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

[MisterMe]

I would have to say that my experience with ECS mbs is that it's a complete case of hit or miss. Hit with a good one and you'll have a nice fast system that's rock solid. Miss with an ECS and you'll get intimate with the RMA process of your chosen VAR. It's a brutal kind of a catch 22 in the fact that ECS gives an outstanding price to value ratio but you're always worried if you're going to get a system that runs or one that causes you nothing but trouble. I've gotten to the point that the risk doesn't out weight the benefit...go with something that has a better brand name and you will spare yourself a lifetime of worry and frustration...

 

[OS]

I've gone through almost half a dozen ECS k7s5a. Most of them had problems of varying seriousness. The worst is that 133/133 problem where the f*cking board won't run at 133/133 using my SDRAM. I know for a fact this SDRAM is good because it'll run prime95 overnite on some k7s5as, but not others.

The ram works great in my BP6.

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
current ecs from frys unstable randomly. can't neven install windows half the ntime. upgraded to antec 350watt, still same problem. back to frys i go

friends ecs didn't boot, returned got another one and it worked fine, go figure.

Try 100/100 first.

 

[OS]

It's up to the end user if saving 20-50 dollars is worth a potential week of down time and troubleshooting. If you're not scraping for a couple bux and your idea of fun isn't babysitting your computer for freezes, stalls, etc., get another brand.

in retrospect, had I known I'd be making so many damn trips to frys, I would have just paid up extra and gotten a good board. :frown:

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: OS
I've gone through almost half a dozen ECS k7s5a. Most of them had problems of varying seriousness. The worst is that 133/133 problem where the f*cking board won't run at 133/133 using my SDRAM. I know for a fact this SDRAM is good because it'll run prime95 overnite on some k7s5as, but not others.

The ram works great in my BP6.

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
current ecs from frys unstable randomly. can't neven install windows half the ntime. upgraded to antec 350watt, still same problem. back to frys i go

friends ecs didn't boot, returned got another one and it worked fine, go figure.

Try 100/100 first.

isn't that underclocking the processor?

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: OS

Try 100/100 first.

isn't that underclocking the processor?

Yeah but try it first. First step in trouble shooting that board. Help me help you. I've gone through like five of these boards, I know what to do.

I had the same problem you did. I was using SDRAM and it only ran stable at 100/100. I got some DDR and it seems to be working at 138/138.

 

[OS]

Or you can just return everything and buy a motherboard that wasn't built by monkeys.

 

[spanky]

nothing bad i can say about mine.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: OS

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: OS

Try 100/100 first.

isn't that underclocking the processor?

Yeah but try it first. First step in trouble shooting that board. Help me help you. I've gone through like five of these boards, I know what to do.

I had the same problem you did. I was using SDRAM and it only ran stable at 100/100. I got some DDR and it seems to be working at 138/138.

damn but i want to use sd133 your right, it does seem to run at 100/100. bogus. why they don't have a 133cpu 100ram mode i dunno.

how much did u shell out for ddr?

 

[IvIaNTiS]

I have the ECS P4S5A/DX and SDRAM at 133. First couple of tries XP wouldn't boot. But I got it to work somehow and its been stable for about 2months. It always booted with 100/100. I'm happy with my ECS board, just my 2 cents even tho you are more interested in the AMD models.

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo


damn but i want to use sd133 your right, it does seem to run at 100/100. bogus. why they don't have a 133cpu 100ram mode i dunno.

how much did u shell out for ddr?

Yeah I wanted to reuse my old ram also. I didn't believe it at first so I went back to frys a couple of times and kept pounding my head against the wall so to speak.

I got my 256 crucial DDR are best buy for 25 AR. I used a magazine coupon tho, w/o it, it's about 30.

If you have different sticks of ram, you can try that or try just one stick in either slot. But I want to mention that sometimes it looks like the problem went away but in reality it just became less frequent. I use prime95 overnite runs to test absolute stability.

I haven't done an overnite prime95 run yet with DDR, I'll know for sure tomorrow morning if this is rock solid or not.

