ECS K7S5A PRO Mobo = $47 w/ free S/H plus free hat!

[0roo0roo]

have two. pro one isnt' bad, it handles various ram easily. the older non pro was a stickler though. usb ports work for me

not bad if you dont' have a frys i guess... those frys deals do rape this one badly though.

with this board its good to get it at a brick and morter for another reason.. quick exchange if you get a doa boardi'm surprised online sellers bother with it, seems the remailing would eat profits alive

 

[craftsman]

ECS K7S5A's are cheap and cheerful. They have nothing fancy but they work provided everything around it works - good PSU and RAM.

I just picked up a K7S5A PRO (Got it at Frys for $59 with an XP2000 ) to replace a K7S5A non-pro. There was nothing wrong with the K7S5A - I just couldn't resist the deal and I'm going to use the K7S5A for a home file server (yes, I'm a geek).

All I did was remove the old K7S5A, dropped in the new PRO board, did some BIOS settings, and WHAM! Everything came up and worked!

 

[Ranulf]

Originally posted by: Mephistokur

Originally posted by: Cleaner
Unfortunately Tom's found out that at least 40% of the boards sold had a major power/memory flaw in them. They only worked with very specific memory chips and you had to have a 300W or greater power supply to run the board, neither of which ECS told the customers. After this experience I will never buy anything made by ECS. Its buyer beware.

I trust Tom's Hardware about as far as I can throw their server. From my experience (I've bought a dozen of the K7S5A) I have yet to have any that didn't work flawlessly out of the box. This is a great mom's machine board. As for the 300w or above PSU, HELLLO! Its a board for an Athlon or Duron. AMD themselves say flat out that there are very few PSUs below 300w that work well with the these power hungry chips! How many times do you have to be told by different manufacturers to use 300w or above?

A dozen and counting - NO RMA's.

This is a steal at 47 bucks. Pair it with one of those 40 dollar 1700+ and you are good to go.

Ditto. Buyer Beware sure but I'm tired of crap ECS gets from some people. For the price, its hard to beat it. As far as it working with specific memory only..yeah right. I had mushkin ddr in there and several no name pc100 sticks in there and it runs fine and happy. If you have the money, get something a bit better but otherwise for a budget machine its a steal. Overall I'd say from what I've read it can run 50/50 at times on odds of getting a bad boad (with fry's rep I'd put that at 80% chance but I just don't trust fry's). Still I've personally known 3 people who have had no problems with it. It runs an XP Tbred just fine (something a friend with an abit 266a couldnt do).

 

[Danzilla]

Heck. Why would you buy a ECS SIS 735 motherboard when you can get an nForce2 refurbished (still better than ECS) starting around $60 at newegg?
While it may be a decent board, the SIS chipset just isn't up to speed with current boards.

 

[ivan2]

That's why u order this board from newegg, cuz their RMA is so much easier. I guess i am just back luck, but think again if it really have 40% of the mobo that sold are bad, im actually lucky (25% of what i experience is bad). Hey for the guy who have built a dozen computers using these, have you actually use all 12 of those and you sure there's no little problem like the computer reboots itself or frezzes? no USB problem neither? I think you are very fortunate.
One thing I've notice is that I wasnt using a 300 watt psu for them, maybe that really is a cause of problem. But if you think again, it really explains that there's a fault exists in their power routine.
But I am still happy about them because of how cheap they are. And i dont expect them to work as solid as intel boards in the first place. But they served me well in a price that i can affort.

 

[puppyfriend]

Originally posted by: tse200
good deal, for a budget rig and a free newegg hat to boot!

click me

Skeet

Why would you buy just the MB alone when for $9 less you can get it with a CPU at Fry's? Is that newegg hat worth it?

David

 

[Dran]

Originally posted by: puppyfriend

Originally posted by: tse200
good deal, for a budget rig and a free newegg hat to boot!

click me

Skeet

Why would you buy just the MB alone when for $9 less you can get it with a CPU at Fry's? Is that newegg hat worth it?

David

A K7S5A and CPU for $38? What's Fry's phone number? Budget be damned, I'll get two.

 

[MrCodeDude]

Time to ream the n00b

Originally posted by: s0ssos
ecs is not a good board. just look at the support forums on ecs' website.

*clap* *clap* Let's judge all products by their websites support forums! I mean, screw actual performance, did you see the support forums?

Originally posted by: s0ssos
i got one for my brother, and the usb 2.0 ports in the back don't work (k7s5a pro). so, how is that a good board?

1. Could be operator error
2. Not all boards are perfect, even with the cream of the crop, there are dud boards.

Originally posted by: s0ssos
and what hacker would want to use an ecs board for overclocking?

Heh, you're an idiot. Please leave the forum.

Originally posted by: s0ssos
for that same price you can find yourself another motherboard, like a msi kt3 ultra, or some motherboards using the via kt333 chipset

You show me where I can get a MSI KT3 Ultra (from a respectful dealer) for $47 shipped + a hat. Newegg is selling the KT3 Ultra for $68 + $5 shipping.

Maybe next time, before thread crapping and making blind-sided arguments, you do your research.
-- mrcodedude

 

[puppyfriend]

Originally posted by: Dran

Originally posted by: puppyfriend

Originally posted by: tse200
good deal, for a budget rig and a free newegg hat to boot!

click me

Skeet

Why would you buy just the MB alone when for $9 less you can get it with a CPU at Fry's? Is that newegg hat worth it?

