In January of 2003, Soltek introduced their first SFF systems into the US market. They were unique, being the first small form factor boxes to feature dual 5.25” bays, but were a little large and bulky compared to the more refined Shuttle XPC. With over a year?s head start, Shuttle seemed to have established themselves as the market leader.

Enter Soltek?s latest generation of SFF systems. The playing field is starting to shift, and competition is leading to innovation. Today we?ll be taking an in-depth look at what is arguably the quietest SFF ever tested in our lab, the Soltek 3401M. Achieving this record, you?d expect to have to compromise in terms of performance. Not the case with the 3401M. This system also overclocked to the highest FSB of any Springdale or Canterwood based SFF system we?ve ever tested. Of course, all this glory has to come at some cost, right? We?ll find out more later during benchmarking?

In the meantime, let?s begin with an overview of the system. The Soltek 3401M features the Intel Springdale i865G chipset, with integrated Intel Extreme 2 Graphics. Soltek has managed to fit dual channel Serial-ATA, dual channel DDR, as well as the somewhat standard compliment of on-board 5.1 audio and 10/100 Ethernet into the 3401M. What isn?t standard is the whopping 250W power supply and the dual 5.25” drive bays, plus a slick mirrored front faceplate with integrated drive covers? all within the confines of a case that just feels like it should be bigger, but somehow manages to fit everything into a form factor only slightly larger than the typical Shuttle XPC.

How?d they do that exactly? We?ll take a closer look shortly. First, let?s visit the overall system specifications:

Processor	Intel Pentium 4 / Celeron 478-pin 533/800MHz FSB
Chipset	Intel i865G + ICH5
Memory	2 x 184 pin DDR SDRAM up to 2GB at PC3200
Audio	Realtek ALC650 AC?97 5.1 Channel Audio Controller
LAN	Realtek 8100B 10/100 Fast Ethernet
PSU	Enhance 250W 110/230V AC
Dimensions:	215mm(L) x 330mm(W) x 210mm(H)
Parallel ATA	Two UDMA-100 Dual Channel PATA Ports
Serial ATA	Two UDMA-150 SATA Ports
On-Board Video	Intel Extreme Graphics 2
PCI	1 x 33MHz
AGP	1 x AGP 4X/8X
Other Internal Headers	1 x Floppy Disk 3 x Fan 1 x CD-In 1 x Parallel Port 1 x IrDA

Soltek’s own specifications page can be found here

Front Panel Connections

2 x USB 2.0 1 x Firewire 1394a (6-Pin) 1 x Mic In 1 x Headphone Out 1 x SPDIF In/Out 1 x Power Button/LED 1 x Reset Button 1 x IDE Activity LED

Rear Panel Connections

4 x USB 2.0 1 x PS/2 Mouse 1 x PS/2 Keyboard 1 x Audio Front Out 1 x Audio Rear Out 1 x Audio Center/Bass Out 1 x RJ45 LAN 2 x Serial (9-Pin) 2 x Firewire 1394a (6-Pin) 1 x VGA (15-Pin) 1 x PCI Slot 1 x AGP Slot

Soltek has included the standard line up of accessories, including dual Serial-ATA cables and a snazzy carrying case. You?ll also find a full compliment of software utilities included with the system, which we?ll touch more on later in the review.

Confused by all the various flavors of the EQ-3401M out there? The Soltek EQ-3401A, EQ-3401W, and EQ-3401M? Here?s a quick lesson on how Soltek denotes model numbers:

E/I : Q : 3/2 : 8/7/4 : XX : W/M/A (ex. EQ-3401M)

E/I ? Excellent Qbic (Advanced Features) or Ideal Qbic (Basic Features)
Q ? Qbic Series
3/2 ? 2 x 5.25” Bay + 1 3.5” Bay versus 1 x 5.25” Bay + 1 3.5” Bay
8/7/4 ? K8, K7, or P4 CPU Sockets
XX ? Generation Code (01 for now)
W/M/A ? White, Mirror, or Aluminum Front Panel Design

With all that under our belts, let?s start from the outside and work our way into this quiet beast?

