Soyo SY-6BA+IV Slot-1 i440BX ATX

The Bad

Soyo took a step forward by including a real manual with the SY-6BA+III, but they have gone back to a "Quick Start Guide" with the SY-6BA+IV. The guide provides the basic information that an experienced system builder needs to get the system up and running, but provides nothing for the first time motherboard installer. The full manual is included on the driver CD in PDF format.

The location of the power connector is less than ideal. As it is, the ATX power cable has to snake around the CPU to reach its destination, impeding airflow greatly and generally cluttering the inside of a system.

AnandTech's prerelease evaluation sample did have one major issue that should be fixed before any boards ship to market. Our SY-6BA+IV would not boot with any 100 MHz Pentium II or Pentium III processor. Our test bed Celeron 333 worked just fine, even overclocked with a FSB setting of 110 MHz. It's a strange problem that probably only affects our sample.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: Mushkin SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com