Opinions on ECS motherboards?

[Achilles97]

I am thinking about buying an ECS / SiS based mobo for a P4 system. What do you all think about this company? I'm concerned with stability.

Thanks!

 

[mindwarp]

I had the k7s5a, and 2 of them were DOA. But that was back before any revisions. I recently got one that was newer and it worked the first time and has been very stable. Usually a good rule with motherboards is you get what you pay for. If you spend the extra $50 you will probably have a much easier and stable time. But if your a hardware guy who likes fooling around go for it.

 

[nick1985]

they are cheap boards, in more ways than one. you get what you pay for IMO

 

[Achilles97]

Do you guys think that wihout overclocking these boards are decent? Inparticular the ECS P4S5A-DX mobo with the SiS 645dx chipset.

Right now I have the FIC SD11 and my comp crashes every 5-10 minutes in any 3d application. I just want my new system to be stable enough to play a game for a few hours without crashing.

Thanks!

 

[CraigRT]

I wouldn't use them in my own rig no matter what.
not even if they were 1/10 the price of a good quality board.
I've only used one, it was a pain in the ass, and it didn't even last near a year.

 

[Achilles97]

You guys who have had problems with these mobos, what type of problems? What kinda things go wrong?

Thanks!

 

[touchmyichi]

look on some forums on them, everyone has issues. IF you want to go under 100 dollars get a kt 266a or a nforce board.

 

[Iron Woode]

I never had issues with them.

I am starting to get really annoyed at all the ECS bashers. Most are just rehashing crap that happened to someone else at some time.

ECS made literally millions of those boards (K7S5A). If even 1% were failures you would have at least 10,000 crappy boards. Bad boards happen to all manufacturers. Paying more for Abit or Asus doesn't guarrantee stability either.

The best thing to do is decide what your goals are and what budget restrictions you have. If the ECS fills the bill then try it. If you want a newer chipset MB then look at other makers. Assuming an AMD system.

It is better to keep an open mind when checking out opinions here. Some people do have axes to grind and are more than willing to rail against something they don't like, to the point of ignoring reason.

However, if you want stability for a P4 system, then an Intel board may be your best bet.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Iron Woode
I never had issues with them.

I am starting to get really annoyed at all the ECS bashers. Most are just rehashing crap that happened to someone else at some time.

ECS made literally millions of those boards (K7S5A). If even 1% were failures you would have at least 10,000 crappy boards. Bad boards happen to all manufacturers. Paying more for Abit or Asus doesn't guarrantee stability either.

The best thing to do is decide what your goals are and what budget restrictions you have. If the ECS fills the bill then try it. If you want a newer chipset MB then look at other makers. Assuming an AMD system.

It is better to keep an open mind when checking out opinions here. Some people do have axes to grind and are more than willing to rail against something they don't like, to the point of ignoring reason.

However, if you want stability for a P4 system, then an Intel board may be your best bet.

Also don't forget ECS makes a ton of OEM boards AND even makes boards for Abit. So you think major computer makers, Abit, etc.. would have someone make a bad product.

ECS is a good company. Show me something that shows other. And the "Well I got a bad one so they must all be bad" is not it.

 

[OS]

Crap boards.

Went through five k7s5a, all of which had problems to varying degrees, including the no SDRAM at 133/133 on three boards. Lost CMOS happened atleast once on all the boards.

I have an Epox nforce 2 board now. Everything works great now, not a single problem. It's really amazing the difference a mobo makes.

read more here

Hundreds of people on that site alone have had the above problems. I seriously doubt hundreds of people are screwing up the same way, to produce the same problem that doesn't seem to afflict other boards.

 

[CraigRT]

I'm not sure why people support ECS so much.... just because they are cheap and they "work" doesn't mean they are really all that good... I setup a K7S5A and i had to do some BIOS tweaking before I could get XP to install.. it also would not boot with the secondary drive set as a slave... had to be on the other channel... so annoying.. they're just blah motherboards... crap like that annoys me... never had such a hard time setting up a mobo... usually it's build the computer turn it on and install... even when it requires a few settings in the BIOS to install that's really stupid... how would a new user know? boo.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: OS
Crap boards.

Went through five k7s5a, all of which had problems to varying degrees, including the no SDRAM at 133/133 on three boards. Lost CMOS happened atleast once on all the boards.

