Honestly I don't know!

[earthling30]

I'm asking an honest question so please keep the sarcasm to a low! I'm looking to possibly be enlightened. I'm not trying to start a flame war because I don't have a flame suit nor enough experience or knowledge in this subject. Most ppl in this forum are totally putting down PCChips boards. Why? The reason for the question is because I've owned 3 of them and haven't had any problems like some ppl describe in their posts. I do know that ECS/PCCHIPS are one in the same company.

What kind of problems have you had with them?
Were you overclocking while you had whatever problem(s) that you may have encountered?
Anyone ever had any that were DOA.

I don't work for them; I'm just a customer that has had very good results with their products. Sure they might ship them in the clear cmos position but that's where referencing to the manual comes in handy. For a low budget system I think that they are really good MB's to use.

 

[Arcanedeath]

PC chips / ECS / Elitegroup is the largest maker of MB's behind Asus, My bigest problem w/ them is I've had far to many DOA or die an untimely death after they've been in service a short time. This is one of those cases where you get what you pay for. When their boards work and keep working they are great and rock stable (w/ the fairly rare lost cmos issue, at this point, on some models though) but the hassle of dealing w/ as many flaky then dieing or just DOA board is just noth worth it when you can spend a bit more and get a better board. w/ better support from another maker. Just my 2 cents.... Although I do have to say the ECS K7S5A was a great board as long as you got a working one

 

[Whizzy]

I can only say that my ECS K7S5A was (is) a great board ! never had any troubles with it . Rock stable and with the Cheepobios a little bit of overclocking was possible. No problems at all

 

[ja83]

I just upgraded from an ECS K7S5A Pro running an AMD 2000+. I loved that motherboard, I would of kept using it, but it didn't support the faster processor I wanted. Great stable board!

 

[Cerb]

1. ECS even has sad QC now , at least for the L7S7A2 after the first six months or so. Starting about Feb, L7S7A2 boards have been bad, about 1 in every four or so from newegg. Enough to pay a bit more for Gigabyte.
2. Many boards are exactly the same, but if you look side-by-side, the ECS will have more and large capacitors, they will be soldered on straighter, etc., generally looking more like some of the better boards out there.

Basically, they are cheap.

 

[tomstevens26]

I've only had one experience with an ECS board (K7S5A) and that was in a PC I built for a friend back when the board first came out. She has used the PC pretty much every day for stuff like web browsing, cd ripping, and some light graphic work. It's never given her one bit of problem for the several years she's been using it.

Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, their QC lets way too many boards make it to consumer, so it seems like it's easier to get a DOA board with ECS than any other manufacturer.

Tom

 

[Cerb]

You basically got it, Tomstevens26.
My father has even entruested several light servers to K7S5A and L7S7A2 boards. Then, hey, it was a <$50 board, every now and then you'd need a new CMOS battery. Out of around 50 ECS boards by Christmas '03 (using them since they came out), two had been bad (never could install Windows), only one died, and it was being tortured anyway (next to three other computers in a corner of a room near the floor, with two others also just a few more feet away, all running 24/7, the CPU idled at around 50C, etc.). Then this year, it got to where one of every 4 or 5 was just bad. Wouldn't make 166MHz FSB, AGP video not working for no good reason, would BSOD during the windows install no matter what other hardware, etc..
None of the ones that completed a windows (or Linux) install have shown any issues at all so far, but it's too annoying when Gigabyte's is $53 (keeping w/ SiS generally because their drivers are plain solid), and there are real NF2 boards worth buying between $50 and $70.

 

[earthling30]

Thanks for all your replies, keep them coming. Now I'm seeing both good and bad results from ppl.

.............would BSOD during the windows install no matter what other hardware, etc..

I had a similar problem but I tracked it down to the cheap memory that I was using, RMA'd it for a better stick and everything is working just fine.

 

[mobobuff]

I have the same persuasion with PowMax. Everybody seems to hate them but I've never had a bad experience with them. Maybe such companies will just always exist where you pay a low price and get a good product, or pay a low price and get a dud. Some companies may just not be 100% consistant with quality, so some people never get a bad part while somebody else will get all bad parts. Maybe we should start calling them Risk products.

 

[jacktesterson]

Well I will tell you I've personally used K7VZA'a dn K7S5A motherboards for people needing a cheap computer solution and you couldnt find a more stable motherboard under $75

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: earthling30
Thanks for all your replies, keep them coming. Now I'm seeing both good and bad results from ppl.

.............would BSOD during the windows install no matter what other hardware, etc..

I had a similar problem but I tracked it down to the cheap memory that I was using, RMA'd it for a better stick and everything is working just fine.

Almost always Kingston ValueRAM, same RAM sticks worked in the replacement boards fine.

 

[earthling30]

Originally posted by: mobobuff
I have the same persuasion with PowMax. Everybody seems to hate them but I've never had a bad experience with them. Maybe such companies will just always exist where you pay a low price and get a good product, or pay a low price and get a dud. Some companies may just not be 100% consistant with quality, so some people never get a bad part while somebody else will get all bad parts. Maybe we should start calling them Risk products.

I've used PowMax PSU's before for a mini-ATX set-up. No problems with them thus far either.

 

[earthling30]

I'm going to give a little history on what I've done and how I started using these boards. The very first new system I built had a PCCHIPS MB in it. It was a PC100 setup w/AMD Thunderbird 1.3 Socket A, sure I've built other slower systems but these were from hand-me-downs. That system I built is still running today (with the exception of WIN ME hosing it all the time, but that's about to change) going to use it for a cheap server setup, w/ Win NT or Win 98 (not sure). I didn't research it any on the net and that was before I new about this forum and/or NewEgg, all I knew was that this MB had a very nice price on it. About a year after that I upgraded it with another PCChips setup (AMD 2200+) and it's running good with XP using the same case. About six months ago I put together another PCChips setup for a family member (Celeron 2200 w/Win98 512MB DDR) cheap low cost setup but it runs fast. I did how ever have to reinstalled Win98 shortly after because they were running it on a cable internet without any type of security even though I told them they needed to purchase a firewall, etc. Someone/thing got into the system and wiped it out. Reinstalled it with a firewall/virus scanner/adware &amp; spyware protection/parental controls and every once in a while I have to go and run maintenance on it because that is the vital part in order to keep a stable system running.

 

[earthling30]

bump