Replacement for ECS MB

[Tomer]

Anyone have any suggestions for an inexpensive MOBO?

Have built and have running 20ish machines with the ECS K7S5A board and they are all stable and most have ran well over a year with no problems at all. (Not counting the CMOS "memory loss" problem all those board have, but they run 24/7 so that is not an issue)

Question is, since this board appears to be discontinued, what would be a good board to use now for inexpensive "Mom and Pop" machines?

The K7S5A had everything onboard except the video and modem and I paid around $45 per at NewEgg.

Thanks

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Have you considered one of the Shuttle MB's? They are priced moderately, (added in edit, the integrated graphics is available), and Shuttle seems to have a much better reputation for quality control than ECS.

(So far, this go-round of doing some system building, I've not tried any of the lower-priced motherboards, so that Shuttle suggestion was just a shot in what seemed like a good direction, given that the evening was getting on toward pretty late with no one else offering a comment. A lot of years ago, I built quite a few systems for resale, but that wasn't a money- making proposition for me after all. I was buying complete White Box PC's after that, for myself as well, until a year ago.)


:beer:

 

[Nick5324]

Would this work for you? I think ASRock is an Asus brand.

This board is only slighty more, but has a newer chipset (VIA KT880 vs. VIA KT400A), 4x DIMM vs. 2x, 6x USB ports vs. 4x, and SATA support. This board also supports an "upgrade card" to install a socket 754 proc., more info here

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: Kiwi
Have you considered one of the Shuttle MB's? They are priced moderately, and have a much better reputation for quality control than ECS.

:beer:

Interestingly though, I've never had a problem with ECS, but I've had bad boards from ASUS, MSI, and Biostar (well, at least Biostar has a less than stellar reputation in that group).

The K7S5A was a real workhorse board.

I don't know exactly what the prices are like (I don't think it's overly expensive), but the A7N8X-X (I hope that's the right letters)is a great NF2-400 board (not ultra), with onboard sound, and I believe onboard NIC, though I don't have one in front of me.

 

[Markfw]

I have done a couple of these, and they were fine....

 

[AncientPC]

I have a secondhand ECS L7VTA that works just fine. The computer isn't really taxed though, only used for web browsing / e-mail so I can't say much about it.

I went with Shuttle for budget nForce2 boards, and Chaintech for budget an nForce4 board. I liked the Shuttle boards a lot, mixed options about the Chaintech board.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I have done a couple of these, and they were fine...

That one didn't seem to include the integrated graphics, which is at least part of the reason I suggested Shuttle. Personally, I've never owned or built a system that relied on that level of graphics capability compared to the available separate video adapters for the time period represented. I have to put it that way, since compared to the really primitive graphics we had when I started in PC's, even MX 440- level integrated graphics is really great.

My first 80X86 machine had a clone of the HGC monochrome graphics card, which had only 720 across by 350 down (could've been 400) for resolution. I have no idea any more what the C64, and/or the Z80A that was before any of the others, had for video. Way too long ago now ..