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Soltek SL-75DRV4 Motherboard Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Saturday, February 09, 2002
System Selection and Testing
After installing the processor and hooking things up we are ready to move on to benchmarks.
Test System
Now on to the system as it was tested.
Athlon XP1700+ processor
ThermalTake Volcano 7 w/ 80mm thermally controlled fan
1x Corsair XMS2400 DDR300 256megs
Hercules Prophet III GeForce3 video card
Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 network card
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40GB ATA/100
Enermax 350watt power supply
24x CDRom (hey you need something to install an os
)
Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 2
Athlon XP1700+ processor
ThermalTake Volcano 7 w/ 80mm thermally controlled fan
1x Corsair XMS2400 DDR300 256megs
Hercules Prophet III GeForce3 video card
Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 network card
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40GB ATA/100
Enermax 350watt power supply
24x CDRom (hey you need something to install an os
)Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 2
General notes:
Warning: Reviewer rant ahead
I would not suggest spending money on the ThermalTake Volcano 7. This heatsink works great but in my opinion has quite a few serious flaws. First of all the Volcano is very heavy with most of the weight being targeted towards the top. Second, and more important, the total weight of the heatsink wouldn't be so bad if the retention system wasn't limited to using just one of the CPU socket tabs. I found that the Volcano would easily rock back and forth on the spongy processor tabs. A better solution would be, to either use all three tabs and a wider spring clip or mount the heatsink directly to the motherboard. Lastly 80mm fans are great but only if they move enough air to actually cool the heatsink. Granted having a thermally controlled fan does great things for keeping the noise level down but really should the fan spin faster when the case gets hot? or when the processor gets hot? If you plan to get a heatsink that uses an 80mm fan spend the extra bux on one that mounts to the motherboard.
I would not suggest spending money on the ThermalTake Volcano 7. This heatsink works great but in my opinion has quite a few serious flaws. First of all the Volcano is very heavy with most of the weight being targeted towards the top. Second, and more important, the total weight of the heatsink wouldn't be so bad if the retention system wasn't limited to using just one of the CPU socket tabs. I found that the Volcano would easily rock back and forth on the spongy processor tabs. A better solution would be, to either use all three tabs and a wider spring clip or mount the heatsink directly to the motherboard. Lastly 80mm fans are great but only if they move enough air to actually cool the heatsink. Granted having a thermally controlled fan does great things for keeping the noise level down but really should the fan spin faster when the case gets hot? or when the processor gets hot? If you plan to get a heatsink that uses an 80mm fan spend the extra bux on one that mounts to the motherboard.
