[Alien]

Does anyone know of any problems/issues/etc with the ECS K7S5A? I'm thinking of recommending it to someone, as it's part of a very nicely priced CPU/mobo/HSF bundle, but want to make sure there's nothing wrong with it 1st.

[Champion_R]

I'm planning of picking one of those up myself.

There's a review on Toms Hardware of this board and it runs stable. I've also read good things about it.

Very good value for money at AUD$109 but if any overclocking is planned I wouldn't bother because this board lacks overclocking features.

P.S. IMHO I'd take my chances with anything over a VIA based board. I own a VIA 693A board now and it's hellish to say the least.

[Edguy]

I wanted a new secondary system... and went for the K75SA... wanted ANYTHING but VIA... i had some PC133 lying.. so i could use it and then upgrade to DDR later since the board has 2 of each slot..

i'd recommend this board to anyone who want's a stable system.. but doesn't need to overclock.. since it has almost no abilities to do so (no multiplierchange at all... very limited FSB's)..

i'm running an XP 1600+ with it... and it's rock solid.. haven't made a hickup once during.. anything... it almost feels like having an Intel-chipset inthere... :p

[Champion_R]

Thats what I wanted to hear

[michaeljbrooks]

I suggest that you read the forums at http://www.ocworkbench.com on ECS motherboards before buying a K7S5A. I briefly had a K7S5A before returning it for a refund. I could eventually get it to work, but the motherboard is built cheaply and the processor retention mechanism does not hold the processor very securely. If you are very careful about applying pressure to the processor when latching it in place and are careful about attaching the heat sink and careful about flexing the motherboard when inserting it into the case and careful about flexing the motherboard when inserting RAM the K7S5A motherboard can be made to work.

[Avalanche]

I built a system using that mobo about 8 months ago or so.

everything seemed fine. The onboard audio was total crap, but the on board LAN was stable and quick and quite nice indeed.

Then the bios started acting up. The machine occaasionallyrefused to get through the IDE dectection phase, and wouldn't get all the way through the initialization. If you would try to go into the bios on startup, you'd get nothing but a blank blue screen with some jumbled text at the top.

I thought it must either be a bad cmos battery or a faulty bios chip, so we returned the mobo and go a new one exactly the same. Everything seems to go fine, but after a couple days, exactly the same things started happening again.

Eventually the board was replaced with a KT266a board.

It's possible that the store we were dealing with got a bad batch of boards or something, but 2 in a row is too much of a coincidence to attempt a third.

When it was working, it seemed to work just fine, and it sure was cheap!

[Alien]

For those who had probs with it - don't suppose you know which revision of the board it was? 1 or 3?

[Avalanche]

Sorry, no I don't know. But if I had to guess I'd say Rev1, since it was quite some time ago.

[sapiens74]

I got an Albatron PE board for really cheap and its got a great set of features.

ANyways a option

[Brian Frank]

ECS=Extreme Crap Systems. I built a system with a K7S6A (I know different board) for a friend and his family. That is the last time I will ever mess with anything ECS. I was gonna put in a PCI ATA controller, but the damn thing would refuse to display any video, regardless of a PCI or AGP graphics card. Also, I ended up having to get a different modem because ECS boards have some apparent incompatibility with BroadXtent/Creative cards/chipsets. Spend some decent money and save a headache. ECS may be cheap, but you pay trying to figure out what the hell is the problem.

[Alien]

Not my money, & not my system. I'm gonna test it before I send it to her though, but she couldn't really afford anything else & this was on sale, & she definitely needed something better than what she had.

[lordleech]

Truth be known, the K7S5A is not a totally bad board. HOWEVER, I have had a few issues with it that I would like to make others aware of.

#1.) since DAY ONE, I was unable to get a floppy drive to work with it. Turns out, all it needed was a bios flash.

#2.) After a few months of use, I ALSO had trouble with IDE detection. Everytime I shut the unit completely down and then restarted it, I had to MANUALLY redetect my hard drives. But I found a solution -> Bios flash. Yet again.

As far as being cheaply made, I have trouble agreeing with that. My board arrvied via UPS and I think we all know their reputation for packagte handling. The box was uttelry and horribly mangled, but I have yet to experience any issues with it.

Some other points of note about the board :
On ECS's homepage they have a special AGP driver for WinXP that ISN'T included on the cd, or installed properly by WinXp. After installing it alone, I gained 15 fps in Mohaa:SH.

I have run this board with Infineon pc 133 sd ram and the sd ram sockets worked great. I have also tried corsair pc 2700 in it (which is still in it) and that, too, runs fine. (Cannot run sd ram and ddr at the same time)

Before going to AMD in general, I was an avid user of A-Bit motherboards, and enjoyed much success with them (bh-6 and be-6 rev. 2) I will have to say, that even with OUT the overclocking options, I have really enjoyed this board. It's been stable and worth every penny.

But I also need to say this to make the arguement fair. The newer SIS 746fx chipset is a MUCH better chipset for only a fraction more. There are also SEVERAL manufacturers who use that chipset as well. Asrock being a newcomer with a lot to offer in the overclocking and stability arenas.

Just food for thought...