ECS k7s5a - is this a good mobo?

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: ljohn
I dont think you should get this board. I have had mine for about 3 months now and I just bought a epox board to replace this. this board is so screwy. had trouble from the get go i believe. the problem is that it wont boot after you turn it off. the power cycles through the system but it wont post. every time I turn it off i have to turn it on and off on and off, pray ,bang on the motherboard ,etc and after like 10 -20 times of doing this it works. it is not fun. I would never buy a ecs board again. go to the ocworkbench.com forum and look under ecs boards. there are tons of ppl on there that have the same problem. when its on its cool no freezes at all. but I dont oc or nothing like that . once you turn off the power it goes to hell and I cant get it to start for a while. not fun at all. but if you get a good board then it may be worth it. but for me I'd spend a liittle more money and get something that will start when I turn it on.

Sounds like a PSU issue.

 

[hojl]

I got this mobo.. it is awesome.. my first and only amd mobo.... For me (not others who have problems) it is as stable as my old BX .. I am using a noname psu 340 watts I think..

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: CrazySaint

Originally posted by: ljohn
I dont think you should get this board. I have had mine for about 3 months now and I just bought a epox board to replace this. this board is so screwy. had trouble from the get go i believe. the problem is that it wont boot after you turn it off. the power cycles through the system but it wont post. every time I turn it off i have to turn it on and off on and off, pray ,bang on the motherboard ,etc and after like 10 -20 times of doing this it works. it is not fun. I would never buy a ecs board again. go to the ocworkbench.com forum and look under ecs boards. there are tons of ppl on there that have the same problem. when its on its cool no freezes at all. but I dont oc or nothing like that . once you turn off the power it goes to hell and I cant get it to start for a while. not fun at all. but if you get a good board then it may be worth it. but for me I'd spend a liittle more money and get something that will start when I turn it on.

Sounds like a PSU issue.

Agreed. I hate to stick up for any corporation, but that ECS board IS the best budget mobo STILL, even though it was released quite some time ago (a year and a half I believe). I try not to blame people, but you're criticizing a board that 19/20 users say is rock solid! Not just good, mind you, but rock solid. Try finding any VIA board that has that kind of acceptance for anything near the price. I picked mine up from a local store (not even online!!) for $62. $62 freaking dollars is just incredible for a board that runs the newest processors that well. The only complaint I have is summed up by Nikko:

I actually just bought this board and so far I can't get it to work. I can't for the life of me figure out which of my case LED/Power Switch connectors go with which pins on the mobo. Anyone know of a site that has a pic detailing where everything goes? I don't need a diagram, the manual that came with my board has one that's not been to helpful.

That diagram of the power/hd led header is incredibly bad. I have no idea what they're talking about. However, after a little trial and error, I was able to find out which one is the power switch. I'm a little foggy, but I believe that if you look at the switch, it's like this:
o o P P
o o o o o
The two P's are where you connect the power switch. I still haven't bothered to find out where any of the other connectors go. That really sucks since Windows has always had a problem starting back up after my hard drives shut down (it's a power save option and it increases the life of my drives). Try those jumpers.

AND GET THIS BOARD!

 

[Tarmouth]

I'm at work now and we've sold 273 of these to date and have only RMAed 3 !!!!!! This pretty much speaks for itself IMHO.

 

[majewski9]

It still is a great board and ECS stilll continues to provide BIOS updates for this board. There is also a beta BIOS where you can adjust your FSB!

 

[Arcanedeath]

I've built 5 systems on this board 3 w/ rev. 3.1 boards and 2 recently w/ rev. 0 (maybe 10) board all have been rock stable trouble free boards, (all of them use 350 watt Enermax powersupplys) the only gripe I have about this board is that on 4 outa the 5 boards the clear cmos jumper was set to clear out of the box causing 4 of the boards to not post or do anything at first untill this jumper was set correctly, really very annoying, but other than this the boards have been great running a 1ghz duron, 1.33ghz t-bird, and 3 AXP's 1600+'s, also just an FYI / cavet w/ this board it requires a high quality PS, I can virtualy guarentee that you will have issues if you skimp on the Power supply and use this board, but other than these few things (and 1 onboard NIC failing in a rev 3.1 board after about 6 months of use) I really can't say enough good things about this board, also it even has some un-offical bios's that can be had from OCworkbench that allow you to change the FSB (142, 150, 166 FSB speeds (good luck on getting 166 though) speeds in the bios making it a fair overclocking board, but for 55 bucks and the fact that it supports DDR and SDR you just can't go wrong...

 

[Confused]

P+ P- P P
H+ H- R R o

That's the connectors P+/P- for power LED, H for hdd, r reset p power button


I have had one of these boards for about 4 months now, and the only problem i've had with it is that it doesn't like the Netgear FA311/FA312 network cards, it just won't POST with these cards in.

Other than that it's been perfectly stable for me, only software has caused my PC to crash *cough* Windows *cough*

I've also had both my Athlon 1GHz and my XP 1800+ overclocked to 146.7MHz FSB (thanks to Cheepoman's BIOSes from OCWorkbench) since i got the chips/board, and still no problems

Great little board for the price, and upgrade paths are there, such as Athlon/PC133 to AthlonXP/PC133 or Athlon/DDR and then AthlonXP/DDR So versatile, and it can take the 2400+/2600+ CPUs too!

 

[BUTCH1]

I'm running 2 sticks of PC-100@133 FSB and it's still stable as a rock! Great board for the $$$

 

[Bovinicus]

The majority of people who have purchased this board seem to be very happy with it's stability and performance. You won't get the tweaking options that you have on your ASUS board, but it will do the job nicely and it is nice and cheap!

 

[SUOrangeman]

I have two systems out there running on the K7S5A. In fact, the only reason why I am not using this board now is that I've gone to a dual Athlon setup. My first K7S5A build (1.4G T-bird) is about a year old. It killed an Enlight 340W PSU (I think my sister may have rattled the case a lil when moving into her dorm room) last month. I've since popped in a 300W PSU from CompUSA and the system is still alive and kicking. Sadly, I originally thought the mob had died, so I promptly ordered another from NewEgg (tough to beat $53 shipped!). Now, I have a K7S5A and no real need for it. :/

The other K7S5A build is about 9 months into its campaign with an XP 1600+. The only damage that one's taken is from lightning frying the AMR card. My dad threw a PCI WinModem in it and all is well in the land again.

Until the nForce2 boards truly arrive, I will always give the K7S5A strong consideration.

-SUO

 

[LupusNoctis42]

I hope some of you folks out there can help straighten me out.

I'm all confused about the various revisions of the K7S5A that are out there.

Specifically, I need to know how to differentiate a K7S5A 1.X from a 3.X

Or, if a 1.X will actually run XP athlons. I don't feel like using a Duron, or hunting for a 1.4GHz Athlon plain.

Love the board, laughing in the general direction of my friends that dissed non-VIA chipsets, now just wanna upgrade the old 750MHz Athlon that's in there. =]

That and slap a wonderful MSI GF4TI4200 128mb innit and finally have gaming goodness!

 

[Ilmater]

I'm pretty sure that the rev 3 board is the one that works with XPs. The rev 1 doesn't.

 

[yellowperil]

I've had this board for a year, the only problem with it is a loose battery clip. Every couple weeks the CMOS resets itself and I have to change the BIOS settings and reset the date/time. Kind of a PITA. Also I had to upgrade from an Enlight PSU to a Sparkle to stop some odd screeching noises.