About ECS (a fair warning)

[kogase]

I posted this on a news item about ECS's NF4 boards, but I want everyone to see it. It's my hope that ECS will never get another cent from anyone who reads AT forums.

I've gotta say this. When I got my first motherboard (built my first system), I got a K7S5A. It got great reviews, and had a decent price. But as it turned out, it was bugged with the Athlon Thunderbird 1.4 that was all the rage at the time. The problem was a modification they made to the electronics, an unneeded change made for the Athlon XPs that were about to come out. ECS never fixed it with a BIOS update, probably never even acknowleged the problem. The only thing you could do was solder in a little resistor in a tiny little corner beneath the socket. I just got a new motherboard (A7N8X Deluxe) after dealing with constant system crashes for over a year. I would never even consider an ECS board, in fact, the very name ECS brings long last feelings of rage back to the fore. After the board had been sitting around for a while, my father decided to try and fix it. He's very good with soldering and electronics in general. It sort of worked for a moment, and then fried the RAM chip we put in it to test it. ECS is bad news, period.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

If you are still experiencing feelings of "rage," I would consider counseling.

Most normal people would have sold the motherboard, and purchased a new one.

 

[CraigRT]

Yes, ECS is complete garbage, no system I ever needed to use would have that stuff inside...

A friend of mine bought a K7S5A paired with a 1700+ off eBay, (I warned him not to get it but he did anyway) had me set it up.... it was a huge pain in the ass to setup.... REALLY picky mainboard, on just about everything! got it running eventually... died a few months later. (something physically burned up on the mobo) I told him "I told you so"

That stuff makes me ill to think about... I totally believe 100% in this case, you get what you pay for.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

The K7S5A was the only board I ever owned that I actually kept through a upgrade I started with a Duron800 and SDRAM and swapped for a 1.4ghz t-bird@1.54ghz using CPUcool * before the bios mods arrived* and 2100DDR, that system rocked for the time period. I also have numerous K7SEMs out there still running rock solid, most in a biz enviroment so whatever issues you or anyone else has with the ECS umbrella of companies, I got nothin' but love for them. The K7S5A was the best price/performer around back then too.

 

[Steve]

Your two anecdotes are not sufficient to wholly determine the quality of that company's products. But since everybody seems to like to go on other people's stories, I'll throw in mine:


Last week I ordered a PC-Chips M847LU motherboard (for those untold, PC-Chips bought ECS, and many if not all of their boards are identical since they come off the same line in the same factory, just with different model names and paint jobs. In fact some programs ID my board as an ECS M847). I've loved my new motherboard ever since, runs great with no problems. Stable, fast, no hassles.

 

[Peter]

Ah, the usual ECS-bashing parrot ... appears every couple of months.

K7S5A is the one best selling single mainboard model EVER, several dozen MILLIONS of those are out there. This didn't happen because it's no good.

Athlon 1400 however ... that one in itself was very problematic, drawing HUGE amounts of power, in consequence requiring very good cooling.
K7S5A never ate my RAM either. That happens when you put it in the wrong way round, or again, when your power supply is overloaded and doesn't regulate properly anymore.

Which brings me back to the behaviour pattern: Clueless DIY attempt, expensive stuff fried ... admit to having made mistakes? Nah. Rant at manufacturer, best to copy a popular rant so that plenty of others chime in and make you feel better.

I've been using PC-Chips and ECS mainboards for my custom builds since about 1997, and they've never let me down. I have two dead ones in about 100 systems built - one is an ancient one where the (now empty) battery cannot be replaced, and the other one got user fried, ROM chip shorted out by the metal case of a hard disk loosely thrown into the case (!) ...

Despite public image, I even got ECS to fix the BIOS bugs I found ... e.g. K7S5A had a couple of SCSI related fixes triggered by me.

In other words, I can't complain. And from the sheer numbers, neither do the big OEMs.

 

[kogase]

Originally posted by: DevilsAdvocate
If you are still experiencing feelings of "rage," I would consider counseling.

Most normal people would have sold the motherboard, and purchased a new one.

