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Spec
| Soltek SL-KT400A-L | |
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Northbridge |
VIA VT8377A KT400A |
| Southbridge |
VIA VT8235CE |
| PCI |
6 x 32-bit, 33MHz |
| Audio |
VIA VT1616 PHY from VT8235CE |
| Ethernet |
VIA VT6103 |
| IDE |
2 ports, 4 devices from VT8235CE, 1 port |
| Memory |
3GB DDR400, 3 slots |
| USB2.0 |
2 backplate |
| Firewire |
None |
| Serial ATA |
None |
| RAID |
None |
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Nothing much more than the bare KT400A spec here. Ethernet (yay!) from a VIA chip, 6-channel audio from a VIA chip, IDE from the VIA southbridge, USB from the VIA bridge. It's a VIA fest here, nothing silicon provided by any other manufacturer save maybe the BIOS chip.
That means no Serial ATA due to the VT8237 going awol with KT600, no RAID and no FireWire. If that's your bag, 6 PCI will see you right in terms of peripheral expansion so you can add those features yourself. I can't chastise Soltek for the feature set, their obviously hitting a price point here. Although you can't argue that it's more feature equipped than some other boards at the same price, since it isn't.
KT400A feature mediocrity however, for that price.
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Shot
Layout
Before we consider the layout, I'll get up on top of the high horse again and rabbit on about the colour scheme. Pleasing purple is how I'd describe it, but again I feel like wishing they'd stick to a common purple scheme over as much as possible. A pet peeve, but I can't complain, you might love it. Some of the ports, upon initially getting it out of the box, are covered in handy stickers so you know what's what, you can see some in the above picture.
Coiled things (I'm stumped if I know the correct technical term for those items) and mosfets flank an east-west rotated socket with no adjacent mounting holes for fat heatsinks. The DDR DIMM slots next, followed by the power circuitry for those slots over on the upper far right of the board.
The northbridge is passively cooled, a good thing, and the heatsink is a stylish silver affair and unobtrusive. We've got P4-style power requirements with this board, the regular ATX power connector present and correct, along with the 4-pin auxiliary connector that we've come to know and love on recent P4 motherboards. We'll assume it helps top end stability more than anything else.
The AGP slot marks the north-south divide. Without cutting and pasting, it's a 7 slot design meaning AGP cards possibly fouling on the memory slot tabs at the south end of the slots, making memory configuration a card removing hassle. No deal breaker however.
Moving south to the boards nether regions, we get a whiff of a clean layout with the southbridge standing to attention and the IDE and floppy ports lined up nicely, observing proceedings from the right hand edge of the PCB room. Do I get an award for most sexual innuendo in a single sentence in a hardware review for that?
And that, as they say, is that. Just one more page to talk about BB&M and then we are done covering board features, layouts and presentation.
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