After careful consideration I have decided to transfer all hardware review activities to a new domain. I purchased Hardwareasylum.com in 2012 and have been working hard to build a new and improved Ninjalane on that domain. If you are reading this you have reached one of the archived articles, news, projects and/or reviews that were left behind during the site migration.
Please update your bookmarks and be sure to visit the new and improved Ninjalane at Hardwareasylum.com
Soltek SL-K8AN-RL 'Black Thunder' Motherboard Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Board Layout and Features Cont.
The power supply is a standard 3-phase design that uses quite a few capacitors; The 4 pin power connector is located towards the top of the motherboard and almost completely avoids crossing over the heatsink.
M.O.M. is what Soltek calls their onboard hardware monitoring, this is not much different from what you find displayed in the BIOS with the addition of a piece of software that enables you to view this information in Windows.
6-channel onboard audio is made possible with this Realtek audio processor. The sound is using the AC'97 codec so quality will be middle of the road but is better than nothing. The ATX connector has a standard layout with 4 USB ports and enough audio jacks for 2-channel sound. The SL-K8AN-RL uses the Ethernet controller found in the nForce3 chipset, the controller is only 10/100 but works quite well.
The Soltek SL-K8AN-RL is a higher end board though since the onboard features don't demand a ton of extra items you won't find them in the box. I do applaud Soltek for including enough cables to get any system up and running and really all anyone should need.
