BIOS
It's now not enough to produce a fully-features mini barebones unit. Users, it seems, now require a BIOS that's robust enough to allow for a modicum of manipulation. Tweakability is the name of the game.
Soltek employs a personalised Phoenix AwardBIOS. The first section we usually jump to is the voltage/ CPU control subscreen. Why change an old habit ?.
Multiplier selection was available on a Barton XP2500+ CPU, that is, the motherboard applied the multipliers just fine CPU voltage ranged for a low 1.1v to a generous 1.85v. DDR voltage, as you can see, topped out at 2.8v and chipset voltage saw a healthy 1.8v. If one didn't have prior knowledge that this wasn't a regular ATX motherboard, it would be impossible to guess it from this subscreen. Voltage levels were decent, too. Setting 1.75v CPU resulted in a BIOS load of 1.72v and a preset 2.8v DDR voltage returned around 2.76v, according the monitoring section.
We're fans of running with tight latencies. Soltek allows us to use our favoured 2-6-2-2 timings at DDR333 speeds. The board is ratified for use with DDR333 CPUs and memory. It appears as if applies synchronous memory speeds when set to aggressive mode. FSB frequency selection tops out at an ambitious 250MHz. The Soltek cube can be run with either an AGP card, PCI card or with on-board GeForce4 MX graphics. The framebuffer size, assuming on-board graphics are to be used, dictates just how much system memory is allocated to the graphics' function. It's a fixed allocation, unlike Intel's Extreme 2 graphics. Selections of up to 128MB are available, and the memory is permanently allocated to the GPU unless manually changed from within BIOS. The GeForce4 MX is a reasonably capable GPU in on-board terms, and the nForce2 architecture should provide it with a decent level of bandwidth. It'll be interesting to see how it benchmarks against the mighty ATi Radeon 9800 PRO.
Features, features and more features. The level of integration afforded by the MCP-T is impressive. Soltek made a good choice in using NVIDIA's chipset.
Soltek probably envisions that the SL-B7A-F will be used for a multitude of uses, from networked storage, desktop replacement to multimedia hub. That's why it's imperative to keep noise levels down to a minimum. Fan speed control, which applied the the CPU's alone, can be set to predefined levels of silent, low and full speed, with each setting operating at around 2,000RPM, 2,500RPM and 3,500RPM respectively. The ~ 1500RPM speed is the IcyQ's fan speed. It certainly does help matters. Once switched off, the CPU's temperature rose by another 6 - 7c. It's thoughtful of Soltek to introduce a shutdown temperature, although the lowest limit was 75c.
A decent BIOS. Strong on voltages and voltage lines. It contains just the right balance between manipulation and stability settings.
