should I give up on the k7s5a?

[UCDznutz]

I picked up a combo from Fry's with the ECS k7s5a and 2000+.

It was running fine for a while until i started having random reboots. So i bought a new server quality power supply rated up to 230W on the 3.3v/5v rails, but i've been getting random reboots and such with it. I switched back and forth between the power supplies but it still randomly restarts.

Heatsink is seated fine, and mbm5 reads about 48C idle and 55 load. I don't think heat is an issue. The only other thing I can think can be an issue is my stick of ram. I've got 256mb of generic high density stuff in there. I've got about 60 bucks to upgrade right now, and I'm wondering if i should go ahead and order 256mb of Crucial 2100 DDR or a new motherboard, maybe the shuttle ak32 or the aopen ak75. So should I get the ram or a new board? I know i'm not doing myself any favors by continuing to use the generic ram in the new boards, but the ram was perfect on my last system (Abit kt7a/900tbird). Suggestions?

 

[CraigRT]

people claim the K7S5A is actually stable... so maybe getting the memory would help.... I did a memory swap just today on an unstable computer, and was afterwards stable.. proving to be bad memory..

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: UCDznutz
I picked up a combo from Fry's with the ECS k7s5a and 2000+.

It was running fine for a while until i started having random reboots. So i bought a new server quality power supply rated up to 230W on the 3.3v/5v rails, but i've been getting random reboots and such with it. I switched back and forth between the power supplies but it still randomly restarts.

Heatsink is seated fine, and mbm5 reads about 48C idle and 55 load. I don't think heat is an issue. The only other thing I can think can be an issue is my stick of ram. I've got 256mb of generic high density stuff in there. I've got about 60 bucks to upgrade right now, and I'm wondering if i should go ahead and order 256mb of Crucial 2100 DDR or a new motherboard, maybe the shuttle ak32 or the aopen ak75. So should I get the ram or a new board? I know i'm not doing myself any favors by continuing to use the generic ram in the new boards, but the ram was perfect on my last system (Abit kt7a/900tbird). Suggestions?

Try Sisandra and memtest86 to see if yor system is actually functioning right. Memtest86 will stress test your ram.

Your temps are on the high side.

 

[Evadman]

I have not had any problems with any of the K7S5A's I have installed. I even had one on a 200 watt Sparkle PWS with a 1600+ for a while.

The K7S5A just seems to not like some people. there have been many horror stories about that board. I recomend it though *shrugs.

As Iron Woode said, try memtest86. If you can, try to get a different stick of ram, or switch to the other slot. see if that helps.

 

[Macro2]

Random reboots are usually from the inability of the PS to deliver good clean voltage (low), heat or maybe RAM.
You're a little hot. My K7S5A runs at about 44-48 C. That's just the socket. Core, if it could be measured, is probably 10-15 C higher but the chip is rated to 90 C.
I hve to ask it you get these Random reboots when pressing certain combinations of Keys? I have Win XP and used to get reboots while pressing certain Keys in sequence. Not sure which ones exactly.

 

[UCDznutz]

hmm i do get reboots while i'm typing. sometimes when i'm moving the mouse. i don't know for sure if that's the problem or whatnot. and about the cpu temp, i was under the impression that anything under 60 is just fine. I could look into upgrading the heatsink/fan (gc68 right now).

Or i could just go ahead and get a new board and sell this one. I'm leaning towards the biostar m7vig pro because of the future use of usb 2.0. I don't know. I can't really afford much right now. I suppose I could head on over to Fry's and buy a stick of quality memory for testing, and then return it to see if that's the culprit. I've used two power supplies (one servergrade Lite-On and an Antec pp303x), and i'm still iffy on if its the power supply.

Ran memtest386 and no it reported no errors of problems. *sigh* the pains you go through for trying to be cheap haha

 

[Macro2]

It may not be the board...mine strated to reboot out of thin air too.

1. Are you using an old version of XP? SP1 might help as well as a defrag. I think XP does a CHKDSK( might have had some truncated files) too. Don't ask why just hasn't happened since.
2. Check and see just what you are doing when it reboots. You get get a black screen and a reboot right?
3. Mine seemed to happen while in IE6 and involved a combination of the ALT, TAB or something. I think it happened someother time as well.

Might try a disk cleanup first .

 

[UCDznutz]

i've done two installs of windows xp, and right after it was done i installed sp1 before installing any other program.

i don't seem to recall what i was doing when it reboots, but i will try to keep that in mind next time it happens.

i figure since i'm financially tied right now, i'm going to go ahead and order some crucial ram (thought about the ddr jump for a while), then order an asus a7n266-vm after i sell the ram and find some more cash, then pick up the new case i've been trying to get after i sell the ecs board.