 

[0roo0roo]

yea i read about the one slot only deal for sd ram or stuck at 100/100 on the net...so lousy!!

i also read one about setting mem settings to ultra. go figure, i think it worked with my two sticks of mem. doesn't make any sense at all though eh?


my cheesy test has been to play q3 for a level or two, on all other 133/133 settings it freezes pretty quick. i got tired of playing on the ultra setting, so i dunno how long it would last. i went 30 minutes. game is useful cuz it doesn't need to be installed through windows to work

crossing fingers!

u using the honey -x bios eh? nice bios oc is an option atleast but where do u get this mysterious bios? i see more discussion online then links, kinda annoying

palomino maxes at 1800mhz, so we still got a little ways to go.

sigh, hope system is stable now, that 50 dollar psu i can't/won't return, don't want to spend more on ram if at all possible.

 

[psianime]

I've had 2 of 10 not being able to start out of the box. Once it going it's a solid buy for its price.

-psianime

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: psianime
I've had 2 of 10 not being able to start out of the box. Once it going it's a solid buy for its price.

-psianime

i've delt with 4 total 1 didn't boot out of box

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
yea i read about the one slot only deal for sd ram or stuck at 100/100 on the net...so lousy!!

i also read one about setting mem settings to ultra. go figure, i think it worked with my two sticks of mem. doesn't make any sense at all though eh?


my cheesy test has been to play q3 for a level or two, on all other 133/133 settings it freezes pretty quick. i got tired of playing on the ultra setting, so i dunno how long it would last. i went 30 minutes. game is useful cuz it doesn't need to be installed through windows to work

crossing fingers!

u using the honey -x bios eh? nice bios oc is an option atleast but where do u get this mysterious bios? i see more discussion online then links, kinda annoying

palomino maxes at 1800mhz, so we still got a little ways to go.

sigh, hope system is stable now, that 50 dollar psu i can't/won't return, don't want to spend more on ram if at all possible.

You should use prime95 to test for stability. With one SDR stick at 133/133, I can get Q3 and UT2K3 benchmark results, but it'll still crash prime95 torture test.

I got my oc bios here

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: OS

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
yea i read about the one slot only deal for sd ram or stuck at 100/100 on the net...so lousy!!

i also read one about setting mem settings to ultra. go figure, i think it worked with my two sticks of mem. doesn't make any sense at all though eh?


my cheesy test has been to play q3 for a level or two, on all other 133/133 settings it freezes pretty quick. i got tired of playing on the ultra setting, so i dunno how long it would last. i went 30 minutes. game is useful cuz it doesn't need to be installed through windows to work

crossing fingers!

u using the honey -x bios eh? nice bios oc is an option atleast but where do u get this mysterious bios? i see more discussion online then links, kinda annoying

palomino maxes at 1800mhz, so we still got a little ways to go.

sigh, hope system is stable now, that 50 dollar psu i can't/won't return, don't want to spend more on ram if at all possible.

You should use prime95 to test for stability. With one SDR stick at 133/133, I can get Q3 and UT2K3 benchmark results, but it'll still crash prime95 torture test.

I got my oc bios here

ah thanks for the link


i'm still installing stuff and games no crashing so far so fingers crossed.

 

[0roo0roo]

bah, i tried nolf 2 and it froze. ripped out one stick and now its fine. 256mb of ram does suck though, nolf runs noticibly slower, load times are like double

 

[Acanthus]

im 5 dead out of 6 with ECS, this was back in the pentium 3 days, i ordered 4 at once from newegg and ALL 4 didnt work.

This was using Antec 330w PSUs with the voltages tweaked to perfection, and 4 different P3 550e's, and 8 sticks of Mushkin PC133 CAS2 128MB.

I worked on them for 15 hours solid one day, called ECS tech support who told me to use better power supplys and better ram (HAH!).

Long story short they were all replaced with Asus Boards and ran great.

The other 2 were ordered from goodlegear, and were Celeron800 systems. Antec Truepower 330w (one of the cleanest power signals in the industry) with Samsung 128MB PC133 CAS2 modules. One board was DOA, other ran great.

I have never ordered ECS again.

 

[OTR]

I just spent about 5 hours trying to help my brother build a new systems using the ECS P4VXASD2+/Celeron 1700, from the weekend Fry's deal. We also used the $29 case from the same ad (Soyo with 300 watt AMD and P4 approved) and had a very hard time. First of all, the manual doesn't make much sense when it comes to setting up the jumpers. It says weird stuff like -- 100MHz, short 1&2, 133MHz open 2&3, which doesn't make sense since opening 1&2 will short 2&3, unless you open them all!!!

Also, have to be careful when seating the AGP video card. It has to be seated very well! Take it out and put it back in. Remove the screw, etc...

