Anyone have anything bad to say about ECS mobo's???

[thorin]

Originally posted by: foofoo
hi,
this will be flame bait for sure....
anyway, my personal experience with the ecs k7s5a has been nothing but bad.

this will be flame bait for sure....
anyway, my personal experience with the ECS K7S5A has been nothing but Good. Having built the following systems with no problems:

? 1 1GHz Duron (w/ SDRAM)
? 1 1400+ Athlon (w/ DDR)
? 1 1700+ Athlon (w/ SDRAM)
? 2 2200+ Athlon Thoroughbred (w/ DDR)

Trust me I did endless amounts of research before buying the cheap board and although some people do come up with bad ones (which get RMA'd or exchanged @ store(s)) the vast overwhelming majority of people and reviews are more then happy with their stability, price, performance, etc...

Thorin

 

[Bovinicus]

My personal experience with an ECS board was a terrible one. It was plagued with many problems. A BIOS update fixed some things, but the system never ran totally stable. Windows 2000 didn't improve the stability, so I knew something was wrong. This was an old Socket 370/Slot 1 combo board. I don't remember the model number.

A friend of mine recently got an ECS K7S5A. It is also plagued with many problems. I am going to take apart his system, clean it, put it together, and start fresh. I will flash the BIOS and format his HDD to make sure things go well this time. If problems persist, I know it is the mobo. I strongly suspect it is though, because he formatted fairly recently. He has all kinds of errors while doing office tasks and while gaming.

Although I have seen only problems with ECS equipment, that doesn't mean it is terrible. Most people seem to agree that buying ECS products can be great or it can be a disaster. There is very little middle ground. I would buy a little higher quality components.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Bovinicus
My personal experience with an ECS board was a terrible one. It was plagued with many problems. A BIOS update fixed some things, but the system never ran totally stable. Windows 2000 didn't improve the stability, so I knew something was wrong. This was an old Socket 370/Slot 1 combo board. I don't remember the model number.

A friend of mine recently got an ECS K7S5A. It is also plagued with many problems. I am going to take apart his system, clean it, put it together, and start fresh. I will flash the BIOS and format his HDD to make sure things go well this time. If problems persist, I know it is the mobo. I strongly suspect it is though, because he formatted fairly recently. He has all kinds of errors while doing office tasks and while gaming.

Although I have seen only problems with ECS equipment, that doesn't mean it is terrible. Most people seem to agree that buying ECS products can be great or it can be a disaster. There is very little middle ground. I would buy a little higher quality components.

two sticks of sdram? it can't handle that u know.

 

[Booster]

Anyone have anything bad to say about ECS mobo's???

No. And it would be intresting to know why some people worry so much about ECS boards. These boards are for OEMs and people who either don't want to spend any money at all on computers or very little, not for the enthusiast community, definitely. And it's really funny to read or to assume the fact how amazing is that these boards even work at all. Heck, I got an ECS board almost for free and look! It works! Heck, guys, these boards, each and every one, are tested to work before they're packed at the factory, so no wonder they work I guess.

 

[Slogun]

I was building a new comp just as the K7S5A came out about a year and a half ago and read about the speed of the combined north/south bridge.

I figured for $65 I could throw the mobo away when I was ready to upgrade.

Guess what.......I'm still using that mobo and built another (gaming) system for my son with one. Been very happy with them.

 

[Dufman]

the k7s5a is a terrible board. however the k7sem is a good all in 1 board

 

[bluemax]

I can get an awesome deal from an online trader for an ECS P4S5A/DX+ and Celeron 1.7 which is fine.

Or I could spend a fair bit more and go with a hotter, noisier, but faster AMD combo using something OTHER than ECS and an AMD XP processor. I really do like the look of my combo because it's a lot cheaper (being both ECS and lightly used at that...) but a good deal becomes a bad deal if it's junk. Hmmm... could be why he's selling $240 CDN worth of equipment for only $150 or so... :frown:

 

[Boogak]

Originally posted by: Slogun
I was building a new comp just as the K7S5A came out about a year and a half ago and read about the speed of the combined north/south bridge.

I figured for $65 I could throw the mobo away when I was ready to upgrade.

Guess what.......I'm still using that mobo and built another (gaming) system for my son with one. Been very happy with them.

LOL, same here. I bought my K7S5A back in August 2001 before the KT266A hit and the SiS735 was the fastest chipset for the Athlon. I figured for ~$70 if it sucked I'd still be able to resell it for $40 and only lose $30 or so on the deal. Still going strong 1.5 years later as my 2ndary system.

 

[cleverhandle]

Ah, yet another thread... oh well,

There is no reason to buy this board today. Unless maybe you've got some SDRAM burning a hole in your parts bin. And even then, DDR is cheap, so... there is no reason to buy this board today.

