ECS K7S5A Pretty impressed

[SilverBack]

I got this for my wife for Christmas. The ECS K7S5A was inexpensive and uses DDR memory, so I thought I would give it a whirl.

Installed without a hitch. Default Sisoft Sandra scores were also very good. 831/760 memory scores using a 1.4 TBird and Crucial DDR at CAS 2.5.
I noticed the disk score wasn't that good so I went looking as to why.
The SiS drivers don't enable DMA, it had to be manually done. So I checked DMA in the disk properties of the device manager.
A 20gig WD ATA100 7200 rpm drive scored 24300 as compared to a 30 gig ATA100 at 24000, very good

If you aren't planning on overclocking, this board seems stable as h*ll.

 

[osage]

good performance for a board of it's cost..... huh....hell it's good performance for a board that costs twice as much.

the 3 of these I have dealt with will run that Crucial DDR with no problem set to Ultra/2 etc:

it's good ram you might as well take advantage of it. max out those memory settings and see what a diff it makes....

 

[sad]

Good luck with yours. My friend's board ran well for 2months then it died.

 

[Dan]

As noted in a similar thread, I used this board last weekend to upgrade my 13-year-old grandson from a Celeron 466MHz to an Athlon 1.33GHz. (Nice Christmas present, eh?) With 512MB PC-133 SDRAM and a Voodoo 3 video card the system is extremely stable. It was very easy to setup, using WinXP Pro for the OS. As others noted, this mobo isn't for overclockers but then I paid something like $57 for it (from newegg) and you can't beat that.

 

[gcy]

set to cl2 and get better performance off your ddr.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

With 512MB PC-133 SDRAM and a Voodoo 3 video card the system is extremely stable. It was very easy to setup, using WinXP Pro for the OS.. Where did you XP drivers for the voodoo3, or are they present on the XP CD?

EDIT: Doh!! I found them in another thread. Here:forum thread

 

[drake6]

Yep look at my sig I ve got one and like it alot

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I've had one since August and it's an excellent board, stable, good on-board LAN and super simple set-up. The only problems I've had are the KTS POS battery dying and having to do the L7 voltage mod to get it to work with a 1.4 T-Bird.

 

[AZGamer]

I've seen more complaints about it then positives, and have had some bad experiences with the board.

 

[Freewolf]

I've also been very happy with mine.

 

[jsmckenna45431]

Mine rocks! I haven't had the first lock-up. I do quite a bit of online gaming, and I have gone for 5 days without a reboot under XP. I built a system for a friend using this board and his results have been the same.

The only complaint I have is that I have been unable to flash my BIOS with the OCers BIOS. When I try to start the flash utility, it gives me an error and states that the program doesn't exist. I have downloaded the flash utility and BIOS from multiple sites and I get the same thing every time. Is there something I'm missing?

Other than that, I am completely satisfied with my $52.00 mobo .

Jeff

 

[SilverBack]

AZGamer
You are off the deep end dude.
Go to Google and just search the ECS K7S5A board use review or even use "problem".
Problems with this motherboard are almost non-existant with the exception of poor quality power supply units.
That's probably just the experience you have had.

 

[ronein]

<< Good luck with yours. My friend's board ran well for 2months then it died. >>



It can happen to any board, for no reason at all....whats that word again....SOL?

In the end its not a bad investment...$52...Heck thats only a third of the Abit Kr7A and look around the boards on how many peeps are having some growing pains with them


Only thing though, is whatever savings you get from the board(against buying the 266a solutions or the Nforce), it will probably be redirected into getting a top of the line PSU; though thats not a bad idea to begin with.

 

[turk101]

Well...so far have had really good luck with this board....flawless installs and setup...from windows 98se,Win ME, windows 2000, and then onto Win XP....have good power supply from the beginning...crucial ddr ram....duron 800...then have XP1600 plus....gts video card ...etc...have the latest bios and using default xp drivers...really like this boad....has the on board lan....version 2 board....going to try the shuttle 735 board when it comes out to build my kids another one....sell their celeron setups...

 

[mboy]

I am 3 for 4 on the + side for this bopard. 1 board couldnt read the floppy. I just installed 1 for my 2nd rig and it has been extremely solid.
Look at the 1st 3 pages of posts in this forum. Problems with everything from the Soyo Dragon, to Asus,Epox, ,etc. All mobos have 1 problem or another.