Nice. Sell a defective motherboard to someone else, problem solved. Real nice. And if you were paying any attention, you ignoramus, you would have seen that I DID purchase a new one. Problem solved. That doesn't excuse ECS of their incompetence.

Originally posted by: Peter
Ah, the usual ECS-bashing parrot ... appears every couple of months.

K7S5A is the one best selling single mainboard model EVER, several dozen MILLIONS of those are out there. This didn't happen because it's no good.

Athlon 1400 however ... that one in itself was very problematic, drawing HUGE amounts of power, in consequence requiring very good cooling.
K7S5A never ate my RAM either. That happens when you put it in the wrong way round, or again, when your power supply is overloaded and doesn't regulate properly anymore.

Which brings me back to the behaviour pattern: Clueless DIY attempt, expensive stuff fried ... admit to having made mistakes? Nah. Rant at manufacturer, best to copy a popular rant so that plenty of others chime in and make you feel better.

I've been using PC-Chips and ECS mainboards for my custom builds since about 1997, and they've never let me down. I have two dead ones in about 100 systems built - one is an ancient one where the (now empty) battery cannot be replaced, and the other one got user fried, ROM chip shorted out by the metal case of a hard disk loosely thrown into the case (!) ...

Despite public image, I even got ECS to fix the BIOS bugs I found ... e.g. K7S5A had a couple of SCSI related fixes triggered by me.

In other words, I can't complain. And from the sheer numbers, neither do the big OEMs.

The board was defective before I tried to fix it. It would have been hard to put that DDR memory in backwards. The PSU is still running fine today with a different motherboard. The temps were fine on the CPU, if my memory servers me correctly. The Thunderbird 1.4 ran fine in many boards. This problem with the ECS wasn't something that only I experienced. I learned of the solder deal from a site that was started because so many people were having problems with the K7S5A and the 1.4. Some people managed to do the mod, and it solved the problem. Still, ECS is at fault. If they couldn't fix it with a BIOS update, they could acknowledge the problem and refund my money. They didn't respond to my emails. As to your last comment... the biggest problem is not that people can't complain, but that they DON'T complain. Just like the first guy I responded to, they just buy a new board and that's that. I had to do the same, but I dropped a line to ECS first, and told other people about my problems. And I'm doing so again, right now.

Edit:

Here's a link to a little guide that explains the issue. http://www.geocities.com/mrathlon2000/zp.html

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Yeah I remember mrathlon2000, he stfu the second ECS threatened to sue him Man those were the days, the controversy surrounding all that was better drama than the current fanboy crap could ever be

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

I have an ECS board in this computer, which is used for work, and it is rock solid. Never had a problem with it for the year or so that I've had it. I have an AthlonXP 2600+ on an ECS board at home that is running strong. ECS/PC-Chips make Abit's boards too.

Most people that I know of that bitch or complain about ECS do so because they are not over-clockers boards and aren't feature rich, but what do you want from a $50 mother board? There's a reason Asus boards fetch a much higher price. It's because they have over clocking features, and people assume that a more expensive board means it is better. I have seen more Asus boards(HP uses almost exclusivly Asus in their Pavilion lines) die than ECS.

 

[Mem]

The K7S5A was the only board I ever owned that I actually kept through a upgrade

After my MSI died awhile back I got an ECS K7S5A Pro board as a cheap replacement,I`m no ECS fan but must say the board has been rock solid over the years(yes still going strong in my backup PC).

The only thing I did was use quality parts like PSU,ram etc.... and clean install of OS,which`s how I treat all my motherboards regardless of brand etc....

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Mem

The K7S5A was the only board I ever owned that I actually kept through a upgrade

After my MSI died awhile back I got an ECS K7S5A Pro board as a cheap replacement,I`m no ECS fan but must say the board has been rock solid over the years(yes still going strong in my backup PC).

The only thing I did was use quality parts like PSU,ram etc.... and clean install of OS,which`s how I treat all my motherboards regardless of brand etc....

Yeah, it is amazing how long various incarnations of that board have been around and how many have been sold. I would say that is all the testimony needed about it as a product.

