has anyone else had problems with ECS motherboards?

[hans007]

i've had an ECS l4s5mg and well wierd problems so far. the first one i got, the socket had a broken pinhole and didnt quite work right, unless you got the CPU in just right. RMA'd that one.

newegg sends me another one. works ok for a month and a half. died today. now i'm on my laptop.


I'm gonna RMA it again, assuming they let me since it did hav ea 1 year warranty and i've had it for 2 months and a half for 2 boards. gah.


i shoulda just bought an asus or something.

 

[jeremy806]

I have heard a lot of complaints about ECS.

I purchased a K7S5A, before most people had even heard of it, and have never had a single problem.

Although my stuff has worked, I would recommend going with a name brand.

I only went with ECS because at the time there was no other boards that I could find that had the SiS735 chipset.

jermey806

 

[VTrider]

Do a search for ECS here and you'll find yourself thrown into a million love/hate threads about this company and it's motherboards especially. 7 years ago I wouldn't personally touch anything with ECS/EliteGroup (pc-chips, amptron, ect.) name on it. Today however, I feel that they have come a long way. I have built 4 systems around the 730 chipset (ECS K7SEM) and all have been running stable and strong for over 6 months (knock on wood). About 2 months ago I built a ECS K7S5A system for myself (one controversial motherboard!) and it doesn't skip a beat so far!

There's a lot to be said about ECS, I believe they are #1 in sales volume for OEM motherboards (asus #2?). You just don't get there selling cheap, inferior products (inexpensive yes).

-VTrider

 

[Superman9534]

I just built a system with the K7S5A and I have no complaints. I don't see why people don't like ECS.

 

[glenn1]

From my (admittedly small) experience with them, the pattern seems to be it either arrives DOA, or it runs like a champ with essentially zero problems. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground with them.

Back in the day, their PC-Chips division, and in particular the PC-Chips integrated boards were the absolute worst boards out there, but they do seem to have improved QC quite a bit.

 

[Goi]

I have an ECS K7S5A and an ECS K7VTA rev3.1, both running 24/7 without any problems. Of course, if I were to build a top of the line, state of the art system and demand the best performance, features and stability, I wouldn't wanna go with ECS, but rather I'd stick to the name brands like Asustek, Abit and Gigabyte, but ECS is doing a lot of things right. They've stuck to the OEM sector and fills that void perfectly, with a lot of integrated things that are useful(audio/LAN/graphics/RAID) and cutting away a lot of less useful things pertaining to that sector(voltage/multiplier/FSB tweaks) and then releasing their boards at prices that other brands can never hope to achieve. Because of this, I'd recommend them to any budget builder who just wants a nice stable performing system and doesn't wanna tweak it to death.

 

[Dabappa]

My K7S5A (Rev. 4) does not seem to like my Athlon 1.4 GHz CPU (T-bird) at 133 MHz FSB. It seems to be a known problem with this revision; you can search Google/Google Groups and find more info (Random Reboots/Memory Errors, etc.). I have an Athlon XP 1600+ which should solve the problem. The newer revisions are supposed to be trouble free.

Assuming the board works well with the XP chip, I will be happy. A lot of features for the money: onboard sound and LAN, 4 USB ports, and it can use DDR or SDRAM. Not much in the way of overclocking features, might be the only drawback. I think this board in only around $55.00 right now.

My old PCChips M575 (socket 7) board, which I believe is made by ECS, runs like a champ. I have an AMD K6-2 450 MHz running at 6x83 = 500, rock solid with SDRAM. Could not beat this board with a stick in it's day; although others might note quality problems mine was great.

Good Luck,

 

[Jmmsbnd007]

PCS = PCChips = trash.

 

[Athlon4all]

I have used 5 ECS/ PC Chips Mobo's (K7S5A, K7VMA, P5SJ-B, PM8600, and M779) and have not had any issues with any of them.

 

[hans007]

i fixed my problem!!! i went online, and bought a new ASUS motherboard. problem solved. granted it costs about $20 more than a new ECS

and the ECS would have onboard video (sis650) and the asus wouldnt (sis 645) but screw it

 

[BFG10K]

I tend to avoid motherboards that are not level 1 (eg Asus, Gigagbyte, Soltek, etc) so I would never buy something like ECS. Saving a few bucks is just not worth the potential headaches.

Besides, Soltek (my favourite brand) is quite cheap in addition to being extremely good quality.

 

[Sunner]

I've only owned one ECS mobo(Well, Elitegroup, same stuff), and it worked decently well.
I didn't have any major problems with it, though a bunch of minor, and stability left a bit to be desired.
This was a pretty long time ago though.

But I see lots of people complaining about problems with their newer stuff as well, while others seem to love it(Im sure Pabster will here any second).

Me, I tend to just go with Asus mobos these days, around here the price difference isn't too great, and I'd rather spend a little extra and get a good quality board that doesn't give me alot of problems.

 

[hans007]

yeah i realized, if i buy an ASUS board now, it'll cost more. but when i get around to upgrading and selling my board, i'll get more for it since its an ASUS. go on ebay and just check how much asus stuff goes for, its incredible.

 

[Joecheng]

I tend to agree with Glenn 1 . . . but i think it is also important to add that although we all hear a lot of complaints about ECS boards, that is still a select few considering the amount of boards ECS ships. I have been using a lot of ECS boards and they all work great. Considering their price, its definitely well worth it . . .