Good Athlon Socket A mobo w/lan/audio sub-$60?

[mrlugal]

I bought an ecs k7s5a and have been having constant troubles. The agp slot is broken and there is something wrong with the pci architecture. I'm running an Athlon Tbird 14000 in it right now and sdram.

Could anyone recommend a similar motherboard that they've had good experience with?

Thanks
Jeremiah

 

[Athlon4all]

K7S5A

Another board that comes to mind is a ECS K7SEM (aka PC Chips M810LMR), niether have DDR support but both have LAN and audio and are about the same price as the K7S5A.

Now here's my question, are u using a good quality power supply? Cause that could be a problem. I had a K7S5A until very recently (I killed it, long story) and it worked like a charm with my Antec 300W power supply.

 

[mrlugal]

I'm using a good 300w power supply too. Thanks for the suggestion. Does anyone know of any that aren't ECS?

 

[Athlon4all]

What brand for the PS? Not all "300W" power supplies are good enough. As for a non-ECS board, you're gonna have a tough time. Hardly any non ECS boards get down to $60.

However, I did look at Pricewatch and Newegg has the Biostar M7VKQ. It's a VIA PLE133 and it says it supports all Athlon's including the XP's,(no AGP Slot), and it has onboard video, sound lan for sub $40 at some places. Good luck!!

 

[WetWilly]

The agp slot is broken and there is something wrong with the pci architecture

What exactly do you mean by this?

I'd also reiterate what Athlon4All said about power supplies. All 300W units are definitely NOT created equal, and with a 1.4GHz Tbird you've got a power-hungry CPU there. At the minimum, check what the rating is for the combined 3.3v and 5v rails - it should be printed on the PS label.

 

[mrlugal]

hm.. ok. Here's my specs.

The power supply was made by "L & C Technologies". It came with a case I bought.
3.3 v 14a
5v 25a
12v 10a
5vsb 1a
-5 .5a
-12 .5 a

I really have no idea if that's good or bad.

For the AGP slot, the mainboard can't distinguish the adapter for the card (It comes up as standard adapter or something to that effect). I had thought it was a driver problem, but the AGP drivers were all installed correctly for the mainboard. I also tried multiple OS's. (ME, xp) The card's I tried were both nvidia chipsets (tnt2, geforce2 mx400)
I'm currently using an ati radeon pci in the computer.

The other problem it's having is sound playback when video is involved. The sound is somewhat distorted. I at first assumed this was a driver problem as well, but I've tried 2 video cards and 2 different sound sources (1 of them being the built-in audio).

Do these problems sound like something associated with a bad power supply?

 

[Rottie]

I have L & C 300 watts PS on K7S5A mobo with Duron and it works really good even with AGP port slight broken...It has been running good since December 2001.

 

[PG]

hm.. ok. Here's my specs.

The power supply was made by "L & C Technologies". It came with a case I bought.
3.3 v 14a
5v 25a
12v 10a
5vsb 1a
-5 .5a
-12 .5 a

I really have no idea if that's good or bad.

Those numbers seem very low to me. Here's the specs on an Enermax 300 W unit:

3.3V 28
+5V 30
+12V 15
-5V 1
-12V 1
+5Vsb 2.2

 

[WetWilly]

1) Like PG said, those values are on the low side. The 5V rail ideally should be at least 28-30A; the 3.3V should be higher as well. Someone had posted elsewhere an unscientific test of using two generic 300W P/S with a 1.4GHz Tbird, both with 5V rails rated at 25A. The first P/S worked at 1.4GHz; ANY attempt at overclocking made the system unstable - video flaked out, random reboots. The second P/S worked with an overclock up to 1.6GHz. Add in the fact that K7S5As are pickier about the P/S than average plus the additional load of hard/CD-ROM drives and I'd start by pointing a finger at your P/S. BTW, did you ever look in the BIOS to see the actual voltages or use a hardware monitor utility under Windows to see what happens to the voltages under load?

2) As for Rottie's system working fine, that wouldn't be a surprise or inconstent. Durons have a lower current draw than Athlons.

3) When the system doesn't automatically detect the video card, what happens when you manually force the driver install for the card? Does it "undetect" the card at the next boot?

 

[mrlugal]

Yes, the card does not boot up properly. It says there was a problem with the adapter or something like that.

Even if the power is on the low side, is that a characteristic problem of a shortage? What else should I look for?

I haven't checked actual voltages but will do that later today...