 

[kponds]

I would try the ram first - I may even consider underclocking the FSB to 100 (you can do that in the bios) to test for stability at a lower speed. My experience with this board (probably over 100 used in systems is that two very important things - a good power supply (you got plenty of 5 and 3.3 amps) and good ram.

If I had to bet, I would say its the ram. Have you got a friend that you can borrow some PC133 from for a couple of hours?

 

[Iovah]

well since you bought it at fries there are two things that I would say to do because I had this board and just took it back they seem to be good boards from what I hear. if you bought that memory at fry's that's probably your problem. try less aggresive timings of the latency's in the bios. Also I've hard of a lot of people needing to change out the cmos battery for some reason but mine didn't need changed it just needed to be pressed in tighter. Check that it's as in there seated as nice as can be. Make sure your ram is seated realy good pull it out and put it in as well as your agp card those can give reboots at times. Plus check to see if your video card is on ECS website for that motherboard if you have an older videocard some like to lock up systems or reboot them especially SIS & savage cards in my experience. Before you go throw around some cash though I would mess with the small things go step by step. I would wait also if you are going to get an a7n 266 because the nforce2 boards will be dropping and the nforce's will be phasing out which means even cheaper your choice but I would wait fro that nforce2. Hope I helped

 

[Soulkeeper]

I'm gonna return an ECS board to fry's it fry's cpu's
heh no pun intended

they are "the" cheapest socket A motherboards being sold right now
the cheapest chipset manufacturer and one of the cheapest motherboard makers
failure rates will be higher than top name companies

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: UCDznutz
i've done two installs of windows xp, and right after it was done i installed sp1 before installing any other program.

i don't seem to recall what i was doing when it reboots, but i will try to keep that in mind next time it happens.

i figure since i'm financially tied right now, i'm going to go ahead and order some crucial ram (thought about the ddr jump for a while), then order an asus a7n266-vm after i sell the ram and find some more cash, then pick up the new case i've been trying to get after i sell the ecs board.

You can turn off the reboot on error. This way you can see the actual error. This can greatly help in finding the culprit.

This seems more of an OS issue than a MB issue.

 

[BarryAZ]

I have had generally good experience with this motherboard -- but I only run it with XP1600 to XP1800 processors. I tried using an XP2000 on a couple of these, no luck there -- so the XP2000 is now running just fine on a better class of motherboard.

I got mine the same as you via a good price from the local Fry's.

I saw an ad there this week -- same motherboard with an XP2000 -- $90 -- good price, bad combination in my view.

My primary workstation has run with this motherboard and an XP1700 -- rock solid -- running 24/7 for months using Win2K. GeForce4 MX440, internal 40G ATA-100 drive, DVD, 12x8x32x CDRW, TekRAM DC390U2W controller (I like these), external 18G SCSI drive. USB ZIP 250 drive.

The PC-Chips 'clone' of the ECS motherboard has been more troublesome.

For a faster system of course, there are better motherboards for sure, but for a 'low end' motherboard (we are talking around $50 -- or less with some of those Fry's special combos if you place a decent value on the OEM XP1800 to XP2000's they include), they are not a bad choice in my view.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: BarryAZ
I have had generally good experience with this motherboard -- but I only run it with XP1600 to XP1800 processors. I tried using an XP2000 on a couple of these, no luck there -- so the XP2000 is now running just fine on a better class of motherboard.

I got mine the same as you via a good price from the local Fry's.

I saw an ad there this week -- same motherboard with an XP2000 -- $90 -- good price, bad combination in my view.

My primary workstation has run with this motherboard and an XP1700 -- rock solid -- running 24/7 for months using Win2K. GeForce4 MX440, internal 40G ATA-100 drive, DVD, 12x8x32x CDRW, TekRAM DC390U2W controller (I like these), external 18G SCSI drive. USB ZIP 250 drive.

The PC-Chips 'clone' of the ECS motherboard has been more troublesome.

For a faster system of course, there are better motherboards for sure, but for a 'low end' motherboard (we are talking around $50 -- or less with some of those Fry's special combos if you place a decent value on the OEM XP1800 to XP2000's they include), they are not a bad choice in my view.

Oddly enough I have found the opposite to be true. The ECS boards give me more issues than the PCChips do.

I have found the XP2000+ to work fine on the newer K7S5As with the latest BIOS.

 

[Peter]

Oddly enough I have found the opposite to be true. The ECS boards give me more issues than the PCChips do.

Hee hee, you guys are funny. It's the same product from the same production line, using the same BIOS.

