NewEgg has REFURBISHED: ECS K7S5A PRO USB 2.0 SiS® 735 SOCKET A MOTHERBOARD for $37.50 shipped

[stockjock]

I know its refurbed..but I have had good luck with these boards. They also include the backplate.

Here's a Linky for ya.

Its now $37...woo hoo...save an extra .50

 

[GnatGoSplat]

Looks like they have 27 of 'em.
I don't know if that's such a great deal though, I had one and didn't like it at all.
I bought a few MSI MS-6590 from Newegg's refurb section for $39 shipped. They're KT400's, USB2.0, 6 PCI slots, and super stable.

 

[stockjock]

I know they are not the greatest boards..but they have the abiltiy to take PC133 or PC2100

 

[Tab]

I wouldn't touch ECS board with a 10' pole...

 

[puppyfriend]

I've bought about 5 of these overtime at Fry's and it rocks. It's the only motherboard that I've ever upgraded using a new CPU. Most of the time, by the time better CPUs come out the MB is too obselete to use it. ECS keeps this board up to date with BIOS releases. I started with a 900Mhz Athlon, move on to a 1.33 Tbird and now I'm using a XP 2100+.

David

 

[altonb1]

Originally posted by: Tabb
I wouldn't touch ECS board with a 10' pole...

A few weeks ago, I ordered one of these boards with a 1700+ retail processor. I hooked everything up and....nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, because it fried the CPU, fried my video card, and corrupted all the data on my hard drive. But the fans never really spun at all, and I certianly did not get to POST.

I order a 2nd board, plugged it in, and everything went through POST fine. (or so I thought). Realized that the 2nd IDE controller was flaky after troubleshooting for awhile. Gave up, RMA'd it, as well, and bought a Shuttle AK32A motherboad instead. Much better, and it supports overclocking.

I would run from this board. The differences between the Shuttle board and the ECS board are minor: USB 2.0 on the ECS vs. 1.1, and no AMR modem support. Hmm...no NIC, either. Otherwise, they both support SDRAM and DDR, have 5 or 6 PCI slots, etc.

 

[themelon]

I have gone through about 15 of these boards with only 2 being bad. Very good for the price, but I would not buy a refurb if my life depended on it. Especially if you live near a frys. They are selling these boards for $49 now. Just dont buy one with the little white frys return sticker on it.

 

[hans007]

my friend's died last night.


newegg has the l7L7S7A2, with 333 bus for $4 more. better deal i'd say. 8x agp, 4 channel sound, better fsb, and you might get the 6 in 1 media reader

 

[Thump553]

I've built about six computers with this motherboard and only had one go bad. I'd buy another-but I would not buy a "refurbished" motherboard of any brand name. I mean face it-there is nothing to fix on a motherboard (except battery replacement). Newegg is just reselling their returns, hoping that whatever defect/problem the first buyer had you won't encounter.

 

[GnatGoSplat]

I don't think so.
It really seems like Newegg sends returns back to the manufacturer, and what they get in return is what they sell as "refurbs". I think this is the case, because whether the motherboard comes complete with accessories or comes in its proper retail box seems to depend on the brand. This seems to me as thought they get them exactly the same way as they received them back from the manufacturer.

Also, I have bought numerous refurb mobo's and haven't had even the slightest problem with them. I've bought at least 10 from Newegg, and had a 100% success rate and 0% failure rate. If these were simply returns, I would think my success rate wouldn't be so good.

 

[stevejst]

1 out of 6, 2 out of 15? That is good?
I went through 10+ Abit boards, none went bad. Howz that? Not to mention the performance difference since ECS is a joke compared to Abit.

 

[-Omen-]

In case anynody is interested, I have one of these brand new for sale - and NOT FROM FRYS

 

[stockjock]

My luck with refurbed boards from Newegg has been very good...I've ordered at least 6 of these boards and have never had a problem...although recently I bought an ABIT KD7 refurbed from them and the copper inlaid wiring on the back of the board was burnt through and hanging off the board....so I wasn't happy about that...but I'll take my chance and buy refurbs from them.