This thread got me thinking about when the K7S5A was the rage in all the forums because of the price/performance it offered, and the issues posted about most often. They were mostly user error easily resolved. The number 1 issue was-

1. No post because they didn't push the vid card in hard enough to seat fully and were getting the no video beep code.

2. Trying to use SDRAM and DDR at the same time, my favorite one!

3. The 1.4 t-bird thing I could never believe since I used a 300W sparkle and had zero problems even with it and the ram overclocked.

4. Barely could hear the sound from the speakers because they weren't using powered speakers.

5. Board would work with SDRAM but not DDR.

 

[kogase]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: Mem

The K7S5A was the only board I ever owned that I actually kept through a upgrade

After my MSI died awhile back I got an ECS K7S5A Pro board as a cheap replacement,I`m no ECS fan but must say the board has been rock solid over the years(yes still going strong in my backup PC).

The only thing I did was use quality parts like PSU,ram etc.... and clean install of OS,which`s how I treat all my motherboards regardless of brand etc....

Yeah, it is amazing how long various incarnations of that board have been around and how many have been sold. I would say that is all the testimony needed about it as a product.

This thread got me thinking about when the K7S5A was the rage in all the forums because of the price/performance it offered, and the issues posted about most often. They were mostly user error easily resolved. The number 1 issue was-

1. No post because they didn't push the vid card in hard enough to seat fully and were getting the no video beep code.

2. Trying to use SDRAM and DDR at the same time, my favorite one!

3. The 1.4 t-bird thing I could never believe since I used a 300W sparkle and had zero problems even with it and the ram overclocked.

4. Barely could hear the sound from the speakers because they weren't using powered speakers.

5. Board would work with SDRAM but not DDR.

Erm. You think number 5 is acceptable? If you guys read my linked stub, you'll see that the K7S5A had two revisions. The original, and one with an 'XP' sticker. There was no way to tell which one you were getting, although the 'XP' came later, so you were bound to get one right before the Athlon XP debuted. The problem I'm speaking of only occurs on boards with the 'XP' sticker.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Erm. You think number 5 is acceptable?

I had no such trouble which is why I don't consider it a valid complaint. Most who were having the trouble cheesed on their PSU and/or ram so it came as no surprise to me they had issues with the swap. I would try to explain you can't cheese on the cost of other components just because the board was very inexpensive but it fell on deaf ears more oft than not.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I built a system for a buddy 2yrs ago using the K7S5A, Tbird 1.4 & DDR, the only problem I had is that it would never run stable at 133/133 (would crash and reboot every 3 or 4 hours), so I set it to 100/100 and it has run stable for 2yrs

 

[arswihart]

DAPUNISHER, your perspetives make me feel "like I'm there" back in the glory days of the K7S5A, and you give accurate accounts of the common problems that were self-inflicted by the users of the K7S5A, and so put to rest the debate that the K7S5A is a sketchy board or that ECS is a miserable company

 

[kogase]

Originally posted by: arswihart
DAPUNISHER, your perspetives make me feel "like I'm there" back in the glory days of the K7S5A, and you give accurate accounts of the common problems that were self-inflicted by the users of the K7S5A, and so put to rest the debate that the K7S5A is a sketchy board or that ECS is a miserable company

That's great I guess, but it doesn't (as DAPUNSIHER didn't) really deal with the gist of my issue. Maybe you guys should check which revision of the board you were using.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Originally posted by: kogase

Originally posted by: DevilsAdvocate
If you are still experiencing feelings of "rage," I would consider counseling.

Most normal people would have sold the motherboard, and purchased a new one.

Nice. Sell a defective motherboard to someone else, problem solved. Real nice. And if you were paying any attention, you ignoramus, you would have seen that I DID purchase a new one. Problem solved. That doesn't excuse ECS of their incompetence.

Originally posted by: Peter
Ah, the usual ECS-bashing parrot ... appears every couple of months.

K7S5A is the one best selling single mainboard model EVER, several dozen MILLIONS of those are out there. This didn't happen because it's no good.

Athlon 1400 however ... that one in itself was very problematic, drawing HUGE amounts of power, in consequence requiring very good cooling.
K7S5A never ate my RAM either. That happens when you put it in the wrong way round, or again, when your power supply is overloaded and doesn't regulate properly anymore.

