Memory question for older ESC K7S5A

[c1eddy]

Asked to add memory to a friends old K7S5A. I stuck in a pair of my unused 256mb PC2700 sticks to get him by till I order some new for him. Anybody know if I'll have problems with Kingston PC3200 KVR400/512R (supposedly backward compatible w/ PC2700, PC2100). Only reason I ask is that I have read that board is very finicky w/ memory, and I figure some here may have tried the combo themselves.

 

[Cerb]

Try it and see. Honestly, I never had any issues with quality RAM in those boards. Most of it being Kingston. Good RAM and good PSU, and the occasional new battery, and they ran fine. Until a cap busted, and...

Some did have problems running at 133MHz, though--the NB HS was usually to blame.

 

[CZroe]

NEVER switch to DDR in one of those boards without the owner agreeing to not hold you responsible. I've seen three people get burned (And many more on Google). Some of these boards inexplicably burn up themselves and the module as soon as you turn them on after switching! I mean literally burned. Black charred socket and everything.

Advice: Read the manual. See what must be changed before the memory switch (A bank of jumpers like some Via boards?)
Reset the CMOS BEFORE powering on. Keep the power disconnected and press the power button while the CMOS jumper is shorted to clear any remnants of power. Keep it that way before plugging back in and resetting the jumper.

My friend is still usins his SiS-based ECS K7S5A and we are reluctant to change anything about it after seeing what has happened to others (Especially when Googling for the problem)!

Why would the friend need better memory than PC2700 in a board that doesn't support higher FSBs?

 

[Broly]

I agree with Czroe here

My a7v333 back in the day with my XP 2000+ had a manual to tell me what BRANDS of ram it could take

I suggest yo uread the manual thoroughly to see if your brand is supported.

If it's not a DDR board do NOT do it, it will screw up everything.

 

[Cerb]

Eh. 50+, 4 DOA batteries, 1 wouldn't do 133MHz FSB, none had any trouble with Kingston or Crucial or Corsair DDR, several had bad caps after awhile.
I think the burning up ones are another case of the ages old problem of using shoddy PSUs, or bad caps that the people didn't notice (my neighbor's, FI, fried the main HDD when it died from bad caps).

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: Cerb
Eh. 50+, 4 DOA batteries, 1 wouldn't do 133MHz FSB, none had any trouble with Kingston or Crucial or Corsair DDR, several had bad caps after awhile.
I think the burning up ones are another case of the ages old problem of using shoddy PSUs, or bad caps that the people didn't notice (my neighbor's, FI, fried the main HDD when it died from bad caps).

No, I'm not saying that the incidents were recent. These boards were not old at the time! It happens as soon as you power on after changing the memory. It doesn't last a second in that config and there is no way in hell the PSU could be implcated. These are boards that ran well for months with SDRAM and toasted everything as soon as DDR was inserted. IIRC, even the CPU was shot. Many are simply defective in a way that does not affect SDRAM and the problem doesn't arise until after the switch.

 

[Tostada]

If you've already got him 512MB, it's absolutely not worth it to upgrade him to DDR. You're not going to notice a difference. Just let him have the memory (or give it to him cheap) since you're not using it.

Those boards are just terrible. It's unreasonable to spend money "upgrading" from SDRAM to DDR. Any money he spends on it should first be going into a better motherboard/CPU.

I've had tons of BIOS problems with those boards. Most get unstable over 100 MHz FSB. One had a secondary IDE channel that never worked. One burned and cracked the clock generator chips. I guess I never had any RAM problems with them.