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Soltek SL-85ERV Motherboard Review

Author: Dennis Garcia

Published: Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Additional Features.

Additional Features

The SL-85ERV has support for 6 USB ports, AC'97 6-channel audio and even a Smartcard reader but only if you buy the connectors separately. Soltek even removed the once included thermal probe. I can let the thermal probe and audio connectors slide since I always use a third party solution for sound but the extra USB ports would have been a very welcome addition.

The manual states "To insert a 3.3V AGP 2X card into the AGP 4X slot will damage the system chip and burn the 1.5V circuitry." Of course nothing is to stop you from using one of these cards. Though I imagine the system will try to boot and later smoke both the board and video card if you do. This is a far cry from the Intel i845D solution that will keep the system from booting if an improper AGP card is installed.

and no I don't plan to test my theory

As you can see VIA is still including ATA 133 support in their Southbridge chips despite the nominal performance gains.

As always ATX V2.03 power supplies are strongly recommended but in the event that you are running less than 2GHz and don't have the 4-pin power plug you can use a regular Molex power connector in its place.