Author: Fido Posted on: 5/23/2000 Sponsor: ABit Discuss: In the forums

Parts are Parts... right? ABIT has been setting standards in my book when it comes to motherboards for quite some time now. I have been using them on and off for about 2 years now. But does the SLOTKET !!! adapter hold up to their reputation? And is it worth the average $25.00 price tag? Our processor we will be using is a Coppermine PIII 600E FC-PGA model - retail boxed, and the motherboard - ABIT BE6-II. Upon examination of the content of the box, two things immediately caught my eye. The first, being the lack of a piece of paper with the jumper settings on it. How am I supposed to know what the hell all these jumpers mean! Instead, the plastic socket piece (known as the cartridge) that the adapter (card) fits into had a sticker permanently attached to it, which contained the jumper setting for the FSB and the voltage settings. How cool is that! I don’t know how many times I have installed a piece of equipment into a machine and six months later when its time to upgrade, I cannot find the damn documentation - definitely a plus in my book. Second item of relevance upon examination of the contents was the fact that the plastic swing-arm that folds down to hold the CPU into the socket sat flush with the CPU socket when it was in its 'folded down' position. This means, that if I wanted to attach GOLDEN ORB HSF to my CPU, I would not have to worry about that damn arm sticking up and getting in the way. I have actually seen stories of people who had to grind their metal arm down with a grinder so they could mount an alternative HSF module. Features Converts PPGA/FC-PGA 370 processor into Slot 1 Supports Celeron PPGA / Coppermine FC-PGA / Cyrix PPGA CPU Supports Dual CPU configuration CPU Vcore adjustable (1.3v~3.5v) via Jumper CPU FSB adjustable (66/100/133) via Jumper More CPU options for Slot 1 Motherboard Pentium II/III-like cartridge for easy insertion and CPU safety Dimension:128 (W) x 73 (H) mm (w/o cartridge) Installation Process All right, time to get down to the nitty gritty - installation of the unit. Instructions on how to install the Slotket !!! adapter were clearly printed on the back of the box and it all seemed pretty straight forward. Step One - install the CPU onto the card. No problem, done. Step Two - insert the card into the cartridge. How! It won’t fit through the slots, even with the CPU off. This is where maybee I just brain farted, or something, or I expected too much from the instructions. What you have to do at this point is take the cartridge apart. It splits in two, so that you can install the card module inside, and then reassemble the cartridge with the card inside of it. I was actually a little disappointed that the instructions never specified that you need to split the cartridge in half to install the card, but I was able to work through it. Step Three - slide the cartridge / card combination into your Slot 1 Socket. I hesitated. I didn’t set the jumpers! So I took a look at the nice sticker mounted to the side of the cartridge, and low and behold, the voltage and FSB were both set to AUTO. So unless I wanted to overclock my system via the SLOTKET adapter, I didn’t have to set a thing. So I proceeded with step three, and slid the cartridge / card combination into my Slot 1 socket on the BE6-II - Click! Step Four - attach the fan wire to the motherboard. Done. Now for the moment of truth... I powered up the system and went into the bios, configured the system for P III 600E, saved settings and exited. The system came up fine perfectly fine, and ran like a champ. Ok, but what if I overclock? I went back into the bios, and set the FSB in the softmenu of the BE6-II to 124. System booted fine, and ran as stable as it did with a FSB of 100. Conclusion If you have a Celeron you want to use on a Slot 1 motherboard, or feel compelled as I, to purchase a FC-PGA Coppermine as opposed to a SLOT1 Coppermine, ABIT’s SLOTKET!!! is definitely a wise investment. Its simple to install, especially with its ‘AUTO’ jumper settings. And the ability to use alternative HSF methods without having to worry about the CPU socket arm getting in the way is a feature that other manufactures should start to consider. So would I buy another one? If I needed it, you bet!

Copyright © by LWD All Rights Reserved.

Published on: 2004-04-10 (4041 reads)