Testbench Setup

Testbench Setup

As part of the review process, we installed the following components within the Soltek 3401M:

Processor	Pentium 4 2.4GHz C
Memory	2 x 512 MB Corsair Pro Series XMS TwinX DDR500
Video	ATI Radeon 9800Pro (256MB DDR)
Storage	Western Digital Raptor SATA 36GB, 10K RPM
CD-RW	Plextor PX-320A CD-RW/DVD-ROM

Our fully configured test system, minus the ATI Radeon so as not to obstruct your view.

Interestingly, hard-drive installation was surprisingly more difficult than expected. Perhaps in a slight engineering miscalculation, Soltek didn?t leave enough room between the hard-drive and the side of the case for connecting your hard-drive to the Serial-ATA cable. Here?s a shot of how the drive is connected, remember, this drive sits sideways in the system. The Serial-ATA connector actually sticks out too far, obstructing the case from closing.

If one attempts to put the case on in this configuration, it won?t fit properly due to the long Serial-ATA data connector. Soltek offered a solution which was to move the hard-drive over further in the drive chassis. This is non-ideal as it means that our Raptor now only had two screws holding it in place, as opposed to four. Shown below in their suggested configuration.

Our suggestion? Invest a few bucks in a right-angled Serial-ATA cable, and you will be able to mount the hard-drive as expected in the chassis without any issues.

Unfortunately we ran into another slight installation issue with our testbench system. Due to the extended height of the Corsair Pro Series XMS memory (the extra height accommodates their activity LEDs), the drive chassis within the 3401M was in direct contact with the DDR modules and was exerting pressure on them forcing the motherboard to actually bend slightly. Contact between the chassis and our DDR modules can be seen in the image below.

Our recommendation is to not use the Corsair Pro Series modules with the Soltek 3401 series systems.

There?ve also been issues with other small form factor systems with front panel audio connections, especially when they are driven by internal cabling connected to motherboard headers. Although a rather subjective test, we did test the three front panel audio ports including SPDIF for functionality and clarity, and did not experience any distortion or noise when compared to our Shuttle SB75G2 review system.

On to benchmarking? our goal was two-fold. First, to test the often touted overclocking capabilities of the Intel i865 chipset, and how they would perform within the confines of this quiet system. The second, was to compare our results between other Springdale and Canterwood based SFF machines.

To that end, we opted to use PC Mark 2002 and SiSoft Sandra 2003 for performance benchmarks as well as HMonitor for temperature measurements and our professional grade sound meter for noise testing.

All testing was completed under Windows XP Professional, with ATI Catalyst v6.14.10.6387 video drivers. Intel i865 Chipset, Audio, and LAN drivers were installed directly from the provided Soltek 3401M Driver CD. Video display settings were set to 1024x768 with 32-bit color at a 60Hz refresh rate.

DDR memory timings were held constant at 3,7,4,4 for the duration of the testing. Note, these are the most aggressive settings we could reliably boot with, using our Corsair ProSeries XMS DDR500 TwinX modules at spec.

All benchmarks were run three times to average results accordingly. Three hours of continuous MemTest86 testing was used to validate memory timings prior to benchmarking.

All noise measurements were conducted at 6 inches from all sides of the system and averaged together. Ambient room noise was logarithmically subtracted to attempt and obtain as close as possible a measurement of actual system noise. Noise measurements were completed with our fully configured test system without active hard drive seeking activity.

Temperature measurements were taken at an ambient room temperature of 72 degrees F.

Before we see the raw data, here?s a look through Soltek?s own system monitoring utility for Windows.

Also included with the 3401M are several commercial software titles including PC-cillin 2002, Virtual Drive 7, RestoreIT! 3 Lite, PartitionMagic 6.0 SE, and DriveImage 4.0.

So how well does the system perform?? Just how quiet is this box??

< previous - (5 of 8) - next >

---

• External Design (1 of 8)
• Internal Design (2 of 8)
• PSU And Cooling (3 of 8)
• Bios (4 of 8)
• Testbench Setup (5 of 8)
• Benchmarks and Overclocking (6 of 8)
• Benchmark Comparisons (7 of 8)
• Conclusion (8 of 8)