K7S5A Arrived yesterday....and *EDIT - I'm a Dork!*

[JHSCOUGAR14]

First, take everthing out of the case and ensure that the power supply is AMD reccommended and at least 300 watts. Get a good power supply. Next install the processor correctly to the motherboard, and heatsink correctly to the processor; get thermal paste if you need to. Next, install the motherboard into the case, using proper jumpers or stand offs, making sure the motherboard is properly grounded from the case. Then hook the power supply up to the mother board, and cpu fan cable to the motherboard. Then hook up the power and reset swith cables to the motherboard from the case. Also with the K7S5a, make sure the jumper JP4 is set to Normal Setting, which is the jumper used to clear the contents of the CMOS on that board. Then install your memory or you can install memory before you put the board into the case. Then install the video card. If it's an AGP card, especially an old one, read to see if there are any settings to tweak. Some AGP cards may conflict that boards video out put; however, there should be power and the fans should spin around. Your problem may be a faulty or incompatible power supply. Check that power supply with another system to see if it works properly, or if you have an electrical meter, that would be sufficent to test it. Maybe you did just get a "bad MOBO". Make sure the processor is installed and seated properly too. Good luck!!!

 

[Duvie]

Ever wonder if some ppl actually read the threads???? ROFLMAO....

I agree AA0 only seems to bash and spread FUD then actually give constructive criticism...I help ppl with Via boards though I would sooner eat bugs then own another one....I keep that aside and try to help the person. I know how it feels to be stumped and need help not ppl bashing your purchase...

 

[foofoo]

i'm not trying to defend thread crapping but there is a valid point to sharing ones experiences if you think that it'll help someone. i personally had very bad experiences with more than 3 k7s5a boards and based on that experience i warn people away from them. if someone has one i try to help them and give constructive advice, but also tell them that if they cant get it going and have a choice on returning for credit toward a different board, that would be the way to go, in my opinion. for the most part, people are grown up. they can listen to varried opinions and make up their own mind.

 

[bowie71]

<< ...... i personally had very bad experiences with more than 3 k7s5a boards and based on that experience i warn people away from them.... >>



is there any possibility that you also did some mistake on these 3 K7S5A as gtd 2000 did?... just wondering..

 

[RossGr]

I attempted to build a ECS mobo last fall. The only difficulity I had starting it up was due to it not liking a PCI vid card in slot one. When I moved it to slot 4 the board booted up easily. I wiped the HD and and installed Win98se fresh. The board ran very well for about 3 weeks, then it began locking up randomly and finally refused to boot. Fortunatly, I was close enough to the return date that Fry's took it back for instore credit. That day I brought home an ASUS A7M (now that is going to the oppsite extreme!) I installed without wiping the HD. So same operating system same PS (Enermax) same everything. The ASUS ran beautifully. Then I began to feel the pinch it was causing on my pocket book and ordered a Shuttle AK31. This board is also running the same OS install and has been running flawlessly for something like 5 months.

My point? There are bad ECS boards out there, do not jumb on every ECS problem as a build by a know nothing nubie. (I was building systems while many of the posters on this board were in grade school.) I do not currently own a ECS, though I would build another, During the time it ran it ran very nice indeed, just wish it had lived a bit longer.

 

[Duvie]

foofoo,

What you are talking about sounds fine....Offer some advice, give a brief history of your experience with same product,then offer course to remedy...that is fine....

As for AA0....I don't think he owns or has owned an ECS k7s5a board....Unless I missed it and he is an eletrical engineer, though i doubt it with some of his statements...how can he say "poorly designed"?? Is he qualified to make that statement??

That is thread crapping!!!

 

[Peter]

AA0 just pisses on every ECS thread he finds. Ignore.

Ross, you might have been bitten by a BIOS bug regarding PCI cards that apparently existed in the December to February BIOSes - the new March 25 release has returned to being OK.

My 830LR aka K7S5A wouldn't run my LSI Symbios SCSI card no matter what. Got the new BIOS, all was well from that moment on. Four PCI cards (two of them dual-function), 14 PCI device instances total, all fine and well.

regards, Peter

 

[Regalk]

Before you guys diss AA0 - remember he may have come over from ocworkbench.com where others like him and even before him found out about the shortcomings of the board a loong time ago and that includes the PS issue! Nothing new here - the early revisions were real horror stories - I had 2 of them so I know and they are gone to the heap now.
ECS is basically a large OEM manufacturer and not for the hobbyist - their entry into the overclockers/hobbyist market was bound to meet with problems.
If you want a top notch system go with some of the better known names - its as simple as that. My ECS experiment was just that an experiment.
ECS could have at least provided some (any) support for it when they entered this market segment.

