Your cheapest MicroATX ticket into Intel's Core 2 world.

Clever corner cutting gives us an affordable, upgradeable performer.

Soltek, purveyor of all things shiny and glittery, is one of the first companies to release a motherboard based around Intel’s eagerly anticipated i865 Springdale chipset.

Another inexpensive Soltek board that's not too heavy on the features, this KT400A board sports the bare minimum to scrape by, with six-channel audio, dual-USB 2.0 ports and ATA133 support.

Soltek offers a 865 board for a fair price with the SL086MP-L. It has some good core specifications – it hosts both Pentium 4 and Celeron processors, with support for 800MHz FSB and up to 4GB of DDR400.

This is one of the few nForce boards here to take advantage of the GeForce4 MX graphics chip and supply an AGP 8x slot.

The S2662AN differs from most of the mobos in this Labs in that it is designed as a workstation-class board.

One of the mid-priced Intel 845PE boards, the Soltek SL-85DR3 comes in just shy of $200.

Well and truly gone are the days of boring green and brown PCBs – and welcome to the yellow motherboard, care of Soltek.

Finishing around the middle of the features and benchmark department this month, the KD7-SL still has a lot going for it.