I have an Epox nforce 2 board now. Everything works great now, not a single problem. It's really amazing the difference a mobo makes.

read more here

Hundreds of people on that site alone have had the above problems. I seriously doubt hundreds of people are screwing up the same way, to produce the same problem that doesn't seem to afflict other boards.

SDRAM at 133/133 is not a problem. Lost CMOS is power supply related. Re-parroting your results doesn't make them any more relevant than they were before. Millions of others got their K7S5A to work, you know ...

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: Peter

SDRAM at 133/133 is not a problem. Lost CMOS is power supply related. Re-parroting your results doesn't make them any more relevant than they were before. Millions of others got their K7S5A to work, you know ...

hahaha, the whole point of having a battery on a mobo is to save the cmos settings regardless of what the power supply is doing. Seriously, what kind of sh*tty ass design would depend on the power supply to remember it's settings, even with a battery??

Now, if they can't even get a battery to work right, what do you think is going on with the rest of the board? :Q


At anyrate, it's nice to see an ecs ho like you acknowledge that ECS can't get the battery thing right.

 

[ThaiStix]

the ecs boards aren't that bad but i feel that it depends on the chipset as well like the k7s5a i've neva had a problem with or the p4s5a isn't that bad.. although there r sometimes probs.. with the via chipsets... i would give ecs a hell no i've tried to via kt400 boards (don't ask me why) and they ran like sh!t. if you are gonna be cheap at least buy a soyo (kt 333 lite) or a gigabyte (7vax).. or p4... asus p4s533.
GOOO ECS!!!
lol!

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: OS

Originally posted by: Peter

SDRAM at 133/133 is not a problem. Lost CMOS is power supply related. Re-parroting your results doesn't make them any more relevant than they were before. Millions of others got their K7S5A to work, you know ...

hahaha, the whole point of having a battery on a mobo is to save the cmos settings regardless of what the power supply is doing. Seriously, what kind of sh*tty ass design would depend on the power supply to remember it's settings, even with a battery??

Now, if they can't even get a battery to work right, what do you think is going on with the rest of the board? :Q

At anyrate, it's nice to see an ecs ho like you acknowledge that ECS can't get the battery thing right.

As has been proven before, you have no clue, except in twisting the facts to your liking.

But anyway, for those willing to learn something rather than inflate their egos, here goes once more.

In an ATX board that is in soft-off state (which is what happens when it powers down on its own, or the power button is pressed), the power supply's Standby rail provides the backup voltage to the RTC and CMOS RAM, as well as the chipset south bridge so you can push the power button again to make the south bridge wake the PSU and the rest of the system.

The "lost CMOS" issue comes in when during this power supply transition from Standby-Only to Full-On, the Standby rail takes a nosedive below the threshold where the RTC chip sets its "low voltage" flag. BIOS in turn uses that flag to then assume the CMOS RAM contents cannot be trusted, and there's your CMOS error message.

The battery on the board is only used when the board is in Physical Off state.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Peter

Originally posted by: OS
Crap boards.

Went through five k7s5a, all of which had problems to varying degrees, including the no SDRAM at 133/133 on three boards. Lost CMOS happened atleast once on all the boards.

I have an Epox nforce 2 board now. Everything works great now, not a single problem. It's really amazing the difference a mobo makes.

read more here

Hundreds of people on that site alone have had the above problems. I seriously doubt hundreds of people are screwing up the same way, to produce the same problem that doesn't seem to afflict other boards.

SDRAM at 133/133 is not a problem. Lost CMOS is power supply related. Re-parroting your results doesn't make them any more relevant than they were before. Millions of others got their K7S5A to work, you know ...

For every million that got theirs working, there was probably 1/2 a million sent back for RMA. That's about ECS' RMA rate, about 33-40%...highest in the industry.

Chiz

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Peter

Originally posted by: OS
Crap boards.

Went through five k7s5a, all of which had problems to varying degrees, including the no SDRAM at 133/133 on three boards. Lost CMOS happened atleast once on all the boards.

I have an Epox nforce 2 board now. Everything works great now, not a single problem. It's really amazing the difference a mobo makes.

read more here

Hundreds of people on that site alone have had the above problems. I seriously doubt hundreds of people are screwing up the same way, to produce the same problem that doesn't seem to afflict other boards.

