Blast from the Soltek Past

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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May 18, 1997
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I just opened up my Amazon Photos desktop app to grab a picture I needed and I was greeted with this "Memories from 2003." It almost burned my eyes out! I give you the Soltek SL-75FRN2-L Golden Flame motherboard!

Obviously the name "Golden Flame" was chosen after others had their eyes burned out as well. That all said, this ugly bastard earned the first-ever HardOCP Top Pick Award.

Combined with stellar performance, great overclocking potential, and a very unique appearance, the Golden Flame nForce2 series from Soltek is sure to capture one’s attention. Quite simply, Soltek brings together flagship level performance and mainstream pricing with the SL-75FRN2-L. Backed by a company who is steadily earning a reputation for a solid mainstream product, Soltek seems committed to bringing value to the mainboard marketplace. At the end of the day whether you're talking about cars or motherboards, speed is all that really matters...right?

Of course we all know now that Soltek, its motherboards, and NVIDIA nForce have all fallen by the wayside. That ABS II sticker on the socket refers to a temperature thermistor that was down on the board in the socket, which was something that was pretty damn cool for 14 years ago.
 
Soltek was one of my favorite brands of all time. I believe I owned that board as well too and I remember a purple one. They overclocked very well.
 
I remember getting an NF7-S because the Soltek was out of stock everywhere.
 
Dear lord, those were the absolute worst sockets to install an HSF on....ahhh memories....
 
I almost bought one of these back in the day. I ended up going with an Abit NF7-S though. I managed 2.5Ghz 24/7 out of my Barton with it.

It was too bad about the stability issues these boards had. I went through three NF7-S's before I got one that was solid (this wasn't unique to Abit either). They revised the chipset at some point (A2 was it?) and got them stable, but it was too late. Too bad too - that was probably the best chipset ever made for AMD platforms up to that point.
 
1489612825U7UFZPMFIh_1_1.jpg




73917788.jpg
 
Wow,

I don't remember Soltek at all.

Were they mostly an enterprise manufacturer that was trying to cross over to consumer boards?

I still miss Abit though. Best boards I've ever owned.

I'm surprised no one has tried to resurrect the brand name. I know the company and its engineering talent that made those awesome boards are long gone, so a rebirth would really just be a badge job, but it would still warm my heart to be able to buy an Abit board again.
 
I remember that board, didn't care about the color because my pc was a beige box. It kept my Barton running fast and smooth for a long time until I went with a dfi board on socket 754. Memories.

I do miss the N force 2 days. They had some great audio options on them.
 
prime2515102 said:
I almost bought one of these back in the day. I ended up going with an Abit NF7-S though. I managed 2.5Ghz 24/7 out of my Barton with it.

It was too bad about the stability issues these boards had. I went through three NF7-S's before I got one that was solid (this wasn't unique to Abit either). They revised the chipset at some point (A2 was it?) and got them stable, but it was too late. Too bad too - that was probably the best chipset ever made for AMD platforms up to that point.
Click to expand...

Man I must have built several hundred systems with the Abit NF7-S back in the day. I think with the athlon xp2500 paired with it. We didn't have any stability issues with it though, that was a solid system back then. 2004/5? It's been a while
 
I guess this board just missed the SATA introduction as that was back in 2003. I had a Asus A7N8X Deluxe with an Athlon XP 2600+ (later upgraded to a 3200+). That sucker had SATA and was blazing fast with DDR400.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Wow,

I don't remember Soltek at all.

Were they mostly an enterprise manufacturer that was trying to cross over to consumer boards?

I still miss Abit though. Best boards I've ever owned.

I'm surprised no one has tried to resurrect the brand name. I know the company and its engineering talent that made those awesome boards are long gone, so a rebirth would really just be a badge job, but it would still warm my heart to be able to buy an Abit board again.
Click to expand...

I'm still using an Abit board because I haven't had the cash to be able to upgrade in years.
 
The golden age of competition and advancement. I miss the days when AMD/Intel and ATI/Nvidia actually had back-and-forth performance crowns.
 
Those were some crazy times. I don't miss ide cables at all, all that ribbon cable origami I taught myself gone to waste though lol.
 
Hehehe I still miss my Epox board. That and my Athlon 1700+ I had around a 50% OC on that thing on my watercooling setup
 
I had a NF7-S from Abit. I can't remember what processor I had on it but I replaced it with the IC7 Max 3 which I still have in the box in the basement. It has a Prescott on it still too.

That NF7-S was retired in 2012, the entire system with its 4600 ti was given to my dad for his office work computer. It ran nearly 24/7 for many years. It just became too slow with 2gb of ram.
 
I too had an NF7-S, and before that the legendary ECS K7S5A... or maybe it was the other way around. Was the NF7-S the one with the bad caps?
 
Hot Biscuits!!!! (or cookies for N.A. type folks)

I had that board and bought it mainly for the Socket Thermister.
Ah, good times..

Now sing with me.... Memories... lalalalala..... Memories......... something mumble.... Memories......
 
Where are the SATA sockets? On the back with the M.2?
 
fightingfi said:
check out those capacitors LULZ
Click to expand...

I not only remember them, I remember replacing that entire forest of them before -- on both this board, more ECS boards than I can count, and on enough Dell 400SC's to make my fingers bleed.
 
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