Which brings me back to the behaviour pattern: Clueless DIY attempt, expensive stuff fried ... admit to having made mistakes? Nah. Rant at manufacturer, best to copy a popular rant so that plenty of others chime in and make you feel better.

I've been using PC-Chips and ECS mainboards for my custom builds since about 1997, and they've never let me down. I have two dead ones in about 100 systems built - one is an ancient one where the (now empty) battery cannot be replaced, and the other one got user fried, ROM chip shorted out by the metal case of a hard disk loosely thrown into the case (!) ...

Despite public image, I even got ECS to fix the BIOS bugs I found ... e.g. K7S5A had a couple of SCSI related fixes triggered by me.

In other words, I can't complain. And from the sheer numbers, neither do the big OEMs.

The board was defective before I tried to fix it. It would have been hard to put that DDR memory in backwards. The PSU is still running fine today with a different motherboard. The temps were fine on the CPU, if my memory servers me correctly. The Thunderbird 1.4 ran fine in many boards. This problem with the ECS wasn't something that only I experienced. I learned of the solder deal from a site that was started because so many people were having problems with the K7S5A and the 1.4. Some people managed to do the mod, and it solved the problem. Still, ECS is at fault. If they couldn't fix it with a BIOS update, they could acknowledge the problem and refund my money. They didn't respond to my emails. As to your last comment... the biggest problem is not that people can't complain, but that they DON'T complain. Just like the first guy I responded to, they just buy a new board and that's that. I had to do the same, but I dropped a line to ECS first, and told other people about my problems. And I'm doing so again, right now.

Edit:

Here's a link to a little guide that explains the issue. http://www.geocities.com/mrathlon2000/zp.html

Ok...

You lived with a "buggy" motherboard for a year, which caused you to experience self-described feelings of "rage." After a year of unspeakable torment, then you finally bought a new motherboard.

You have wasted a considerable amount of your time - now on at least 2 message boards - spewing bile about ECS.

Most normal people would not allow a $50 board to affect them so badly.

Your board was not defective. Your board was "incompatible" with your CPU. Big difference. So ECS did not fix the bug? Oh well. You just get a new motherboard - which you ultimately did anyway.

You could have legitimately sold the board to someone else a long time ago - someone who did not have a power guzzling Tbird 1.4Ghz chip. The board would have been just fine. Instead, you decided that soldering a cap onto the board was the proper course of rectitude. ... and you fried a DIMM ... and you blamed ECS for your technical incompetence.

:roll:

.... and you call me an ignoramus. LOL.

 

[arswihart]

yeah, what he said, i just didn't have the energy

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: arswihart
DAPUNISHER, your perspetives make me feel "like I'm there" back in the glory days of the K7S5A, and you give accurate accounts of the common problems that were self-inflicted by the users of the K7S5A, and so put to rest the debate that the K7S5A is a sketchy board or that ECS is a miserable company

The days gone by always seem better don't they? I'll be talking about the flamewars raging now with fond rememberance in a couple years no doubt! :clock:

 

[imported_Computer MAn]

Right now I have 3 K7S5A's in my other three computers and they have all worked fine. IMO ECS is fine for the average user who does not need extreme performance or OCing.

 

[kogase]

What makes anyone think I needed extreme performance or OCing? At any rate, getting a new motherboard right away is a ridiculous solution. I didn't have the knowledge at the time to realize what was going on, and I assumed that was the problem. I assumed my lack of knowledge led to the crashes. So I spent a long time looking for the answer. One can't always plop down a wad of cash for a new motherboard or CPU just because they bought a motherboard that should have worked but didn't. Of course, when I was able to get a new board, I did. After doing so, I learned of this issue, and supposed fix. The board should have been designed properly in the first place. The problem was a small change in the 'XP' revision of the board, an unnecesarry change that no other motherboard makers implemented and AMD recommended against. And DevilsAdvocate, your railing against my "power guzzling Tbird 1.4Ghz chip" makes little sense, and seems like little more than an ECS fanboy rant (although I can't imagine how someone could become an ECS fanboy). A board made at the time the K7S5A was should have been compatible with one of the most popular chips of it's platform, one way or another. Some people have K7S5A boards that work fine, and still do, and I think that's fine. However, chances are you aren't using an 'XP' revision if you're using it with a Thunderbird 1.4 or 1.33. But the issue I speak of is a reproduceable problem with a redproduceable solution, spanning many different users.

