Persuade me or dissuade me from buying the ECS k7S5A

[RaynorWolfcastle]

I want to put it in my next build, but all these problems I read about it make me nervous. Try to convince me that I should or should not buy it

OH, the CPU will be an AthlonXP 1600+ and the PSU will be 350W Antec

-Ice

 

[Pabster]

Don't listen to the whiners. 99% of them have never owned, nor currently do, the K7S5A (or any other ECS board, for that matter.)

There's no more a chance of receiving a faulty K7S5A than any other board out there. You simply can't buy a better price/performance ratio right now.

 

[CraigRT]

That board was NOT nice to me when I set one up.. it was the most picky SOB I have ever used and hopefully won't have to deal with one again..

I voted I wouldn't touch it with a 10ft pole.. no need to skimp on a vital component of a system such as a mobo...

 

[flood]

Ive built 4 systems on an ecs k75sa and have never had any problems. Theyre fast and stable. Heck, I even used one as a stand in server for a month... ~75-100 load and had a month of uptime after a fresh win2k install.
Best of all, no 4-in-1 drivers.

 

[ToBeMe]

VERY nice board! They had problems when they first became available, and you should use quality components, but, the ones available now are very fast compared to Via and very stable! Definately go for it!

 

[robisc]

I built a new system with one and have had 0 problems ever with it. Great board for the money I say.

 

[Workin']

<< Don't listen to the whiners. 99% of them have never owned, nor currently do, the K7S5A (or any other ECS board, for that matter.) >>

Well, since Pabster threw in his 2 cents worth....

I'm not a whiner (I'm a winner! ) and I've owned 6 K7S5A's. But not anymore. They all fell down and went boom. And even the divine Pabster couldn't figure out how to make them do their thing again. Or what went wrong. Please don't make me post the details, they are in another recent thread along this same line of questioning.

I think mostly you pays your money and you takes your chances. But I personally wouldn't touch another one of those boards with a 10 ft. pole. I don't even like being in the same room as one

 

[CocaCola5]

Perhaps the only annoyance I ran into with this board(rev.1.0) was it had problems transferring large, 200MB+ files, between my two hard drive which was both on a promise 100 card. Otherwise, it ran awesome, no spurious crash I could remember.

 

[edjam]

It's a great board, and you can recylce your old SDRAM for a while too!

 

[NinjaGnome]

ive had 2 of these and both of them have died and i can even rma them cause ecs never has any reps available to give me an rma number. i have tried 4 times waiting an hour and a hlaf each time. buy from a quality manufacturer. I WILL NEVER BUY ECS AGAIN:|

 

[Siva]

I've dealt with 3, only got 1 up running, it didn't last long though. I'm not incompetant or anything, though i'm no expert, I would stay away from em myself. Though admittedly one of the boards didn't work cause the PSU wasn't adequate, that was my friend's fault. still it was a 300w sparkle, not a bad PSU.

 

[zzzz]

wait for K7S6A or abit's mobo with sis 745 chipset. If you don't want to wait, go for K7s5A.
BTW, using two boards. They are stable, fast etc. One has the problem of warm booting.(hangs at boot detection when you reboot, works fine if you shutdown and restart) But it doesn't bother me much as I reboot may be once a week.

 

[CocaCola5]

To be fair, I must say I didn't enable hdd SMART which may be the problem, however, I since have changed my configuration and haven't been able to verify this.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Hmmm... I'm feeling a little more confident about buying it now but workin' still has me worried

-Ice

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Do we have an ETA for the K7S6A?

-Ice

 

[Vyle]

Bought a K7S5A from Newegg. Installed it with a 1000 mhz Tbird and it's been running fine for three weeks now.

The problems: The ram slots are the tightest I've ever seen on a mobo. You have to apply a lot of pressure to get those puppies in there. The only real problem I've had with it is my board doesn't seem to like two sticks of PC-133 in it. I've got a 256mb stick in one slot. If I put anything in the other...I get lockups. I've tried with three different brands of ram. Hmmm...

But other than that, it's been stable and fast with no other problems. It was cheap and it works. I was on the fence a long time before getting one, too. But I looked at it this way, it was a sixty dollar investment. I've spent more on ram in the past. I figured if it didn't work out, if I didn't like it, I could sell it to somebody and make at least some of my money back. But if it worked, I'd have a cool system for little cash. I say go for it.

 

[Hankysmoo]

Its so cheap and I heard enough good posts about it that I decided to order one from newegg and give it a try along with an XP 1600 myself. I'll tell you how it goes...

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Probably not, I'm ordering tomorrow

-Ice

 

[Budman]

I built 2 of those,1 with 1.4ghz Athlon with pc133 & an other with a AthlonXP 1600+ with 256 DDR.

They both work very well,and they are cheap.

 

[zzzz]

<< The only real problem I've had with it is my board doesn't seem to like two sticks of PC-133 in it. I've got a 256mb stick in one slot. If I put anything in the other...I get lockups. I've tried with three different brands of ram. Hmmm... >>


I am running 2 256Mb of crucial PC133 sticks without problems. (kicking myself for not buying DDR when it was cheap.)

 

[Budman]

<< I am running 2 256Mb of crucial PC133 sticks without problems. (kicking myself for not buying DDR when it was cheap.) >>



Same here on both counts.freaking high priced DDR:|

 

[NFS4]

Never had as much trouble out of any other motherboard as I did with the K7S5A. That's all I have to say.

 

[gogeeta13]

Well, if my 14+ perfectly stable ECS systems mean anything to you..

SOme run 98, some me, some 2k, some XP. All are fast and stable, and all beat the crap outa VIA!

 

[RagingGuardian]

It's the worst board I ever owned. It was really picky about components and the board would frequently reboot whenever it saw fit.

 

[Pabster]

Ought to add an option "Do you, or have you ever, owned the ECS K7S5A?" and only tally those responses. Of course, people would lie anyway.

IMHO, there's not a better price/performance ratio to be bought. 99% of the "complaints" are from people who do not, and have not ever, owned any ECS mainboard -- let alone the K7S5A.