David

A K7S5A and CPU for $38? What's Fry's phone number? Budget be damned, I'll get two.

Check out the thread on chubbywallet.

David

 

[TekDemon]

Originally posted by: RanulfIt runs an XP Tbred just fine (something a friend with an abit 266a couldnt do).

Yeah I've noticed my Shuttle AK31A has weird spastic sessions trying to run my AthlonXP(and it's not even a thoroughbred!) properly, and half the time it doesn't properly detect the chip while overclocking and makes up names and Mhz numbers. Sometimes the numbers make no sense at all.

But I got it to work anyway =P However, Shuttle's website shows there's NO SUPPORT to throroughbreds.

So if you want a cheap board to run a thoroughbred in, this is probably the cheapest you can go since most KT266A baords don't seem to support newer CPUs.

 

[s0ssos]

to mrcodedude, if you ever tried looking at ecs' support forums, as i have, you'll find that many people have problems with their usb ports. maybe you should check it out before you make a comment. because it's not just my board that's a dud, unless all the boards are duds

 

[HappyNic]

ECS k7s5a/pro is not that bad of a board and it really doesn't have that much problem compare to other boards, it's just that there's so many out there that you'll notice more problems than other name brands. You shouldn't really just judge a product base on their support forum since it's a forum mainly for support of their products and their problems. It's normal to see problem with this and that in those forums, I mean why else would you post in a support forum, besides questions, problems, and help solving some of them.

Most of the USB 2.0 problem can be fix by installing winXP sp1 and then removed the usb driver in their device manager and restart. it'll then detect the new usb 2.0 driver.

 

[ViperV990]

The BIOSTAR M7VIW for $49 shipped (KT266A/8235/SDR/DDR/Sound/LAN) seems to be a better deal.

Oh and BTW, the original KT266 was slow, but the KT266A was much faster.

 

[Cleaner]

Originally posted by: attention

Originally posted by: Cleaner
Yes some good some bad. I had revision 1.X ones and had nothing but problems. If you guys are getting them to work with revision 5 boards fantastic. I wish all the best to fellow Anandtechers I just got screwed. In regards to Toms yes they are fanboys but so is EVERYONE. Everyone has a bias even Anand.

Concerning power supplies I've got a 230W powersupply running my K7S5A board right now. It was rma's 3 times before I got one that worked with my rig. You don't need a 300W power supply to run a machine unless you've got more than 2 cdroms or the same number of hard drives. Dell Poweredge 2650 servers with TWO Xeon CPU's and 5 15K SCSI harddrives only have a 500W powersupply in them. So logically if you cut that in half and only have ONE cpu, and 2 7200RPM drives you're only at around 200W. Actually using a top of the line rig as an example the 3.06GHz Northwood has a power spec of 81.8 watts (http://www.cpuplanet.com/features/article.php/30231_1690721_2), an average hard drive uses 10W, an average cdrom 20W, and a big video card uses 40W. So using these figures we're at 160W. Thus all you people with 300W or greater powersupplies in your computers are just wasting electricity. These numbers are easily verifiable you just have to look.

Please don't counter argue unless you have verifiable facts to backup your 'perceived' ideas about how a computer works.

This is why analtech is what it is now. Morons like this guy.
Thank God there is Fatwallet!

Yep I'm the idiot who quoted facts and figures unlike you who just threw insults. If you had read my preceding post I did not insult anyone I was merely stating my OPINION on K7S5A's. When someone asked about it I gave them verifiable facts concerning such. I'm not going to revert to 4th grade name calling as I'm trying to HELP the Anandtech community by giving FACTS. If you don't like the 'community' atmosphere of Anandtech then don't post comments.

 

[jna]

Just my two cents, but I've learned that buying "budget" motherboards really doesn't save any money at all. If you can get a working unit, get it to work properly, and then give it to someone who is never going to upgrade it, install new drivers, or flash the BIOS, then it may be worth it - but good boards are less than $30 more.

As to the power supply issues - I have two Tbird systems that have been running for about 2 years with a 200W and 250W PSU. The problem with cheap power supplies is that a "300W" unit is usually designed to deliver 200W or less continuously. I even had a system running off of a 150W PSU, at least until the capacitors got sick (damn you Abit!) However, it had a 5400 RPM drive, a GF2MX, and 16x CD-ROM.

 

[phreakyzen]

Just my two cents, but I've learned that buying "budget" motherboards really doesn't save any money at all. If you can get a working unit, get it to work properly, and then give it to someone who is never going to upgrade it, install new drivers, or flash the BIOS, then it may be worth it - but good boards are less than $30 more.

What exactly is the logic here? I have used a K7S5A for 2 years now and have sold about 30 systems with the board in it. By your own words (31 x $30) I have saved over $900. I install new drivers and I flash the BIOS just like I would with any motherboard. How can you say it was not worth it?

 

[nexialist]

I have built 5 systems on the K7S5A mobo without any problems. They were built with Durons, T-birds, and thourobreds for performance but not overclocking. I have never had so few problems with a board.

$79.99 for this mobo (pro version) AND you get an AMD 2400+ at Fry's in the go area. They sell the mobo for 49.95


Dan