I know a computer shop that tells me the ECS K7S5A motherboard is junk. (they claim 30% return rate)..what do you think?

[Duvie]

I agree with Tdas,

Too many newbies got ahold of this board due to the cheap price. There lack of experience, research, and troubleshooting skills I can believe count for the large percentage of returns withthat board....

I have built 5 to date with one being assembled now....

There was a rash of them that were sold with the jumper pin set to clear cmos...I wonder how many idiots sent it back right there..."it won't boot!!!"....

Then there was in that same batch a bunch of them with the cmos battery dieing...I had one bought the battery fixed it right up...



This board was not only picky with power supply it did provide some trouble with ppl with particular ram...

It didn't like running in asynch mode 100/133 with older bios...


PPL who researched it properly could have avoided many of the issues and solved the battery or jumper issue in a flash...

 

[PH0ENIX]

There was a rash of them that were sold with the jumper pin set to clear cmos...I wonder how many idiots sent it back right there..."it won't boot!!!"....
Then there was in that same batch a bunch of them with the cmos battery dieing...I had one bought the battery fixed it right up...

This is probably the only thing I disagree with in the thread; and even then not wholeheartedly.

When I was last building my system, fair enough if i'd hit any problems I would have attempted to fault-find, but that was @ home, late at night.

But, building systems for a living - if system #10 for the morning decides not to boot and it appears to be the mainboard - I'd grab another off the shelf, call a courier, and RMA the other.

Fair enough it could be something simple, but being that I don't have to get out of my chair to RMA something, added to the importance of the customer's specified turnaround time - it's just plain logical to get it replaced as DOA.

Not worth any effort

 

[Adul]

i thnk they are junk. seen a few die after a few months of use. ...

 

[VTrider]

Yeah, I would have to agree with Phoenix on that one, you just shouldn't get a board DOA period. It's like buying a brand new car and not having it start right away when you turn they key. Yeah you could look under the hood and troubleshoot, maybe it's something simple like a loose spark plug wire? Either way, the burden shouldn't be on 'us' - ECS (and every other motherboard manufacturer in Taiwan) should wake up and understand that they should have their products working 100% before they ship, jumpers in right position, CMOS batterys fresh, ect.

As for my little quirk with the cold-boot problem, I've trouble-shooted as far as I'm willing to go and have come to the conclusion that it's just the motherboard and 'not' my components. For $55.00 it's just not worth the effort to tear this thing apart, re-package it, pay for shipping and RMA it back to Newegg. I mean I could and what, risk getting a worse K7S5A?

Let's face it, Newbie syndrome aside - the ECS K7S5A is no pick of the litter. You take the risk of getting a bum board w/any manufacturer, it's just that this risk is a little higher with ECS (K7S5A in particular). Bottom line is you get what you pay for.

I like mine, fast and great performance. Funky cold-boot stalls once in a while I can live with (all I have to do is hit the reset button). I can still recommend it with caution, but I'm not going to praise it.

-VTrider

 

[bozo1]

I agree with the statement that some of the problems are due to user error, but...

Both of the big local shops here sell ECS. Both of them have told me that they do have a higher failure rate on ECS boards (ECS, pcChips, etc.). They still sell them but they test every one of them before they let it leave the store. They normally do not test the other boards they sell - Abit, Asus, MSI, etc. unless the customer wants them to which they will do for free. They haven't seen 30% failure rates, more like 10% compared to under 2% for the other brands.

I've used ECS/pcChips boards before and haven't had any problems that I remember but I usually stay away.

Having to use a 'good' powersupply simply points to something being wrong since most other brands don't have that need.

I dunno, maybe they are cheap and seem to have a higher failure rate because they don't spend any time/money on quality control. <shrug>

 

[spanky]

i've worked with four k8s5a's and all work perfectly. two of the four had pretty generic 300w psu's too.

 

[BrintonAA]

I've built a computer for some customers with the ECS K7S5A, and my sister just ordered an ECS a few days ago. No complaints, the motherboard is stable and runs at a decent speed. Plus the price is fabulous.

 

[kgraeme]

Personally, if a board needs finessing like the K7S5A does, then it's not a good design. It might run fine after a bit of work or with some luck, but a good board doesn't need the "experience, research, and troubleshooting skills" in the first place.

As a friend used to say, "Puttin' a cherry on sh!t don't make it a sundae."

 

[CAK]

I think one reason people heard so many bad things about them is because(as stated earlier) so many people bought one. It had to have been in the top 3 for best selling athlon board last year retail wise, and was #1 in the OEM channel in asia(don't know about the U.S). Plenty got around.

Now I'm not sticking up for ECS, they chose to sell it retail and design it however, but most OEM's I have seen have power supplies made specifically for certain models to meet voltage and amperage requirements of the system, including the motherboard. Everyone knows ECS is a big OEM company, and I don't think they ever had retail sales before like they did with the K7S5A.

I personally have used 2 dozen and have had one bad one(so far). I found them to be a good value, but have mostly used rev 3.X. The one that did die on me was rev1.0. Don't know if that means anything or not.

 

[krackato]

Whatever kgraeme. I don't know about everyone else, but all I did was stick in 1 256mb stick of DDR Ram, installed my Athlon XP1700+ and all the other stuff, and my board's been running like a champ ever since. The board is rock solid and I love the fact that it is so cheap. Remember, you're also getting built in 10/100 LAN which will save you an additional $15-$20. Even excluding the built-in sound (which is decent, but I love my Audigy), total cost is like $50-55. Why spend $100 + $20 for an ethernet card when you don't have to. Better to put that money towards a faster processor or a better soundcard, video card, condoms etc.

 

[Boogak]

I bought my K7S5A a few weeks after it was released. I've put Win2K and WinXP on it w/ no problems. After such a nice experience with a quality inexpensive board, I have a hard time now shelling out over $100 for a mobo. My next upgrade was a Gigabyte 8SRX for $70 for my P4 1.6A and got it nicely overclocked to 2.26ghz. While some folks may say you get what you pay for, I'm starting to believe that may not be true in some cases (or motherboards).