Soltek Qbic EQ3401M: More Expansion & A New Standard in Quietness

Soltek Qbic EQ3401M: BIOS and Overclocking

Soltek uses AMI Bios in the Qubic EQ3401M system. This is the same basic BIOS used in many current Asus systems. The basic layout is quite similar to the more familiar Award BIOS, but the menu/submenu arrangement is a bit different.

A full Hardware Health submenu with Smart Fan adjustments and a complete readout of fan speeds, temperatures, and power levels is available in the BIOS. Smart Fan adjusts the fan speed as needed for the system temperature. Because the Soltek cooling is very effective, it is best to leave the fans on the Smart Fan setting.

The organization of BIOS options is a bit different on the Soltek. Most of the frequently used controls are arranged as bullets with submenus in Advanced BIOS Features.

Even Frequency/Voltage Control is a submenu in Advanced Features. As you can see, the voltage and frequency settings are very complete.

Memory timings can be adjusted in the Advanced Chipset Features, Northbridge menu. A full selection of CAS timings and memory tweaks is available by selecting Manual.

FSB Overclocking Results

Our Shuttle review proved that contemporary SFF systems should be compared to the best systems in that class, without regard to system size. With just a little more power and a little more size, Soltek carries this idea even further. The following setup was used on the Soltek Qbic EQ3401M for FSB overclocking:

Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed
Processor:	Intel 3.0 800FSB Pentium 4
CPU Voltage:	1.525V (default)
Cooling:	Soltek Icy Q
Video:	ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128Mb
Memory:	2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II DS
Power Supply:	Enhance SFF 250W

While we could boot into Windows XP at overclocked speeds as high as 244FSB at default voltage, the highest stable FSB overclocking we could achieve at default voltage was 235 (940FSB). This translates into an astounding 3.5+ GHz speed in this SFF system with a 250-watt power supply. This 3.0 CPU is known to perform as high as 245 on other Intel motherboards like our Intel testbed with a 470W power supply. The 250 watt Power Supply seems to give us all the capability we need to reach the highest levels that this SFF motherboard is able to reach.

At 3.53GHZ, we ran the machine overnight, stress-tested, ran benchmarks, and still could not get the system to fail or the automatic setup of the fan to kick into high speed. The loaded Soltek Qbic EQ3401M contained 1 GB of memory, 120GB hard drive, CD burner, and an ATI Radeon 9800 PRO all drawing power. We suspected that we might be able to overclock even higher without the ATI 9800 PRO drawing system power, but we got a lower overclock of 225 with the on-board video. The stable 235 setting is likely the highest stable overclock that can be achieved with this Soltek system and this 3.0 CPU at default voltage. It is also close to the highest default voltage speed that we have achieved with this CPU on other systems.