And as I said so many times before - why buy a cheap board and an expensive PS when you could buy a better quality board and a cheaper PS?

 

[Buz2b]

Regalk:
I built at least two of the K7S5A's in the past with the very first revision of that board; along with about 4 more with various subsequent versions. No one says you have to get an "expensive" PS; just a decent one that puts out the AMD recommended voltages in a reasonably clean form. A 300 watt Sparkle is a good example of this. They are not in the same price class as a PC Power & Cooling PS or 450 watt Enermax, but they are an approved Power Supply for up to an Athlon XP 2100+. I have used three of those with no troubles whatsoever. Their price was exactly $5.00 over that of a "Fry's Generic" Power Supply. $5.00 is hardly worth the time it takes to think about it. Your argument does not hold water. What I am talking about is a user accepting responsibility for building their system with at least reasonable quality parts. No one said to buy an inexpensive MB and expensive Power Supply. And as you might know, I was "in" on the very beginnings with this MB release here at AT and 75-80 percent of the troubles reported in those "early days" were directly related to poor quality, underpowered PS's. A good portion of the remainder were simple user errors. Yes, there were failures. With the sheer numbers of those boards that were sold, those failures seemed disproportionate when compared to other MB's of that time. That is the main reason that the board got the "rep" as a poor quality product with some users when others thought that they were terrific. Too bad you had problems but no matter how you slice it, the board is a good one; solid and reliable as most on the market. I've had troubles with IWILL before but that doesn't mean I give them a "bad rap". It just means I had some trouble with them; plain and simple. For folks like AAO to "stalk" ECS threads with the simple idea of "trashing" them, I have no respect for them.

<< If you want a top notch system go with some of the better known names - its as simple as that >>

Now here we agree!! When folks purchase the K7S5A they are not spending top dollar for a top-of-the-line MB. They are spending +/- $60 for a good price/performance"-its as simple as that."

 

[gtd2000]

Well the board seems to be running fine indeed.

Yes it was a bit daft messing up the connectors - especially when I've put together quite a few systems in the past.
Well it's much more fun for others when you are honest - as well as perhaps letting others know that it may well be a simple oversight that caused the trouble.

I'm just using my Duron 700 in it at the moment until I swap it out for my Duron 1G. Actaully managed to overclock the Duron to 933Mhz yesterday for about 2 mins, but it requires a bump in voltage to maintain that speed.

I'll be running the system for a week or so to see if everything is stable then I'll perhaps update to the latest BIOS and see if I can get my 1G Duron back upto 1.2G's - or in that region anyway.

One of the reasons I went for an ECS board in the first place was from previously using systems at work based on them a few years ago - never had any problems with them whatsoever.
Obviously combined with the price and the upgrade path it makes it a no-brainer choice. The "non-Overclocker" nature of this board is a moot point as you are already saving enough $$$ to pay for the upgrade to a faster CPU in most instances

The CMOS jumper issue - on my board this is silk-screened as

JP4: 1-2 Clear CMOS, 2-3 Default

This may confuse some people looking for "Normal" etc etc - maybe I have a different revision?
I'm sure I have a rev. 1 board though?

 

[Regalk]

I still stand by my original comment that ECS falls in the 2nd or 3rd tier manufacturers where quality is suspect. Don't get me wrong I believe the K7S5A/K7S6A are good value/performance boards but not to my standards. I bought them just to try out and didn't like them - just my opinion. If others like them well enough to make it their main systems then thats just fine and dandy.
Price was not a factor when I bought them since I like to test different manufacturers out which is why MSI K7T turbo/MSI K7T Pro266-RU are in 2 of my home systems, Asus P4S333, EPOX 8KHA+, IWILL KK266 and ABIT ST6 in my other home LAN.

 

[foofoo]

bowie71---


<< is there any possibility that you also did some mistake on these 3 K7S5A as gtd 2000 did?... just wondering.. >>




not likely, one was doa and i tried everything. the other 3 were very unstable. all with enermax 350, 400 ps and all of latest bios at the time. i could get them stable only at 100 fsb which was unacceptable to me. i swapped working parts from many boxes trying to get stability.
as a point, the exact same parts that were unstable when connected to the k7s5a have been stable and fast on both a shuttle ak31a and (currently) on a soltek sl75drv2.
it's a real pity actually. i really hoped that the ecs would be a cheap/fast/reliable mb but it just wasnt, in my experience.

duvie--
i agree that aao is way over the line, i was just trying to point out that negative comments, in the right context, arent necessarly a bad thing.