 

[brentkiosk]

I have to join the others who have found their ECS boards to be satisfactory. This L7S7A2 with an XP2400 has been doing a fine job for a year and a half now. I'm a pretty low impact user, but there have been exactly zero problems. My wife's K7S5A + 1700 is over 2 years old - no troubles. My 755A2 at work is only a few months old, but no sign of trouble so far. I feel that I completely got my money's worth with these boards.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Erm. You think number 5 is acceptable?

I had no such trouble which is why I don't consider it a valid complaint. Most who were having the trouble cheesed on their PSU and/or ram so it came as no surprise to me they had issues with the swap. I would try to explain you can't cheese on the cost of other components just because the board was very inexpensive but it fell on deaf ears more oft than not.

I have just been upgrading a couple of K7S5A with budget PC3200-CL2.5 DIMMs. No problem. Au contraire, I could run both boards at the most aggressive timings available (at 133 MHz of course), which gave a very nice speed boost over default settings.

I'll say it again: Nothing wrong with this board (and yes, I've been using the "XP" marked revisions with T-Birds ...)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
Yeah I remember mrathlon2000, he stfu the second ECS threatened to sue him Man those were the days, the controversy surrounding all that was better drama than the current fanboy crap could ever be

I remember the issue with those boards, the RAM incompatibility problems, the mysterious rapidly-draining CMOS batteries, the cold-boot issues, the ZP impedance-matching resistor change causing incompatibilities with certain CPUs. (Which, technically, isn't so much ECS's fault - AMD mandated that change in their design specs. For whatever reason though, it caused problems on that board.)

However, I missed the whole lawsuit thing, apparently. What did mrathlon2000 do/say that triggered ECS's legal response? I would think that the mfg would have to have some serious !@#$# going on, for them to be motivated to sue a customer to shut them up.

(Hope that doesn't happen with the NV 6800 AGP PVP thing!)

Oh, and btw, even though the board had great market longevity and millions sold - the fact that it was up to, what, hardware revision 6, should tell you about how many bugs that it had, that needed to be fixed with hardware revs. (A few might have been cost-cutting/feature-upgrade revs too. But no board has ever had six hardware revs, just for that.) Then again, I remember a certain now-highly-reguarded NF2 mobo that had serious issues too, in it's pre-rev 2.0 days.

I've owned some ECS boards in the past, before they joined the "evil PCChip empire", and they were actually pretty solid. Then again, they were Socket7 boards, with Intel i430TX chipsets, and back in those days, Intel had such great hardware-engineering tolerances, it was pretty hard to royally screw them up.

But since then, I refuse to touch anything PCChips or ECS produces, and I'm loath to recommend MSI or Biostar as well, in some cases.

I don't think that (aside from the ZP-resistor thing and possibly the CMOS battery issue) that the defects were in the engineering so much - the problems seemed to be more with mfg and QC issues, the very same thing that PCChips is famous (or "infamous") for. If you got a "good board", it generally worked, but if you got a flaky one, good luck. Although, I don't think that it had a very wide "engineering tolerance" margin for PSU stability or RAM though, either, so perhaps the engineering in some areas was questionable as well. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the predominant problem was the QC, or lack thereof, though.

 

[Peter]

From v1 to v3, 4-channel sound capability was added (optional, some are still stereo). v5 (aka K7S5Apro) was about adding the VIA USB2 chip and reshuffling the I/O connectors for it. v2 and v4 didn't even exist.

That makes at most two actual changes that weren't added features - the "XP sticker" resistor change on v1.0 (as required by AMD!), and then something I'm unaware of from 3.1 to 3.1A. PCB revisions other than 1.0 and 3.1 weren't available, IIRC.

No board has ever had six revisions, you say? ROTFL. You know nothing, mate. You're making up facts to support your FUD.