Soltek's latest P4 DDR board is the SL-85DRV3 and a colourful beast it is too, based on a red PCB. There's also a matt silver heatsink, plus red IDE ports and yellow CPU fan connectors.

In contrast to the other boards this one uses a non-Intel chipset; Soltek has chosen the latest A version of VIA's P4X266 chipset. The Southbridge is also new and updated; the VIA VT8233A now offers ATA-133 support.

The layout of the power connectors and IDE ports show some thought has been put into this board. The main power connector is placed towards the edge of the board, which stops cabling from going over the CPU or blocking airflow. The floppy and IDE ports are nicely located below the memory sockets, out of the way of any expansion slot. It's also nice to see a CPU socket that's not surrounded by capacitors around the area where the heatsink snaps onto the holder.

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Expansion wise it's pretty standard stuff; AGP, CNR and six PCI slots. One thing this motherboard does feature is a thermal cable connector by the AGP port that could be connected to thermal cable for measuring temperatures for anything you want - like the hard drive or the AGP card. The temperature is shown in the BIOS for this cable.

Bundled with the SL-85DRV3 is a very useful set of utilities; PC-Cillin, Virtual Drive (a CD ROM emulator), Partition Magic 6.0 and Drive Image 4.0. There's also a decent manual in the box.