 

[Quake]

I have one problem, My sound has statics whenever I run a heavyloads of graphics (Games,movies...) and the thing is It's doing it with the Onboard Sound Card and the SB LIVe
I have a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI, so I guess my video card is the problem, what do you think?

thanks

 

[networkman]

Just upgraded my gaming rig with this board - had to replace my power supply to work out some minor lockups, but aside from that it's been great.

I am overclocking with mine - I'm running it at the 133/133, which is overclocking for me cuz my Tbird is a 1000(locked at 10x) but it performs fine at the 133fsb for a 1333MHz chip. Very nice.

Edit: Yeah, it's the 200 chip, not the 266.

 

[lamplighter]

After frying my A7V last week I figured why should I get another Asus when there are so many other good mobo companies out there... so I get the K7S5A and I love it so far! It is so much cheaper than the others, has good features, I can use my Duron 600 and my SDRAM (although I'll have to lose a stick) and then in the future I can upgrade to Athlon XP and DDRAM anytime.

One question though, would my SB Live! Value be better than the onboard sound? Cause my SB card is just unused right now but the onboard sounds fine.. and I'm not one to be able to tell which is better

 

[lamplighter]

<< I have one problem, My sound has statics whenever I run a heavyloads of graphics (Games,movies...) and the thing is It's doing it with the Onboard Sound Card and the SB LIVe
I have a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI, so I guess my video card is the problem, what do you think?

thanks >>



I guess the fact that it does it with onboard sound rules this out... by I saw at ocworkbench.com that people have had problems with their Live! card in slot 5, and they say to put it in 3 or 4.

 

[SilverBack]

Quake
If the sound is doing it with both sound devices there are a couple of possible reasons.

Interference from a new objext around your pc (unshielded speaker, hand held walkie talkie, etc ) this is a very remote chance, but possible.

An IRQ conflict. In a perfect world, IRQ sharing works. Our world isnt perfect so it doesn't always.
If you are using 98 or ME download PCIList from
Entech Taiwan
Run the program and look to see what your system resources are and what kind of conflicts you may have.

 

[picardal]

It is because of you voodoo pci
Trust me on this one, i had the same problem stick an agp card in there

 

[SilverBack]

That's interesting. I wonder why it would do that?
Hmmm

 

[L00PY]

Could be that the card / drivers are hogging the PCI bus in order to give a better FPS number. I suppose you could try bumping the hardware acceleration slider (Display Properties, Advanced, Troubleshooting or something like that) down a notch or two and see if that helps any.

 

[hwstock]

<< PIC's of My PC, check it out! Winner of Maximum PC's Rig of the Month 11/01 >>



Pretty case, but...
1) I take it you don't worry about RFI?
2) doesn't the wood (a great insulator) make it a bit toastier inside?

 

[SilverBack]

Farther down on that page I listed the problems that I thought might happen with my Lan Box.
It's worked out very well. No stray static, the air flow is inline so there isn't any heat build up at all.
I'm satisfied with everything with the exception of the cd-rom access. I should have had it facing the front. But that's hindsight now




<< There were a lot of things that popped into my head about the case when I first visualized it. >>




1. Would a pc enclosure cause problems electrically?

As far as I can tell after working on it the past couple of weeks, there have been no electrical issues. Grounding is not a problem and there has been no static related issues or build up.

2. Wood is a good insulator. Will it have a problem with cooling?

I designed the case so that the air would move left to right, 1st across the video card, across the motherboard ,it would then exit through the power supply and across the hard drives. There is a fan pulling air out just next to the (2) 40gig IBM 60xp's. I have been more than surprised by the ambient case temp and the cpu temp itself. I have no real proof, but I do have a couple of theories. The case runs about 11 degrees F over my room ambient. That's not bad at all. 72F room means 83F case temps. While in a standard case 14F was normal. The cpu temps hold to the same pattern. The Soyo board comes with a utility for viewing cpu temps called ITE Smart Guardian. In a regular case, the cpu at idle was 43C and in the wood case 41C. I'm guessing two things have helped. The polyurethane coatings may be helping the airflow as there are 6 coats inside the box as well. Wood may not retain heat or heat up as easily as the regular case. So the heat doesn't remain trapped and moves easily with the airflow.

3. Since it is a wood enclosure and has 7 fans inside, would the case act like a resonator for sound similar to a piano or sub woofer?