what do you guys have to say about the ECS K7S5A

[lotust]

xbitlabs.com review

before you trash on it. its 57$ at newegger


im not gonna overclock with it. But i do like the features. Onboard LAN, and the memeory options are a ++ ,Supports all AMD XP Processors too

whats your input ?

 

[cavemanmoron]

i have 2
yes is cheep price
had to upgrade bios from day 1
spoiled by using epox/abit/iwill mboards in past [kt7a etc]
will try 266a next time

 

[zzzz]

good mobo. There are a lot of problems reported but none for me so far.( apart from the win2k floopy issue which was resolved via the bios update)

 

[lotust]

kewl... what cpus are you guys using in them? i see they support all XP's according to neweggs site ?

 

[Yihaa]

I have two. They have never given me porblems at all.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

mine has been running a 1.4 T-Bird@ default and 1.54ghz for approx. 11 weeks now and runs very stable. I did have the CMOS battery die on me but I have many extras so no big deal. Especially since the KTS that came in it isn't exactly the best to begin with. I would personaly buy the AK31A for 30$ more if I were looking for a board right now but that's just me.

 

[osage]

Well I have 2 of these boards and I like them....I have seen quite a few posts from ppl having probs with them, but I have had no issues with mine.
Use good quality components and you should be fine. I have retired my Iwill KK266 since getting the second K7SA, that's how much I like these mobos.

Running a 1.2 and 1.3 T-bird, both with 256mb Crucial DDR.........XPs coming soon I hope

 

[hmkjohn]

I recently purchased this motherboard and had to RMA. Here is what I ran into. 1) Wouldn't retain CMOS settings. Had to replace the battery right out of the box. Also, not leaving it plugged directly in to a powered outlet would also cause it to lose CMOS settings. 2)Always got a "Write protection error writing to CONFIGMG" on cold boot up. 3)Sound drivers didn't work on the CD sent with the board. Had to download new drivers from SIS to get the sound to work. 4)In some instances, sound had background clicking noise especially when playing DVDs. 5)Board failed memtest utility. 6) ECS technical support leaves something to be desired.

On the bright side, the board is fast and cheap. It you have the time and don't care about a few anomolies, it's probably an OK decision.

 

[RossGr]

I bought a K7S5a in early Oct, got it going will miminimal hassle, it finally took a PCI video card in slot 4 and then it got through the NVRam check. Once it was going it ran fine. I swear I got over 5000 3DMark2001 with a GF2 GTS! But after about 3 weeks it started locking up and finally refused to POST. I took it back to Frys and am now running a Shuttle which scored only 3600 with the same components.

I would say give it a try, but if you start running into flakey behaviors, return it. A lot of people have spent a lot of time fighting a variety of problems with this board. Don't waste your time keep trying until you get a good one. Be sure that you have a good Power supply, of course this is true for any system running a Gig + Athlon system.

 

[Binar]

So far so good.Bought it 4 days ago from fry's.Since then no problems at all.My rig 1800+ xp CPU 512 sdram (that's the reason I bought it -the fact I can choose between ddr or sdram) GF3 ti200 ecs kts5a mobo 13 gb 7200 rpm ibm hdd
Never bought something so cheap for my pc.My bad , the floppy drive was cheaper

 

[Mitzi]

Three of my friends all have the K7S5A board and not one has had a single problem - cheap, fast and stable.

Some people say you need a high quality power supply to get the board stable but my friends are all using generic 300 watt power supplies (you know, the ones which come in a £30($60) case) and not one has caused a problem - they could all be just lucky but take it as you will.

 

[cavemanmoron]

i have one running with an 800 Duron,the other has a 1.4 tbird
seem stable ,but battery issue/bios issues,and lack of setup tweaks bugs me,
ok for the price,but ehhh {waaaahh}

 

[lotust]

dam this is looking so appealing.

Ide like to thanks you all for taking the time for such posts excelent i say!!! hheee



Im ready to jump on this mobo NOW! .


thanks so much

 

[Technican]

yo:

I have bgt 3 of these mobo's and have had minimal problems. I also received the write protection error (configmg) after installing an orb usb drive. 1 board wouldn't install win ME. I finally figured out that I had to have ACPI disabled before the install, but it installed perfectly on another k7s5a with ACPI enabled so go figure!!

Overall it is the best bang for the buck in computing history...$57 bucks (thats 1 dinner at italian rest. w/ wifie)...all my systems are 1.3+ w/ enlight 300watt p/s. absolutely stable with 512mb crucial ddr.

lastly, ECS's tech support is so bad in my opinion it doesn't even exist!...enjoy

 

[Freewolf]

I have been using one for two months now with no problems and it is fast.

