Soltek Qbic SL-3901a K8T800Pro 939 Cube Review - PAGE 1

Soltek 3901A SFF Review

Another month, another Soltek SFF review. Actually, it's been at least two months since we've had our last Soltek SFF review. But it seems so recent...

Users are demanding so much more from SFFs these days. With so many choices available, what could you get? Luckily, due to competition, you are capable of purchasing anywhere from cheap Dell box-wannabe low-end cases (no offence to Dell), all the way up to the latest technology (give or take a few months). In our case, we'll only be looking at the newest and the greatest as of press time, so here we are.

The current generation of QBics, at least aesthetically, are still identical to the previous ones. Perhaps the only real difference (read: the ONLY difference) is in the motherboard. Since the first generation, there has been practically no change in the Soltek design. While it has that industrial look about it, I would look kindly on a case redesign.

In any case, we all know that newer SFFs pull close to their desktop equivalents. The only questions are how close is the performance and how good the system is in other areas. Today we have the Soltek 3901a, which is the newest SFF based on AMD's Socket 939 and Via's K8T800 Pro chipset. This new chipset (in addition to the new socket) brings dual channel memory performance to the Athlon 64. Of course, AMD downclocked all their Socket 939 CPUs at the same performance rating number, so we'll have to see if it actually makes any difference.