 

[Replay]

The K7S5A refurb boards onsite today have been there since Friday. The "good stuff" sold out quickly, as usual.

I have a K7S5A ($32 refurb July-2002, non-pro) and am ready to step up to another board.

Cheap chipset heatsink held on with tape caused gaming lockups until I added a small fan.
Infamous "lost bios" issue, where the clock and bios settings are wiped out from time to time.
Some have stability issues with 2 sticks of sdram.
Reputed to misbehave with cheap power supplies.
Limited OC options (3rd party bioses exist with OC features 100/112/124/133/138/147/150/166).

The good: bargain priced all-in-one board
PC133 or DDR support (but DDR is cheap now).
Onboard AC97 sound, LAN, USB2 (Pro version)
Runs all Athlon-Duron 100 or 133 MHz cpus.

At $37 you are just two bucks away from the KT333 KT400 and some NForce refurbs. Newegg now says their refurbs are in many cases customer returns, and Newegg doesn't test anything.

 

[swifty]

One of the best boards I have ever used. I have a duron processor in mine
would not change it for anything - after all with aduron it was less than $100

 

[Hook]

I just installed mine. It looks like it is new (arrived in original box with all parts, cd, manual, etc. sealed in anti-static bag). I had no problems with the install (except that WinXP want to be re-activated...).

A few months ago, I bought a refurbed ECS K7S5A from Newegg and it also looked new and has had no problems.

So far I've had good luck with these boards and Newegg's refurb deals...

 

[GeoffS]

I've had more Abits blow their caps on me than K7S5A boards fail. My current DC farm has 13x K7S5As and 1x K7S5A Pro... no problems that I've noticed. Stable 24x7 boards for me!

 

[chin311]

blah, teh infamous LOVE and HATE of ECS. i dunn0, i've only had one board (K7S5a-nonpro) and its ran fine and never had any sort of problems....not saying that next time i buy a board its gonna be an ECS, but its been a decent board to me.....don't think i'd buy a refurb tho

 

[Thump553]

Originally posted by: stevejst
1 out of 6, 2 out of 15? That is good?
I went through 10+ Abit boards, none went bad. Howz that? Not to mention the performance difference since ECS is a joke compared to Abit.

Two out of two Abit motherboards I've owned died also, and both gave me endless configuration problems before they did. In the one ECS K7S5A MB that went bad, a cap blew a little over one year after installation in a 24/7 service. I'm not happy with that but it appears to have been a fluke occurence

Every time ECS K7S5A comes up in a thread there are always two or three "experts" that pipe in claiming this board is absolute trash and the spawn of the devil. I'm an intermediate level home builder and have been very happy with this board. Just use quality memory and a good power supply-which you should do anyway.

I still won't buy a refurb motherboard, its not worth the risk, potential delay and aggravation to me, but this may be acceptable risks to others.

 

[GnatGoSplat]

Yeah, but why bother? For the price of a K7S5A, there are much better and faster boards that take SDRAM like the Shuttle AK32A or MSI KT2 Combo-L.

 

[antmanbee]

I'm with hans007, I also at this point in time would rather buy a L7S7A2.
I have built about a dozen with the K7S5A boards with no problems but now it is getting a bit dated.
The ECS quality has been good for me so I had no reservations about trying a new L7S7A2.
For about $20 more than a refurb K7S5A you can have a new L7S7A2 that has a lot more features
and can O/C easily. I just built my first with the L7S7A2 a couple of days ago and I am very pleased.

 

[s0ssos]

my experience from ecs has been pretty bad. the first one the heatsink fell off cause a latch broke. so it fried the cpu.
the second one was a deal at fry's. one of those cpu mobo combo deals, and my brother wanted a newer computer, so i got it for him.
well, it turned out that the motherboard works, but none of the usb 2.0 ports did. so, there is no such thing as usb 2.0 on the k7s5a pro board for me.
plus, looking through the ecs support website, and all the faq's, it seems like a lot of people have problem with the usb ports. some can't even get the usb 1.1 ports to work