 

[Iron Woode]

I have only built 1 system using the ECS, and it worked just fine. If something happens to it, so be it.

I use an MSI K7T Turbo board and I had to deal with AA0's abuse. He would have more respect if he could actually get his facts straight. He rags about my board when his gripe was with the MSI K7T Pro2 or 2-A. Granted its virtually identical to mine, but its not the same.

I too try to help others if I can. But to just state that such-and-such board is crap doesn't help anyone, except maybe AA0's ego.

 

[Peter]

Yeah right, regalk, that's why ECS have skyrocketed to become the #1 mainboard maker (in shipped numbers)
in the world, and stayed there. The reason is the very K7S5A, the best selling single mainboard EVER.
If you believe in statistics, that is.

Of course they only sell that much because half of it is broken and people have to get another.

regards, Peter

 

[AA0]

You know, a board might work for you, or for some people, but the shear number of complaints coming from this board is not normal. It is poorly built. If you have any doubts, just look at other ECS reviews and see how badly they make their boards.


Yes, house wiring is a factor, weather you believe it or not. I have a ups with voltage regulation on it. If I use a cheap psu on my system, which is quite powerful, I will not have problems with stablility or rebooting, the same as a high quality psu. If I take the ups off, they will both randomly reboot. I've seen this happen on many situations, most people just buy a massive 400W plus psu, because that should be able to offset your power problems, but not always.

I strongly dislike ECS boards, they're failure is very high, which most of you seem to ignore, or perhaps you're too short sighted? If you plan to keep a system running for years, then get something else, the chance it will die is too high. As for my MSI bashing, they screwed up big time on some boards, and I have emails sent to be stating how much MSI cost them, out of 125 boards installed that were MSI, one person is now over 40 that are dead. Each week more fail. That is a reason to bash them, not unwarranted.

ECS is #1 because they are cheap, not because they have quality. They also sell boards under a dozen names or so.

Iron Woode, I state problems with boards. If you are too sensitive to deal with a board you bought maybe have issues, then I suggest you let someone else buy things for you. My facts are straight.

I'm sorry I don't sugar coat things for you guys... too many idiots think they know what they are talking about because the one board they bought works fine. Take a look at the big picture for once.

 

[bowie71]

<< ...........If you plan to keep a system running for years, then get something else, the chance it will die is too high. >>



who wants to keep a mobo for years?.. normaly people like me and also others I believe, upgrade the mobo twice a year or keep it for a year or two only for second system.



<< I'm sorry I don't sugar coat things for you guys... too many idiots think they know what they are talking about because the one board they bought works fine. Take a look at the big picture for once. >>



yeah, and there are also too many idiots who look everythin at the big picture all times and forget the basic thing which is that the purposes of this forum is to help people and sharing experiences, not to bush and spread FUD

 

[AA0]

actually the people that upgrade their motherboard twice a year are an extremely small minority. The majority of people use them until they are too slow for bloated MS code...

I help people all the time, I just state what happens to certain boards. I have no agenda, my recommendation to avoid a certain motherboard is to help.. unlike most people, that just like to promote certain brands. If you look at what I post, I recommend many types of boards, but there are 3 or names I avoid due to their consistantly bad past. If you owned a business, and recommended ECS to business customers, you would not be in business for long...

 

[Iron Woode]

<<Yes, house wiring is a factor, weather you believe it or not. I have a ups with voltage regulation on it. If I use a cheap psu on my system, which is quite powerful, I will not have problems with stablility or rebooting, the same as a high quality psu. If I take the ups off, they will both randomly reboot. I've seen this happen on many situations, most people just buy a massive 400W plus psu, because that should be able to offset your power problems, but not always.>>

Ok.... if your house has a history of "dirty" power then your statements make sense. However, the vast majority of people don't have this problem and so this statement is foolish. You obviously haven't a clue about electrical engineering or even rudimentary computer science.

Random reboots are 99% software related. A good PSU is always beneficial, but not required by most boards. I ran my MSI Turbo with a 250 watt Antec PSU. It is not on the recommended list or the minimum often listed on this message board, but it works flawlessly at all the correct voltages. My cheap and generic 300 watt PSU is not recommended either and guess what? It works just fine.

