Another fine ECS motherboard (POS)

[Grminalac]

Well, it would seem as though the wonderful ECS CMOS battery drain problem has occured to me one month after I installed a new battery. (K7S5A) While this wouldn't normally be a problem as I could hit F8 go into the BIOS and set things straight again. I have a Promise RAID card installed that does not post with a few default settings in the BIOS enabled. Which means now until I go get a new battery (which will likely get me another month) because removing the card, changing the BIOS settings and reinstalling the card resets the battery when I turn the machine off. By the way contacting ECS is not even worth it even though this board is less than a year old. I'm just going to buy DDR memory and a new board.
Thank you ECS.

 

[RSMemphis]

The ECS CMOS problem is very puzzling indeed. On my machine (the one with the ECS K7S5A) it would fail pretty often on me. But now, for the last few months, it hasn't ever lost the BIOS settings. I did not replace it either. I had it completely separated from line for 12 days over the holidays, but still - everything was there.

 

[stevewm]

Have you flashed the latest BIOS to the board?

The newest BIOS was supposedly sent to someone awhile back to solve the lost cmos issue with some boards.....

Personally its only happned once to me, and it was my fault. I knocked my IDE controller card out of its slot while the computer was running. When I rebooted it gave an CMOS Checksum error. I went into the BIOS saved the changes and all has been well since

 

[chizow]

Why are people still buying this board? It has the highest fail rate of any mobo I remember to date. Its not really a value solution anymore as many equal or better performing chipsets have fallen into this price range......

Chiz

 

[Ketchup]

Originally posted by: chizow
Why are people still buying this board? It has the highest fail rate of any mobo I remember to date. Its not really a value solution anymore as many equal or better performing chipsets have fallen into this price range......

Chiz

That is a very unfair statement. It may appear that way, but keep in mind this is probably one of the best-selling motherboards on the market, so if you look at percentages, this board probably has a failure rate no higher than any other board. I don't have any numbers on me, so unless you do, I suggest you not make such statements.

I bought one of these boards about 18 months ago, and I have not had a single problem with it. I gave it to my Mother to use, and she has not called once saying there is a problem in the year she has used it, so I think it is a pretty good board.

Grminalac, if your problem occurred within one month after buying the board, I wouldn't think twice about getting an RMA for it, as it could very well be a bad board. I don't see how putting it new batteries is going to help things get any better.

 

[ericboo]

I have had this board for over a year now too, with only a failed onboard NIC, which worked again after a BIOS flash. I agree that their support is less than desirable, but the same can be said for other companies.

But I did have some familiarity with opinions about what I was buying, but it is for my kids computer. Had no lost CMOS problems at all.

I, personally would probably not buy another ECS just because of the support, but that's just me.

 

[Grminalac]

No, I have had the board for a few months, it was a value segway to upgrade, to still use my SDRAM I'm ready for a real motherboard now.

 

[CraigRT]

Another reason why people should not buy garbage.

why skimp on the board? most important part of the system.

I'd never in my life use one of these in my personal computer.

 

[Ketchup]

I don't see how you can argue this board is one of the best for value. You can use it will SDRAM which is dirt cheap, a Duron which is also dirt cheap, and it has everything but the video card integrated. It also runs great with a generic 300-watt power supply, this is a great vale, even if it is a segway to a better system (that's how it was for me too.)

 

[Grminalac]

Any board that is not stable is not a good value.
The K7S5A has higher power requirements than others due to the board layers, I would reccomend a power supply higher than 300. It also refused to run stabily with 2 top of the line Mushkin rev 2 133 memory chips installed. So the value of being able to use SDRAM was severely diminished.

 

[Macro2]

RE:"Why are people still buying this board? It has the highest fail rate of any mobo I remember to date. Its not really a value solution anymore as many equal or better performing chipsets have fallen into this price range......"

Because it's a great board. SDRAM