Over a year ago, when the board got really popular, it was competing against KT266A's at nearly $100, requiring DDR which was still a very expensive upgrade. You can get a great quality KT333 from Epox, MSI, etc. for $75 now. Skimping the $20 is just absurd when the alternatives are so much better.

For the record, I've built 2 K7S5A systems. One was flawless, and runs fine a year later. The other I never quite got running correctly, but that may just be incompatibility with OpenBSD and not a problem with the board at all. Returned that one for an MSI KT3.

Classic board, but it's time is past...

 

[FuManStan]

I bought one over the summer and its worked great, with 2 sticks of SDRAM. DDR is expensive.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle
Ah, yet another thread... oh well,

There is no reason to buy this board today. Unless maybe you've got some SDRAM burning a hole in your parts bin. And even then, DDR is cheap, so... there is no reason to buy this board today.

Where do you live that DDR is cheap? Where I live DDR is still 2x what it was last year at this time and about 1.5x what it was last summer. SDRAM also just made a jump (I'm assuming as the part bins start to thin out since less and less mem makers are making it).

Crucial 512MB PC2100 $225CDN (~$145 US). (Generic ... LG or something can be found for $198 CDN).

Thorin

 

[Ketteringo]

I have a K7S5A, its my 2nd. The first one popped and let the magic smoke out, I think something was in the power connection area because it also blew out my PS. My 2nd works great and I love it. You can flash an OCers BIOS very easily and have control over all of your steppings. My only problem with it is there is only room for 2 dimms or whatever ram you use.

Right now its got an Athlon XP 2000+, 512MB PC2100 DDR, Gigabyte Radeon 8500 Pro OCed to 300/300 (with a Whispersys video card cooler exhaust fan), Audigy MP3+, Leadtek Winfast deluxe TV tuner card, 2 12" green cold cathodes, 2 quad blue LED fans, 120GB Maxtor 7200 RPM HDD w/ 8MB cache, 32x burner, DVD-rom, 350W no-name power supply and it runs just fine. There are a lot of people who have reported problems with smaller power supplies so you should have at least a 300W just to be safe. For the money, you cant buy a better board!

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by:

Other than that I have had great suckcess with the K7S5A.

Same here. Save yourself the hassle and get a different combo board (lots of them) or upgrade to a DDR solution.

Chiz

Edit: Anyone else wonder why the glowing reviews of this board come from people that have owned multiples of them??? Oh yah I forgot, everyone here is a closet system builder

 

[SearchMaster]

I just put the board in my wife's computer, along with an XP1800+...no complaints at all. I'm using 2x256MB PC133. It's my only experience with the board.

And I'm certainly no closet system builder. I've put together less than a half dozen computers in the last five years or so.

 

[Adul]

how due u rma this crap :|

 

[bluemax]

Man... I'm getting a really uneasy feeling about ECS.... When is a deal not a deal? When it doesn't work!
Is ECS *really* that bad?

Would you turn down this board if it was offered with a CPU for a really good price?

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: bluemax
Man... I'm getting a really uneasy feeling about ECS.... When is a deal not a deal? When it doesn't work!
Is ECS *really* that bad?

No as many of us have stated.

Would you turn down this board if it was offered with a CPU for a really good price?

Yes.

Thorin

 

[bluemax]

Looks like I won't have to worry about it. The trader pulled out of the deal at 1:00AM *after* I went and sold my old system to get it. :| :| :| :|

So I think I'll head over to buy/sell forums and look for a mobo/cpu combo.
The original nForce video half decent?

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: bluemax
Looks like I won't have to worry about it. The trader pulled out of the deal at 1:00AM *after* I went and sold my old system to get it. :| :| :| :|

So I think I'll head over to buy/sell forums and look for a mobo/cpu combo.
The original nForce video half decent?

Yes it is I built a first gen MSI nForce system for my mother-in-law earlier this year and I have to say that I'm impressed with the integrated video.

Thorin

 

[Macro2]

RE:"two sticks of sdram? it can't handle that u know."

I heard that. I also think some problems can arise by sticking too many things in the slots. LOL.

Seriously, I'm using the this board right now and it's super stable.

Mac

 

[0roo0roo]

at what speed? everyone i iknow gets it to work with two sticks of sdram stable at 100/100mhz. but why underclock our processors 133/133is basically 100% failure for sdram two slots filled. you might be able to do smal tasks in windows, but run a current stressful game for a while and it'll die.

i'll bet 9 times outa 10 2 sdram won't work in it. u either gotta get a sweet lucky board or have two identicle and very perfect sticks.

 

[nick1985]

its a cheap board, you get what you pay for...

 

[0roo0roo]

ah well hacked ecs cheepo bios


fsb oc and supposedly lets you run ram at 100mhz with cpu at 133.