 

[DFranch]

I agree with DAPUNISHER. I've had my K7S5A Since the begining of september and had no problems. But there are faster solutions available today for only a little more. I'd go with a KT266A solution (Epox or Shuttle).

 

[hwstock]

The link below gives a quick GIF summary of the results for both K7S5A and AK31A, straight from the polls, and with corrections for multiples (i.e. multiple boards set up by people who have only one vote).

Life-death summary comparison


Simplifying the multiple-corrected stats, we get this picture (in percent):
----------K7S5A------AK31A
Dead:__21.99____21.05
Limbo:__7.09_____2.11
Living:__70.92____76.84


...Not incredibly different, except for "limbo," which may be related to the funky CMOS and the revision 4 resistor fiasco. (Before adding the multiple corrections from "Workin'," the two looked very similar; unfortunately, not everyone indicated when multiples were reported.)

I've tried to be unbiased. I got some comments along the lines of: "My shuttle's working flawlessly! Except it hangs a lot!" which I took as positive, but others might classify as "limbo."

The K7S5A seems to have a higher death rate in the "middle" period.

 

[Duvie]

I have no problems with mine...I used quality 350watt power supply...POsted first time and been flying since then...

Tested memtester thing for memory errors and got none...This was related to a theory floating around on an error with this board and <1.2ghz tbirds. Soemthing about a resistor ohm problem (incorrect on mobo) which caused data corruption and errors...I don't know much about it...

MOst issues I saw seemed to be inexperienced newbies jumping on the cheap bandwagon and not doing the research...Good PS are a must...


Sidenote: I have been running my 1.4tbird @1.5gz for 2 weeks solid w/o a reboot or a freeze up...doing 4 divx movies, massive cadd work, other work, burning files, etc...

 

[nizenco]

I love my k7s5a! I'm using it whit an athlon xp 1500+ w/o any problems. but here in sweden everything is much more expensive :/ I payed approximately 90 dollars (945 sek) for mine, but a via 266a board costs more than 250 dollars (2600sek) so it wasn't so expensive.

 

[KilrB]

I've built 2 K7S5A with 750 durons. Both are relitively trouble free and rock solid stable. One I sold to guy and the other is for my wife with the 750 cranked up to 1000mhz. Both system are running WinME. I picked both mine up from newegg.com as well. If it weren't for the limited over clocking features of the K7S5A i'd probably have 2 more running here right now.

The only board i've ever recieved that was a turd is a Shuttle AK31. It's my first mobo RMA and I just shipped it back to newegg this morning.

 

[lotust]

thanks again.

had anyone put anything faster than a XP1500 in there?

 

[adlep]

I have set up 3 systems using this mobo, if u know what u are doing they will not give you any problems,
make sure to flash the BIOS to the new one and thats about it, good mobo and cheap....

 

[RossGr]

Duvie, I'll take your comment personally, then point out a big difference between the life death stats for the ECS board and the Shuttle board. You will note that the ECS distribution contains a statisticlly signifigant pile of deathes between 2 weeks and 2 months, even some after 2 months, While the shuttle shows NO deaths in this time period. So you should hold your piece until your ECS board has lived past the 2 month mark, you may well find yourself, self classified as a "newbi".

I found it signifant that when my ECS board died after 4 weeks that the same hardware and even same windows installation has run flawlessely on both an ASUS K7M266 and a shuttle AK31, Guess it must have been my newbi status that killed it! LOL.

BTW, the first system I built was a 286 in 1992, does that get me out of the newbi class?

 

[hwstock]

<< Duvie, I'll take your comment personally, then point out a big difference between the life death stats for the ECS board and the Shuttle board. You will note that the ECS distribution contains a statisticlly signifigant pile of deathes between 2 weeks and 2 months, even some after 2 months, While the shuttle shows NO deaths in this time period. >>


In the actual AK31A survey, there was no category for deaths after 2 months. When I started the survey, I thought the board had been out for only two months (in fact, I've seen no indication it was widely available before October; I suspect some folks may have mistakenly piled in their AK31 (rev 2) stats).

The K7S5A has been around quite a bit longer than the AK31A, so there is a possibility that some of the differences between the two are a result of "statistical aging."

That said, I think there were some problems in the K7S5A that caused deaths after a few weeks, possibly due to something as simple as battery drainage (especially for those boards that came with JP4 on the "CMOS clear" setting).

Please folks, let's not read too much into this. Bad batches of mboards do go out, and some folks can get really bad statistical clusters -- just due to random bad luck. Perhaps a more important survey would be: find the 4 major vendors of these boards, and ask how many boards purchased from each vendor were still alive, or were now dead.