I've built over 15 systems with the K7S5A, most of them EARLY revisions. hell I ran the first version untill 2 weeks ago... I have not had one board DOA yet, I have purchased them from several online vendors. (newegg/tufshop/pricewatch venders) I have replaced a few cmos batteries and did some Powersupply swapping. not much but some. Do I think this board is picky? in some ways yes but it really isnt that bad. I dont use all top-notch components, I build alot of cheap systems for people on a TIGHT budget. they cant afford cruical ram or enermax powersupplies. Basically if you use common sense 9 out of 10 times you are going to be fine. I've had a k7s5a running on a cheap 230watt psu, and I've had one that didnt like a 300wat psu, instead of screaming that the boards were "poorly designed" I did a little bit of leg work and come to find out the 230watt had more juice on the 5/12V lines, I'd blame half of the ECS psu woes on poorly designed and adverstised PSU's instead of it being soley the boards fault.
I go to ocworkbench on a daily basis that place is THE ECS HUB on the internet. Yes a TON of people post there because they are having problems. a TON of them get it fixed easly and Alot of them have geniunely defective boards, but I wouldnt even think of claiming that ecs has the highest failure rate or is the most unstable motheroards. I simply do not have the data to make that assumption with any kind of certanity, But I can say that just because there is 500 complaints on the ecs boards vs 50-100 on the asus/abit boards on OCworkbench doesnt really mean anything. Just stand back and think how many K7s5a's ecs has sold ALONE... Millions.... thats not including there other budget mobos. you could say "Oh, they sold so many because they are sh*t boards and you have to buy two to get a good one" But I would suggest not saying that to someone who has never RMA's one and has a stack of empty k7s5a boxes in my spare closet from floor to waist height...