SDRAM at 133/133 is not a problem. Lost CMOS is power supply related. Re-parroting your results doesn't make them any more relevant than they were before. Millions of others got their K7S5A to work, you know ...

For every million that got theirs working, there was probably 1/2 a million sent back for RMA. That's about ECS' RMA rate, about 33-40%...highest in the industry.

Chiz

nope. Do you have an RMA data sheet?

Abit actually has a higher RMA rate than ECS.

 

[Peter]

Just stop feeding the trolls, they will go away ...

chizow and OS waste no time telling everybody they don't go anywhere near ECS, yet they seem to know everything about them.

Does anyone else really think Shuttle, Abit and, among others, Apple would repeatedly choose ECS to have them make their product if ECS were the worst choice around?

 

[Booster]

Allright, it's not the worst choice, neither it's better than any other choice around. I just don't get why some people are so ECS-biased (either curse it or love it).

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: Peter

As has been proven before, you have no clue, except in twisting the facts to your liking.

But anyway, for those willing to learn something rather than inflate their egos, here goes once more.

In an ATX board that is in soft-off state (which is what happens when it powers down on its own, or the power button is pressed), the power supply's Standby rail provides the backup voltage to the RTC and CMOS RAM, as well as the chipset south bridge so you can push the power button again to make the south bridge wake the PSU and the rest of the system.

The "lost CMOS" issue comes in when during this power supply transition from Standby-Only to Full-On, the Standby rail takes a nosedive below the threshold where the RTC chip sets its "low voltage" flag. BIOS in turn uses that flag to then assume the CMOS RAM contents cannot be trusted, and there's your CMOS error message.

The battery on the board is only used when the board is in Physical Off state.

hahaha, you're the one who admitted that it happens at all.

Ok seriously, you just admitted this does happen. So why have I never ever heard of a "lost cmos" problem on any other motherboard before??

But let's take your explanation at face value. How is a "nose diving" standby rail significantly different from just pulling the plug on a computer or using a hard kill switch? Shouldn't the battery take over once there is no/low standby voltage??

Can you honestly say, that's it a good engineering for a mobo to erase it's cmos settings when standby voltage falls or disappears, given the common situation of a computer losing physical power??

Nothing too personal bro, but seriously, come on. . .

 

[Peter]

(dp)

 

[Peter]

*sigh*

Standby power going away (to physical Off state) isn't the problem - that's covered by the battery taking over.

The problem is the transition from Standby to On, where on many cheap power supplies one can observe the Standby rail dropping below the limit tolerated by the RTC while firing up the main rails. Now while the board is in On state, the Standby rail is supposed to feed the RTC, doesn't, and causes the RTC to complain.

In simple words, the Standby voltage may drop or go away altogether in Standby state (transitioning to Off), but in On state, it must be stable.

It *does* happen with other boards too ... but those don't have people like you who keep droning on and on and on and on about how lost power cannot possibly be a power supply problem.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Peter
causes the RTC to complain.

What's RTC stand for??? ReTail Consumer???

Chiz

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: Peter
*sigh*

Standby power going away (to physical Off state) isn't the problem - that's covered by the battery taking over.

The problem is the transition from Standby to On, where on many cheap power supplies one can observe the Standby rail dropping below the limit tolerated by the RTC while firing up the main rails. Now while the board is in On state, the Standby rail is supposed to feed the RTC, doesn't, and causes the RTC to complain.

In simple words, the Standby voltage may drop or go away altogether in Standby state (transitioning to Off), but in On state, it must be stable.

It *does* happen with other boards too ... but those don't have people like you who keep droning on and on and on and on about how lost power cannot possibly be a power supply problem.

Ok, so based on your explanation, if I hard kill the power on a mobo while it's on, I will lose the cmos?

If the answer is yes, I will try it right now with my computer, which has a NF2 mobo.

 

[SemperFi]

I have built 2 budget systems built on ecs k7s5a. The second one I got had some serious issues. I rma'd it back to newegg and the second worked fine. In my experience the issues I had were in the first couple of boots. After getting everything ironed out at the begining systems have had no stability issues.

I must say it is not as easy as an Asus which is what I generally use. It definately took a little longer getting everything setup. I would not hesitate to use one again but chances are that you will not find one in the system I am using.

my recomendation would be if you like tinker, tweak, have patience (in case things aren't so smooth ) and want to save the cash go for it. Otherwise you may want to spend a little more on something else.