Nintari, It could very well be if Every dollar is important to you. I've build 12 systems out of them now both for myself and friends/customers And its been a good experience everytime. There is 3 system up in running in my house right now with k7s5a's with a broad mix of cheap and quality hardware.
If you can afford to wait a little bit I would consider waiting to see what the new ECS SIS board looks like (the DDR333 one) Its rumored to have some OC options. REAL OC options...
Other then that there are lots of good alternatives. ECS makes a KT266A board thats only a few dollars more. so does Shuttle (the AK31) theres probably 10 different boards you can get for under $75 that will work great.
Jfunk, I understand how alot of people think of ECS as a low-end manufacturer because of there price. But I'm really beginingg to form a different opinoin. Lets look at the known facts. in 2001 ECS sold more motherboards then ANY other manufacturer. (including asus) now that doesnt nessasarily mean they are the highest quality, but they they moving the most parts. Now if you look at there primary market. (OEMS) you have consider the fact that Oems make there money buy selling pcs that will hopefully work forever without any problems. So apparently they like them enough to buy the snot out of them. not to mention the millions of people who still cant believe they can get a decent performance Athlon XP board for $55 with free sound and lan... its pretty easy to see why they sold so many motherboards... the price is right and from my experiences they make good products.
I see post after post after post of people bitching about them here, everything from it "looks bad" to it burned down my house. But when I look into it and tear at the post some I've actually been fairly hard pressed to find more then a few posts that really have me convinced its the motherboard... Given the fact that theres probably 10,000 anandtech readers with a k7s5a were going to see alot of feedback, both bad and good. and considering you can buy a board for $55 theres alot of people messing with them that probably shouldnt be...
Its a great board I love it. but they are not infallable. I just think for the price you cant beat it... yet 🙂
