ECS K7S5A

[Marvelii]

As soon as I had my k7s5a mobo and my AMD Athlon XP 1500+ i set it up the first time and it was a succcess! I've never had a problem with the motherboard. I paired it with a 40gig, 52x CDrom, and a tnt2 m64 AGP w/300watt PS. Im still waiting 4 my gefroce2 gts from newegg but they dont deliver on weekends so ill get it on monday. How come a lot of people are having problems with the mobo? i ran my pc from win98, me to XP. I think its just that when people assemble their PC's they are not looking at small mistakes like loose cables, the AGP card isnt pushed all the way in the slot, or not installing the motherboard drivers cd. Many people are saying that the k7s5a sux but infact it is a very stable, reliable and fast mobo not to mention the cheapest.

 

[CMRvet]

Do you know the revision of the mobo?

 

[hardwarefreek]

I have actually built about 20 PC's in the last year, & seen most problems with other ppl's PC problems but buying this MOBO seems to be like a lottery!
Any MOBO that can lose a HDD totally at randon, sometimes after working flawlessly for a week has got be suspect & if you ever need tech support forget ECS 'cos they will NOT reply to you.

 

[mbetea]

no, they will reply to you... in about 2-2 1/2 months!

happiness is finding a stick of ram in your mail.

 

[bdaley]

Well, if it's a lottery, then I won. My k7s5a has been stable, fast and trouble-free for the 5 months I've had it.

I've recommended it to several people, and they've been fine with it too.

As soon as people have any PC problems while using the k7s5a, they immediately start blaming the board.

"There's no such thing as gravity, the Earth just sucks"

 

[hardwarefreek]

If I understand you correctly, you are one of the few ppl this board works for (until it fries) & as far as you can understand this MOBO has no problems at all, completely ignoring the fact that more than a few ECS K7S5A topics were started by guys like myself who regulary build systems.

I got my new ABIT KR7A board today & it rocks much like my 1 year old ASUS k7V, I suggest that if you can't offer anything to further solving the ECS boards problems you ahould maybe just keep schtum.

Pleased for you that the board works though, but iot has been known to unexpectedly burn up, I want a board that I can trust to be stable & reliable as my whole system is built around it.

 

[bdaley]

Until it fries? It's been working for 5 months with no problems. It's been probably the most stable board I've owned. But yours didn't work, so I guess they're all bad, huh?

One of the few people this board works for? What, are you nuts? It works for most of the people who use it. A LOT of the problems I've seen people posting turn out to be something other than the MOBO. Have there been bad boards? Of course.

I never said this MOBO has no problems, I said mine has no problems, and several of my friends who also own it have experienced no problems. Take that as you may.

What am I supposed to offer to solve the "ECS board problems"? YOU had a problem with this board, and you want the whole world to know about it.

Boo hoo, poor you. Does that make you feel better?

And what the hell is "schtum"?

"There's no such thing as gravity, the Earth just sucks"

 

[dhlucke]

This board works perfectly. If you get a bad one, exchange it. Plain and simple.

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=blue>Bless</font color=blue> <font color=red>America!</font color=red>

 

[hardwarefreek]

Board exchanged now, no NOT a third ECS crap for an ABIT KR7A

 

[dhlucke]

Did you ever post your specs and ask for help and did you ever check the faq over at ocworkbench? I know it makes no difference now, but you're pretty upset at that board even though I don't see you asking for help at any time.

You went to a dealer, but are you sure he knew what he was doing? These boards require a decent powersupply and your USB and HD problems are not typical at all. Did he install a HD without a clean install? Was this a from the ground up build?

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=blue>Bless</font color=blue> <font color=red>America!</font color=red>

 

[Ncogneto]

Hmmm, funny the three ECS boards I built on all worked flawlessly unlike the crap Abit k7a that went bad do to a design flaw, in which Abit now wants 25 bucks to fix even though it is a known defect in the board design itself.

Take into account this board is/was outselling any other one make of board by about 4 to 1 and of course you are going to see more problems then any other board listed, mainly do to the fact that there 4 times as many out there. Not to mention that its cheap price attracts many first time do-it-yourselfers.

It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!

 

[hardwarefreek]

I did actually post my specs & it was a ground up build by myself (about my 30th build in six months) I posted on www.pcnineoneone.com & other places, my dealer has a pretty good tech & he had the board on the bench twice w/out errors for a few hours, days till it gave a primary master HDD boot error again. it was also randomly freezing in win98 & WinME no blue screens, it just slowed down & halted!

All my components are less than a year old and is as follows.
ECS K7S5A
Tsunami 350W PSU
512Mb cas 2 PC133 Crucial (micron) ram
Athlon 1.2 TBird not O/ced
2 x IBM deskstar 40Gb ATA100 7200RPM
SB Live platinum 5.1
64Mb GEForce 3 Ti200
2 x Zonet LAN cards to cable modem & home network
Logitech USB gaming mouse (my third 'cos I wear them out)
Microsoft net K,board PS2
USB Black widow scanner
USB Epson 980 printer
USB Logitech force stick
Creative 5.1 desktop theatre sound system

Out of all that the board still lost the HDD with minimum hardware req'd to boot & on a clean Fdisked & formatted setup tried with both generic Win98 drivers & with SIS drivers, & with a spare 8 mb VGA card & a Geforce 2 GTS & one HDD I also tried my 30GB ATA66 5400 RPM Maxtor drive.
It is strange that it happenned with both boards I tried, so I suspect it is the PSU which I have used in a ASUS system with an 850 Athlon O/ced to 1100Mhz & it was stable over 9 months.
I don't want to spend £80-£90 on another PSU when I can get a new MOBO for less that'll run on the existing PSU.

