Anyone heard of Soltek

herd of them but my opinion on them is that they are cheap. cheaply made to sell for less money but with that you get lesser quality. but thats my opinion i think they are cheap and like ecs
 
I had an old like 233MHz board, didnt seem to bad but that was WAYY back. I would go for asus or something.
 
I have used nothing but Soltek boards for several years now. They are the most reliable boards I've ever used. Prior to Soltek I tried several ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte boards and had issues with all. If you want dependability, go with Soltek. They also have some of the best (if not THE best) tech support around.

I am running the very board you linked to and am completely satisfied with it.

Here's a link to a site where we have a representative from Soltek being an active member of the forum.

Check it out. and grab that mobo... it's good.
 
yeah its pretty inferior to the other major brands, but if u just need it to use the net, and lower end things its fine, my friend had a soltek in egypt
 
To the best of my knowledge, Soltek are pretty good. That's all I can say about them really!
 
I have a soltek mobo at the moment on one of my pc's, had no trouble with it either. Soltek also get good reviews from what I have read at on other sites.
 
dreamliner77 said:
I know they make good vacuum tubes...
I wonder if they still have some 6l6's for my old sound city and my old marshall 200

hmmm

I also have an old tube mcntoch (when mac meant amplifier)
 
perris,

I'd kill for that Mac. Funny thing, I have an old Sound City 200w bass head with 2x15 cab and the thing chews thru tubes like you wouldn't believe.
 
Highjack:
Are the tubes in the pre-amp or power section?

For either location check the filament voltage, typically 6.3V. If it's too high the filaments will erode prematurely. Indicator will be tube no longer glows.

If the tubes in the power amp are going out the plate current may be set too high causing plate damage. The tubes will still glow but distort or not pass sound signal.

You should be able to adjust the plate current. The filament voltage may be directly off the transformer in which case adjusting it is not easy.
 
Back to the thread...

Soltek is just one more far east board maker. You either get a good board or a flaky one from them.

The differences from say ASUS or MSI is the features on the board, the warantee/support and how well they bother to test before shipping.

So, check the features, warantee, support web site and decide. I've been buying crap boards the last 2 years because the "good brands" screwed me over just as much, cost more money and go out of date jsut as fast.

Some failure history:
Gigabyte KT333 - undersized header on cmos reset let the jumper fall off when system was moved. Wiped the bios.
MSI - cheap plastic cpu socket clips sheared, hsf fell off, MB & CPU went up in flames.
ECS K266 - sound was flaky to start, finally died. Rest still runs.
ECS NF2- died after 2 days of normal operaiton. No boot.
ECS NF2- MB voltage and temp monitors do not work, but OC's great.
Chaintek KT600 - nothing yet.
SOYO K6 - best MB I ever had, 7 years old and still working.
PCchips - 2 different boards working fine.
Several others have had no problems over 2-4 years.

Bottom line. It's a crap shoot so buy the cheapest and cross your fingers. Except ECS has been consistently disappointing.
 
yeah i think i'll avoid ecs for sure, i love gigabyte and trust them completely, just wanted to look at something else, is DFS or SOYO good mobo makers then?
 
back to the highjack

Highjack:
Are the tubes in the pre-amp or power section?

For either location check the filament voltage, typically 6.3V. If it's too high the filaments will erode prematurely. Indicator will be tube no longer glows.

If the tubes in the power amp are going out the plate current may be set too high causing plate damage. The tubes will still glow but distort or not pass sound signal.

You should be able to adjust the plate current. The filament voltage may be directly off the transformer in which case adjusting it is not easy.

these are power with tubes in pre amp and power amp sections...no cooling device either...heat sinks came later also

mostly, if you were a guitarist, you didn't want the tubes brand new, you wanted them a little fried

I always liked the sound of new matched tubes, and I really never understood that "dirty" sound most guitarists went for

the "fuzz box" didn't get the same dirty sound as some fried tubes in one of these amplifiers

for instruments, I've had fender amps, marshall amps, gracen amps (the worst) custom amp, ( I think this is the first solid state amp for guitar)

the best of any of these was a tiny little amplifier in a wood box...the boogie amp...it cost a fortune back then, but it smoked anything I ever had or heard

that aside, my favorite amp was that sound city

the tone control was so pure, if you turned the bass mid and treble to zero, there was no sound

you guys ever see an old sound city or boogie amp, even if they don't work, pay any price for them and fix em up

gonna start a new thread
 
Last edited:
Not sure about DFS, me and my net buddies have never seen one.

Soyo was always good to me. I don't see them very much anymore so I haven't bought one in ages. I'd rank Soyo on the high end of the economy (cheap) MBs.
 
well whats a good high end mobo for an amd, and if i bought one, what could i expect from it that i wouldn't get from a cheaper one?
 
A higher price...

As I said above, the package bundle and bios features are the only add ons for the price:
-Improved overclocking features.
-Maybe better test before shipping (I get a lot of ECS with features that don't work)
-Maybe better quality sockets (but gigabyte and MSI sockets were bad to me).
-Possibly no questions asked warantee work (read the details for the MB)
-Better free antivirus and utilities.

MSI seems to be highly liked for their AMD 64 MBs these days. Good overclocking.
ASUS seems to get less cheers on their new stuff lately.
Gigabyte has a nice price/feature trade off.

HEADS UP. The new ATI dual slot video solution (crossfire) requires an ATI chipset MB. Consider that before you buy. Check out the thread under graphics.

I've been on a "buy the cheap stuff kick" for 2 years sicen getting screwed by Gigabyte and MSI but am thinking about swinging back to the premium boards. I've been hamstrung trying to overclock the ECS and Chaintech stuff. It does not allow voltage adjust or individual adjust of RAM/FSB/AGP/etc.
 
I don't want to overclock a thing, prefer to have faster stuff in the first place. I'll look into that dual slot thing, no idea what it is at this stage.
 
soltek was formed when a number of people left soyo and started on their own
 
i think i'm going to wait for the ati board and get two x800 xl's, anyone know when they are coming out for the crossfire. its looks awesome.
 

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