<<I strongly dislike ECS boards, they're failure is very high, which most of you seem to ignore, or perhaps you're too short sighted? If you plan to keep a system running for years, then get something else, the chance it will die is too high. As for my MSI bashing, they screwed up big time on some boards, and I have emails sent to be stating how much MSI cost them, out of 125 boards installed that were MSI, one person is now over 40 that are dead. Each week more fail. That is a reason to bash them, not unwarranted.>>

More unsubstantiated, self-serving drivel. Actually the ECS failure rate is low. Abit has a higher RMA rate. You are actually seeing a disproportionate ratio of complaints to congrats because people tend to post problems instead of kudos and because they made a huge amount of these boards compared to, say, Abit. As for your anti MSI bias: your opinion means nothing to anyone. The Turbo boards were/are among the best made by MSI. The Pro series were the ones with the problems. Again your ignorance is showing.

<<Iron Woode, I state problems with boards. If you are too sensitive to deal with a board you bought maybe have issues, then I suggest you let someone else buy things for you. My facts are straight.>>

As for this little bit of insight: it seems you are the one with issues. As Nomad said in that Star Trek episode "the changeling": Non sequiter. Your facts are in error.

My board does not have any issues, period. It is painfully clear to everyone you have zero PC building experience, but a whole lot of trolling experience. Here's a suggestion for you: Stop trolling. Then go and get some real PC building experience and stop assuming a MB company is crap because you read a number of complaints on some message boards about them.

The truth is out there. Try looking for it.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

<< That's ok. Glad your experience went well just like mine did! >>

I caught your post about giving it a try, that's great to hear it worked as expected, I knew it would

 

[poppasp1ce]

This thread gets me upset.

 

[AA0]

I've beem building and troubleshooting PCs longer then 99% of the people here have. I do large amounts of troubleshooting.

The power issue is far more common then you would believe. PSU upgrades are just a quick fix. 250W PSUs easily can handle the load of a system, even the most powerful systems.
Random reboots are rarely software related when I troubleshoot them, they are often brownouts here. The power level drops all the time, but usually won't do anything unless you are using a lot of power, like opening an app or transfering files, etc.

Abit RMA used to be much higher, but they weren't due to deffective boards. I know a store owner that told one of the workers they could keep any Abit RMAs he could get working again, 9/10 RMAs he got working.

I've done a lot of looking into the MSI problems, I'm not in error. The Turbo isn't as signifacant, but it exists.

 

[Buz2b]

There's an old saying:
"Sometimes it is better to let someone think you're a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

I think, AAO, you should heed this. Enough of this drivel now.

 

[bowie71]

<< There's an old saying:
"Sometimes it is better to let someone think you're a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." >>



I also have a wiseword from my oldman, "empty bottle sounds louder when you hit it"

 

[alcopro]

I have to say that some ppl here seem to get all hyped up about brand loyalty... And also that I just built an ECS K7S5A system (see Champ in my rigs) and it went beautifully. I did end up changing the cpu hsf, but that is no fault of the board, the retail hsf that came with the Athlon XP 1600+ just scared me with high temps, so I put in an HCC-001 (not the heatpipe version) and thats doing fine. I also built the other rig in my list, with an Epox board and had no problems, maybe(definitely) I have been lucky, but I love the ECS board.

 

[Witchfinder]

I bought my K7S5a as a stopgap last november whilst waiting for ATA133, USB2, FireWire, AGP8X to appear (Iwasn`t going to pay £150 for a top notch Dragon+ with that lot just around the corner!) and though that when all that is standard fare, I could move the 5A into the server along with a cheapo Duron and PC133 RAM.

I didn`t expect much but this thing has been as stable as my old BX setup (which is now in the server) and have used 3 more of the boards for other people`s systems without hitch on any count, I always buy them locally (saves RMA costs IF a dud turns up) and never fit a TB 1.4 (where according to OCW it would seem the most probs arise) always a Morgan Duron or XP Athlon - 100% success every time.

People see the spec of my system and see what I`ve spent on the case, cooler, XP1800+ etc and Laugh "Why did you spend all THAT on the rest and leave in a POS board" - because it`s only about 3% slower than a VIA266A board, there`s no wrestling with 4-in-1 drivers, no PCI latency probs (I use it for heavy 24bit Audio work) and of course the BX-Like stability.. I`m in no hurry to change it and only WILL when all the new stuff is available on a board with a future *SiS* chipset - Yeah the power requirements seem to be in the 8KHA+ league, but Cheaping out on the PSU is a bad move anyway