The first impression I had of
this motherboard was that it has everything you could possibly need
or want. Soltek specifies SP/DIF in and out ports on this board but
I didn't see any RCA jacks that are commonly used for the SP/DIF
connection. Upon closer research it turns out that they are using
optical connections. This should be nice for those of you familiar
with the program Sonar, since the AMD FPU really works well with
making your own tunes.
Another thing that I liked
about this board is that Soltek sought to include every cable that
you can possibly need. There is no cable shortage! Although not a
big deal for some its just the notion of giving a crap about us that
I like. On top of that Soltek also cared enough about esthetics, and
the K8TPro is a real looker, and quite possibly one of the only 939
boards out right now that is geared for the case modder.
The board layout of the Soltek is nothing
short of incredible. Lots of room around the CPU socket, AGP and
memory slots, and the ATX PSU header is in the far upper portion of
the board. I do have to grip a little about the Promise RAID since
one of the ports is not even close to the other headers, its offset
on the board by the #3 IDE header.
The Soltek board box is a looker too. You
gotta hand it to their marketing dept. since they obviously know how
to cater to the PC Hardware enthusiast with a purple board, and
attractive board box.
Time to read now about the features of this
motherboard. That would kill some time now wouldn't it.
The back of the board reveals the A64
required backing plate. Soltek was nice enough to attach for us.
Notice the transistors on the board. Last time I saw that, it was
one of the best motherboards ever made, the Epox 8k7a. Not that that
kind of thing really means anything, but transistors get quite hot
so I don't have a problem mounting them somewhere else away from the
heat of the other components on the board.
Soltek has no problem giving you a lot for
not a lot. Utilities, Drivers, Freebies galore are part of the
software package. I liked the neat little cardboard card that states
the name of the reseller and contact information, and the date the
warranty of the board takes into effect. The Promise RAID floppy
disk was excluded from the picture since we accidentally left it in
the floppy drive. Whoops! ;)
Got cable?
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