I've been planting an XP2100+ on my brother's system, and other than getting dodgy RAM from the shop (three times!) and a DOA harddisk, no troubles so far. Give it enough power, working RAM and adequate cooling, and there you go. This has been true every time I touched a K7S5A - including one which another Computer Repair Man didn't get to work stable for an entire year before I got onto the case ...

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: UCDznutz
Suggestions?

Take it all back and get something else.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: OS

Originally posted by: UCDznutz
Suggestions?

Take it all back and get something else.

Here we go again.

 

[jhites]

Sounds like a memory issue to me. My K7S5A never reboots @ 138fsb / XP1800+ / Crucial PC2100

Download MemTest-86 v.3.0 and run all 11 tests for about 3 loops.
You will know pretty quickly if it is a memory issue.

To run all 11 tests.
Hit C, when it starts.
Then Number for all tests, 2 I think.
Then Enter and off she goes.

 

[touchmyichi]

try the cheepoman bios

 

[BarryAZ]

Interesting -- I found I needed the 'overclocking' BIOS tweak for the PC Chips board to make it *more* stable -- strange.

What happened on my primary workstation, I swapped out an XP2000 for the XP1700, the system booted up, got into Windows 2000 and did the 'freeze' thing - not a reboot, simply froze up. Returned to the 1700 life was fine.

I relocated the XP2000 to another motherboard (Epox or Asus if memory serves) and life was fine.

I figure eventually I will go through the joy of a full upgrade on my workstation -- say to an XP2400/2600 on a KT400 motherboard -- but that will be when I have the available time to reinstall/retweak a workstation that I've lived with for over 9 months. I typically live with a system as 'prime' for about a year or so.

 

[freshspace]

I also think it may be a memory issue. I also had automatic reboot problems with a stick of PNY 512 memory. Unlike most of you, I still run an SDRAM system.

MSI K7T Turbo2
XP1700+ (Throughbred B) 1470@1712Ghz
3 x 128MB PC133 Kingston ValueRam.

I wanted to swap out one of the 128mb sticks with the 512. My computer just went crazy. I put the Kingston back in there, and no more problems. Try a different ram. Then, get rid of that board!!! I mean I hear it is really stable, but I also hear horror stories. In my mind, if you hear both versions, the board will be no good. It will ramdomly be good to some and not to others. You just don't need that kind of headache, if you can avoid it completely by going with some other stable board.

I was at a computer show and saw your board. It was a display model, and it's chipset heatsink fell off in front of my eyes! Hello?

 

[freshspace]

I also think it may be a memory issue. I also had automatic reboot problems with a stick of PNY 512 memory. Unlike most of you, I still run an SDRAM system.

MSI K7T Turbo2
XP1700+ (Throughbred B) 1470@1712Ghz
3 x 128MB PC133 Kingston ValueRam.

I wanted to swap out one of the 128mb sticks with the 512. My computer just went crazy. I put the Kingston back in there, and no more problems. Try a different ram. Then, get rid of that board!!! I mean I hear it is really stable, but I also hear horror stories. In my mind, if you hear both versions, the board will be no good. It will ramdomly be good to some and not to others. You just don't need that kind of headache, if you can avoid it completely by going with some other stable board.

I was at a computer show and saw your board. It was a display model, and it's chipset heatsink fell off in front of my eyes! Hello?

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: freshspace
I also think it may be a memory issue. I also had automatic reboot problems with a stick of PNY 512 memory. Unlike most of you, I still run an SDRAM system.

MSI K7T Turbo2
XP1700+ (Throughbred B) 1470@1712Ghz
3 x 128MB PC133 Kingston ValueRam.

I wanted to swap out one of the 128mb sticks with the 512. My computer just went crazy. I put the Kingston back in there, and no more problems. Try a different ram. Then, get rid of that board!!! I mean I hear it is really stable, but I also hear horror stories. In my mind, if you hear both versions, the board will be no good. It will ramdomly be good to some and not to others. You just don't need that kind of headache, if you can avoid it completely by going with some other stable board.

I was at a computer show and saw your board. It was a display model, and it's chipset heatsink fell off in front of my eyes! Hello?

Your issue could have been a PSU issue.

I have the Turbo 1 board and I tried out 512 meg dims. I had 1 gig of ram using 512 dimms. Worked great for me (Enermax EG465P-VE PSU).

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Yield
people claim the K7S5A is actually stable... so maybe getting the memory would help.... I did a memory swap just today on an unstable computer, and was afterwards stable.. proving to be bad memory..

Yah replace everything in your system, and when that doesn't work, replace the mobo

Chiz

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: chizow


Yah replace everything in your system, and when that doesn't work, replace the mobo

I say just start at the other end, replace the mobo first. :Q