When you look at the hardware specifications of the Soltek SL-B5A-FGR motherboard, you'd think you're dealing with a regular size ATX board. Soltek crams a lot of features into the QBiC without using a lot of real estate. The motherboard supports Socket 775 Pentium 4s that run on a 800 MHz FSB, or 533 MHz Celeron chips. The two DIMM slots support a maximum of 2GB of PC3200 DDR RAM, and to enable the dual-channel memory controller, you'll want to use two identical DIMMs. Other hardware features include a 7.1 audio controller, IEEE 1394a and a Gigabit LAN adaptor.

Since the SL-B5A-FGR is based on the 915G chipset, it does come with Intel's GMA 900 integrated video. If you want something a bit more powerful, there is an open PCI Express x16 slot for a standalone videocard. Sitting behind the PCI Express x16 slot is a legacy 32-bit PCI slot for your expansion needs.

The Soltek SL-B5A-FGR motherboard supports four Serial ATA devices and at the moment only or two would be useful. In the future, when external Serial ATA devices become more popular, users can take advantage of the extra ports on the motherboard. Since the Soltek uses the ICH6R southbridge, the SL-B5A-FGR also supports Serial ATA RAID 0 and 1 but this is not very useful since fitting another HDD inside the chassis is difficult.

With everything packed so closely together the Soltek EQ3501-300PW QBiC Mania is quite a hot-running machine, so we didn't expect much in terms of overclocking. We were right as it turned out, since the maximum speed we could get the motherboard up to was a lowly 224 MHz. Then again, one would not generally buy a SFF PC for its overclocking ability.

PCStats Test System Specs:

processor: intel pentium 4 3.2e clock speed: 16 x 200 mhz = 3.2 ghz motherboards: gigabyte ga-8anxp-d (925x)* msi 915p neo2 platinum (915p)* dfi lanparty 875p-t (i875p)** asrock 775v88 (pt880)** albatron px925xe pro-r (925xe)* soltek eq3501-300pw qbic mania (915g)* videocard: msi rx800xt-vtd256* asus ax800xt/tvd ** memory: 2x 512mb crucial ballistix ddr2-533 2x 512mb corsair twinx1024-3200xl hard drive: 40gb western digital special ed cdrom: aopen 52x combo powersupply: seasonic super tornado 400w software setup windowsxp build 2600 intel inf 6.10.1012 forceware 66.85 workstation benchmarks sysmark 2004 business winstone 2004 content creation 2004 winbench 99 sisoft sandra 2004 super pi pcmark04 3dmark2001se 3dmark05 aquamark3 comanche 4 x2: the threat ut2003 ut2004 doom 3

* - msi rx800xt videocard used ** - asus x800xt pe videocard used