos last year.
Let me tell you, my system right now, is THE best bang for the buck. I am so impressed. All I needed was the lan, and it too kills my pci network card. This Soltek mobo should not be understated, to say the very, very least. I also like the fact of just having my one stick of corsair, ranther than having 2 dual sticks. If you need all the "features", pass on it. If you want amazing speed, ultra reliability, and great overclocking (Soltek has O/C bios at request, FULL ram tweaking), grab this board.
I can't believe something this cheap is so damn fast, reliable.............
Don't be fooled people. Ya, I have no bragging rights, but I have a great little purple mobo on crack, HIGHLY SUGGESTED.
THIS IS THE MOST UNDERATED MOBO ON THE MARKET RIGHT NOW. ABSOLUTELEY. You don't hear much about it cause Nvidia etc. etc. is not getting rich off it. Its a gem.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, August 27, 2003 - link
Can't see the benchmarks, too. Using Netscape7 on Linux.Anonymous User - Monday, August 25, 2003 - link
Uhh... Did something happened to the benchmark pics? (They are not showing up) Anyone else experiencing this? or Is my browser acting up?Maybe another ongoing article update perhaps?
Anonymous User - Wednesday, August 20, 2003 - link
To the author,PCI bus speed runs at a fixed frequency for nForce2. It isn't half of the AGP bus speed. Please use a IOSS RD2 Pro PC Geiger PCI Bus Multifunction Analyzer to verify.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - link
Jeff, stop posting, it's already known fact that Gigabyte's nForce2 U400 and other U400 motherboards perform exactly the same as Epox and ASUS's boards. Your argument request is useless, waste's Anandtech's time, and is getting old frankly.Anonymous User - Sunday, August 17, 2003 - link
I'm really surprised by the figures you guys obtained - I had an ASUS A7N8X-X (non-ultra) and it was crap! I could only get 8,000 in 3Dmark01, upon changing to the ASUS Ultra (deluxe) and keeping everything the same I got 13,500!!!!Also, my A7V8X-X was way faster (12,000 3DMark01) - Don't know why, maybe the A7N8X-X was not working correctly(?).
Jeff7181 - Sunday, August 17, 2003 - link
Again I ask... where the hell is the popular boards like the A7N8X Deluxe and 8RDA+?Anonymous User - Sunday, August 17, 2003 - link
is a7n8x-x anygood?Anonymous User - Saturday, August 16, 2003 - link
I am awaiting further testing on other nForce2 400/Ultra motherboard, e.g. chaintech 7njl3 or 7njl4 or gigabyte counterparts which are also very competitive in the market.wesley, hear my voice?!
Anonymous User - Saturday, August 16, 2003 - link
And one last question - is it not possible that the 'Auto' setting for memory speed actually runs the memory in sync with FSB? I just want to be sure.