Like I said before, if ECS want to supply a budget board then it also follows that PPL buying it are probably like you said first time builders or don't want an expensive build & that they will not have a high quality PSU & the mobo should be designed with more tolerance for that voltage fluctuation.

Maybe I am a bit annoyed but I expect my hardware to work out of the box & I expect manufacturer support when a problem is as serious as being unable to boot it.

I had the PC setup & put away for the kids xmas, when I brought it out on xmas day the kids & I set it up & hey presto! no HDD installed, imagine how my kids felt as they had waited for 6 months for an upgrade to their K62 500.

If you are interested there are a lot of topics on this mobo at the www.amdworld.com forum
My new ABIT is great anyway

 

[Oct_7]

Hi,

can u provide the link to the ocworkbench? it is about the FAQ for the ECS rite?

Thx alot

[] [_] [-

 

[endless_n00b]

just taking a stab here, but... www.ocworkbench.com ?

sorry, couldn't resist

----
A newbie is only a newbie for as long as you allow him to be.
-Anonymous Veteran

 

[mbetea]

well yes, you have had success/good luck with it. but i wouldn't consider Matisaro a first timer which he went through what 5 boards? and still didn't get a good one. as well as quite a few others that have gone through 2-3 boards. myself it only took one replacement and that i gave to my sister. i know i wouldn't take a board from a company where ANYONE needs to go through 5 of em to get a fully functional board, but maybe that's just me. i forgot who it was, but they summed it up good for the k7s5a: it's like playing the lottery.


happiness is finding a stick of ram in your mail.

 

[jrktms5]

As stated can you explain lock ups and freezes i'm using this MB 4 about 5 months now and have noticed that it's getting slower, it locks up at random times and freezes on game boot ups it's a ver 4 Mb running at 1333/133, i'm running win me a 1.2 amd, 384 meg ddr system with a msi 32 meg ddr vid cca. as stated it locks up , i think that i'm going back 2 win 98 se after i try win Xp pro i'm not sure about win xp but would like some thoughs on it with this system. PS i have built many systems based on this board for friends and they seem to have no problem, so it might be just me or mine is the oldest.sys range from 800 duron -1.33 tb

 

[hardwarefreek]

My first thought is the PSU, this mobo is really fussy about its power supply & with DDR ram & video it's looking for more power, the problem as I see it, is that the PSU simply cannot keep the voltage on the +5 & +12V rails within tolerance & causes the crash.

I sucessfully RMAed my board on tuesday & got an ABIT KR7A non raqid for £109.00 not the cheapest but still a good deal to get shot of my ECS mobo that I also struggled with for 4 months! I alos have built many systems but this one I just gave up with.

PPL say to get a good PSU like the Enhance ENS-2046 from http://www.overclock.co.uk/ at around £80 -£90.00! ok if you can afford that, I'd rather get another mobo with that & hopefully a bit less fussy.

 

[jrktms5]

yes i do have an enermax-eg365p-ve
(350 w)
I believe that i read someware on this post that the MB does not like to run at 133/133 for some resaon
have u found this to be true
just a note case temp 28'C, cpu 41' C stable
13&20 gig HD @ ata 66
vcache set @ 1 & 25 % of ram



<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jrktms5 on 01/31/02 05:39 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[hardwarefreek]

No I haven't heard that one, mine was OK till it started losing hardware

Smoking is bad for your Athlon........Get a decent cooler today!

 

[dhlucke]

<A HREF="http://forum.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=4" target="_new">Here is the forum with the FAQ at the top.</A>

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=blue>Bless</font color=blue> <font color=red>America!</font color=red>

 

[dhlucke]

There is a new PSU FAQ in that link too for anyone who is interested.

I never had any problems, but I bought a Antec SX1040 which has a 400W PSU. Together with WinXP I have yet to really crash.

Here's <A HREF="http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com/maxpc/index_cases.htm" target="_new">another usefull link</A> that has what each component (on average) requires in power. You can add up all your components and then compare that to what your PSU will actually provide. I would also recommend checking <A HREF="http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_869_1039,00.html" target="_new">AMD's recommended powersupply</A> list and seeing that your PSU is on there. If you're familiar enough with the PSU and understand what is required of it you can skip that last step. See the PSU FAQ above.

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=blue>Bless</font color=blue> <font color=red>America!</font color=red>

 

[dhlucke]

So regardless of what the problem actually was, your powersupply is not on AMD's recommended list (no tsunami psu was). I'm not going to look up the stats on it since I don't know the model number.

A basic assessment of your system (if you do have a floppy & cd-rom) puts your requirements over 200W add more if you've got a CD burner as well. It's a borderline situation depending on whether your PSU is good or not. A sparkle 350W PSU for example only gives roughly 200W of combined power and on your PSU, depending on which leads are good or not, you might have not been getting the juice required.

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=blue>Bless</font color=blue> <font color=red>America!</font color=red>

 

[Crashman]

It's a cheap board with a good design and an excellent chipset (er, controller chip). As a cheap board you come to expect that the capacitors are probably cheap and undersized, leading to less stability if your power supply is just as crappy (it's an Antec PS isn't it?). You also expect a higher flaw rate with cheap motherboards. A lot of people bought this motherboard for it's super stable, compatable chipset (er, whatever). So these people are more likely to use a good power supply that compensates for any deficiency in the board's voltage controll.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?