It's nice that Soltek went out of their way to make the important parts of the motherboard (the fan headers and clear CMOS jumper) stand out. The PCB is actually not quite as user friendly as some of the other boards we've tested in the past but the users manual makes up that with very detailed instructions. I'm sure even novice users will not have many problems figuring out what is what on the SL-K8AN-RL.

Those of you who have a lot of USB devices will be happy to know that the board has four USB ports on the rear I/O. I know these days I seem to be running out of USB ports constantly, and I don't even consider myself someone into multimedia! The SL-K8AN-RL does not have IEEE 1394 support built in, but that's not a big deal.

Despite the motherboard's low price, Soltek are still able to bundle a pretty impressive software package with the SL-K8AN-RL. There really isn't much about the SL-K8AN-RL that we disliked, though a third DIMM slot would have definitely given users better memory upgrade options.

We found the front panel I/O connectors poorly labeled on the board - which can make initial installation a little frustrating if the manual is not handy. The onboard audio option makes use of Realtek's less than stellar ALC650 (AC'97) software codec... which is known for sapping CPU cycles at times.