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As I have said in several forums - it is pointless to buy a $50 board and a $75+ PS to run it. Add to that the number of times the video card/Ram needs to be reseated to get it to work if at all. I learnt the hard way not once but twice. A fellow by the username of Mr Athlon and a few others revealed a number of short comings about the board before we were practically kicked off www.ocworkbench.com for challenging ECS to respond. They did all right byt telling us to shut up pr face legal action.
Trash the board or use it for a wall hanger or somethin useful and get a real board - the one thing you should never go cheap on anyway is the main component - motherboard. A real shame Asus or MSI did not choose to market their version of the K7SiS boards and allowing the likes of ECS to thrive. >>
LOL!! I DID get banned from Ocworkbench. They sent me some nasty emails (nice guys, told me to FO and a few other colorful metaphors). I simply told the truth about Mr. Athlon's fix which worked for my k7s5a ver 4 1.4 athlon after weeks and countless hours of frustration. I called ECS tech twice and if I listened to them, I would have replaced every piece of hardware except the mobo. "it's your psu, it's your ram, etc." . Horse puckey! Mr. Athlon was right and ECS was CYA. ECS obviously has those guys at OCWB shakin in their boots with the threat of a lawsuit......they pulled all references to Mr. Athlon, mine and anyone else that dared post problems these boards have that requires physically altering the mobo like the resistor fix. ECS should be the ones quaking from a class action lawsuit in my opinion. These mobo's are a crapshoot......a blind squirrel finding a nut; every once in while, you find one that works. BTW, I was warned on the forum to never come back.
I also have a Duron 1 ghz in another k7s5a and it's out of action. My son was playing on it and the next morning I found the screen froze up, so I tried to reboot and nothing....the hdd and cdrom lights stay on and that's it. I've heard the battery can go bad (cheap), so that will be my last try before I RMA it.
This mobo, once you figure it out (be forewarned!!!) is ok, but I'll never buy another ECS. I will say though the SiS 735 chipset is less buggy than the via kt133......but you have to know these things inside and out. I agree, it's too bad the other board makers didn't run with the SiS.
BTW, speaking of chipset, removing the heatsink, reapplying it and adding a fan is supposed to help a lot. I experimented by blowing a fan directly on it and did seem to help. HOWEVER, Mr. Athlon, on his own website, says there is a potential power problem on the mobo to the chipset. I'll believe him before I'd take the word of those cowtows on Ocworkbench. By the time you get done, you could have gone out and bought a Soltek Dragon LOL.
I also built a pc with a Shuttle AK31a, and so far it's been rock stabile with no problems. Now this is a great card for the money. Of course, there will those who say it's not, but compared to the ECS crap, it's a great mobo. The Soyo I built is "ok", but not as good as the Shuttle. Yeah, I know ECS builds the Shuttle boards, but they didn't design them. The next pc is a Gigabyte......we'll see how it does.