My ECS experience

[ssanches]

<< I wish I had taken a picture of my broken KCrap7crap5crapScrapA for these forums. ECS did one on us and as I said so many times before (at www.ocworkbench.com and www.AMDMB.com) where is the logic in buying a $1 motherboard and then buying expensive components for it incl. say a 450W PS!! Makes no sense! >>



EXACTLY!!! I too feel the same way! :disgust:

 

[xbassman]

More bad here...

I am in the process of RMAing my second K7S5A.
I got this one when the first one gace up after about a week.

This one tries to boot but crashes halfway through loading a win98 boot disk.
Hit reset and it will freeze on the amibios screen.

I have had enough of crap boards. I had better luck back when I used to use generic crap!

 

[Acanthus]

i hate ECS, 5 bad experiances in a row. Never again.

Im not even talking specific models here, ive had duron, athlon, ddr, sdr, celeron, p3, p4 everything, they are all crap. Issues from the USB voltages too low, to vagp screwups, DOAs are more than common, and compatibility problems out the wazoo, i hate ECS with a passion the last one i had was smashed in the middle of my driveway, and ran over for a week before i cleaned it up.

 

[wurmyhi]

My take on the k7s5a situation:

1) I don't care if there are a lot of folks having problems w/the mobo, I bought one even after a lot of bitching because the thing was so damned cheap. Think about it: A SB Live! and a decent NIC would run you only 5 LESS bucks than the price of the mobo (albeit w/o shipping), so I'm not really risking anything.

2) As far as time goes, I approached the new box like a toy, something to play with. If it was crappy FOR ME, then I'd RMA, microwave, or just toss it into the spare parts pile until I found a use for it - at the worst, I could keep it as a conversation piece as being either one of the most (in)famous mobos of recent memory, one of the best deals, and/or both.

3) That being said, I could see that there'd be folks running into problems w/the board. The AGP slot requires excessive force, and the 2-pin LED jumper from the mobo would require you to relocate a pin on many case setups (if you choose to use it). Add on the floppy corruption problem unless you flash the BIOS, and I could see myself getting pissed if this needed to be my main box and I ran into trouble.

4) Both pro/anti sides would agree that this mobo requires a quality PS. I always run at least a ~350w AMD approved PS (on all my rigs) since I sometimes stuff my boxes.

5) For the k7s5a , I use a molex CPU fan for these two reasons - a) Power to the rest of the mobo, and mostly b) Noise. The Thermalright SK-6 rocks even w/o a .484A Delta fan.

6) So, caveat empor ("let the buyer beware" or however you spell it). There's been enough bad feedback about the board that you can't claim that you where "burned" if you choose to buy it even after reading huge amounts of negative feedback in the community.

7) I'm not saying that I'm smarter than folks that have problems w/the board. I may just be lucky that the sun shone "just right" in the Sea of China the day that my mobo was made.

8) IMHO, it's a good board for cheap if you're willing to be careful with it, much like anything else.

 

[RandomFool]

I had a problem with my ECS(K7vza) board it sucked for awhile but then i realized it wasn't starting cause the fan was busted.

 

[xroyal]

Look at all the users ECS has equipted with hunky power supplies (againist their will or maybe need) who will be ready for a couple of more upgrades. Today, my new 400W arrives, and the K7S5A is going to accept that medicine or else. Good luck to all.

 

[Wayward]

I'm running two boxes with ECS K7S5A's. One is an early rev board with a 1700XP (had a 1.4/266 in it at one time) 300 watt Pc Power & Cooling psu and generic DDR memory. Never had a single problem with it. Second box I just put together today with a 1900XP, again no problems.