We were not able to get two sticks of DDR 2100 to work, so just left it with the 256MB. He is going to buy a 512 DIMM and see if that will work.

Finally, got it to post and, when I left, it was formatting the hard drive (160GB deal from Fry's).

I still have the $99 ECS/2000xp combo here at home and am wondering if I even want to go through the hassle. I probably will. Some people do crosswords for fun; I like hassling with computers. Also, I bought the 512 MB DIMM, so at least, hopefully, don't have to worry about the "2 stick" problem.

What a pain!!!

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: OTR


I still have the $99 ECS/2000xp combo here at home and am wondering if I even want to go through the hassle. I probably will. Some people do crosswords for fun; I like hassling with computers. Also, I bought the 512 MB DIMM, so at least, hopefully, don't have to worry about the "2 stick" problem.

What a pain!!!

I'm using two sticks of DDR right now in that exact combo and it seems fine. I'm going to run it overnite tonite for a verdict.

SDR is a totally different story. Why the hell ECS put two slots that don't work on this god damn motherboard is beyond me. Plus not having SDR erases a lot of the price benefit of using the stupid board in the first place.

 

[OS]

oh also, if you're using bottom rung memory from Frys, it's supposedly some of the worst stuff you can buy on the market. :Q

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: OTR
I just spent about 5 hours trying to help my brother build a new systems using the ECS P4VXASD2+/Celeron 1700, from the weekend Fry's deal. We also used the $29 case from the same ad (Soyo with 300 watt AMD and P4 approved) and had a very hard time. First of all, the manual doesn't make much sense when it comes to setting up the jumpers. It says weird stuff like -- 100MHz, short 1&2, 133MHz open 2&3, which doesn't make sense since opening 1&2 will short 2&3, unless you open them all!!!

Also, have to be careful when seating the AGP video card. It has to be seated very well! Take it out and put it back in. Remove the screw, etc...

We were not able to get two sticks of DDR 2100 to work, so just left it with the 256MB. He is going to buy a 512 DIMM and see if that will work.

Finally, got it to post and, when I left, it was formatting the hard drive (160GB deal from Fry's).

I still have the $99 ECS/2000xp combo here at home and am wondering if I even want to go through the hassle. I probably will. Some people do crosswords for fun; I like hassling with computers. Also, I bought the 512 MB DIMM, so at least, hopefully, don't have to worry about the "2 stick" problem.

What a pain!!!

u did eventually notice those cpu/bus settings can be done through bios right?

 

[thraxes]

Built 7 machines with them in the last year and all are running just fine. It's a cheap, in most cases reliable and reasonably fast mobo.

(refers to ECS - k7S5A with int. LAN)

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: GoodRevrnd
I think part of the problems with the K7S5A is the board revision they're using. I've used at least 6 of these boards. rev1.3 has been completely flawless, 1.2 only has very very very minor problems (random instability, occasional graphic glitches that were fixed w/ a new board of same kind), and i only used one revision befor that and it was kind of ho-hum. The other thing to keep in mind with this board is to use a good power supply, and make sure you use the latest bios. I can't even recall how many horrendous bugs have been fixed through the many bios revisions but they seem to have everything ironed out now.

That being said, when someone says to me "I need a computer and I want to go on the intarweb," this is the board i get. SiS735 is stable, and for $50 you can't beat a board that performs well, is stable, and gives you LAN & Audio.

When you get people's opinions on ECS it's really important to know what boards they are talking about and when they used them because they are fairly inconsistent. Some rock, some are PCChips nightmares.

This was exactly my point. Some ECS boards are great, others suck. I just won't buy from a manufacturer who doesn't take the time and do the testing to catch and fix problems before they release their products to the customers.
When I buy a board, I don't think I should have to try several different PSU's to make the board run stable. I also shouldn't have to find out the revision of the board to make sure I get one that works correctly. ECS is a "value" motherboard maker. They save money on manufacturing by using cheaper components and skimping on their quality control testing. This means that although you may get a very good stable board, your chances of getting a crappy one are much higher with ECS than with Epox, Asus, Abit.

So for me, it's worth the extra money to not have to worry about whether I will get a good one or a bad one, or if I got exactly the right revision, or if I have exactly the right PSU, etc.

 

[CraigRT]

they're a pain in the ass.
i would never personally use one in my own computer at home.

 

[spaceman]

had 5 of them,1 only i didnt like.the rest were great.