ECS, PCCHIPS Pcware motherboards ?

[bambam]

A couple of years ago I almost put together a system with an Amptron M747 ( a PCCHIPS brand ) motherboard so I wound up us a Tekram . Serveral people suggested that I probably would have heaches with it and ultimately throw it away when it died making it not worth the money saved. Anyway here I am needing to buy a ultra low cost system for someone. I heard that ECS was PCCHIPS now and I wondered if the two are equivalent in quality and would like some recommendaitions. - Thanks

 

[mboy]

I have a PC Chips board in my Little Dawg's rig. It uses the original Ali Magik DDR chipset. It is the same as the Amptron 817lr and the ECS K7ama ( I actually have the Amptron Bios on mine after flashing since their version is the newest). ECS/PCCHIPS/AMPTRON is all 1 now.
Thaty being said, this board while not being the fastest out there. IS rock stable and has been from day 1. I have also built 2 K7S5A systems and the are running fine, altho I had to RMA on board becasue it wouldnt recognize the floppy. I am selling the PC Chips rig now and will be going to an XP1600 and K7S5a for that rig within 2 weeks or so.

 

[clumsum]

There was a bios up-date to fix the floppy drive issue in Win2K on the ECS K7S5A.

 

[gtd2000]

Too many people dismiss the no-name brand boards, which often perform flawlessly

The only downfall is that there are often no real tweaks for most of the boards, however they normally perform their intended task as required

 

[Peter]

There's nothing wrong with the boards themselves. They work fine. You get zero end user support beyond BIOS
and driver updates. Combine that with the serious headaches that setting up an all-in-one board may
cause in the inexperienced, and you'll see where the occasional manic rant on BBSes comes from

The 747 btw was a very popular board, lots of people still using theirs today. What you never get on ECS/PC-Chips
boards is toys. No overclocking, no voltage adjust, only the bare basics of what the chipset offers. But then
again, they're about the only ones who provide an AMR modem to go with the AMR slot, and who offer onboard
LAN on most of their boards.

regards, Peter

 

[Peter007]

Ya, Peter, you're the guy who stole my Handle !

I have a similar question on ECS P6S5A, it is a Flip-PGA motherboard, a close cousin to ECS K7S5A with the same BLACK PBC

It is listed for only $44 on PriceWatch

Has anyone bought it and experience with it?

 

[Peter]

Well the K7S6A is the successor of K7S5A, using the SiS 745 chipset instead of the 735. This brings us support for 166 MHz DDR-RAM ("DDR333"), FireWire ports, and maybe other performance enhancements. We lose the SDRAM slots, get a CNR slot instead of the AMR, and apparently (from the photo) lose the onboard LAN to CNR-based LAN.

This thing has been presented like five seconds ago, so I don't think you'll get much feedback on it.

regards, Peter