ECS K7S5A

Anyone want to tell me ehat the hell is going on ?

I thought ECS always makes crappy mobos...

I've been following this mobo for a while and I have nothing but praise for it.

It's a solid mobo, good performance, good drivers, dirt cheap and with the integrated LAN and Sound a real value as well.

True that the board's design is a little strange (being almost full ATX size os unless you havea really big case you can't install more than 2 CD-ROMS and the fact that the power led connector is two adjacet pins so you need to play with the connector) but that's about it.

I think this mobo should get the "Entry level Socket A" award - it's cheap and effective-clearly a winner.

Anyone had any problems with that board ?
any horror stories ?
Post your views.

To be honest, I think ECS is crap. I haven't worked with any of these motherboards yet. Reading your comments made me curious. I think I should talk to the salesmen at work and maybe convince them order a couple of them for testing purposes.

I am running one on my main PC. I have not had any problems beside a Battery that had to be replaced after a month ($3.00) It has run 98 and now XP without a hitch. I started off with PC133 but now running DDR (this is a nice feature) I have'nt had any problems. I would recommend to anyone who is on a budget.

I hae just finished building 4 systems based on ECS P4S5A boards with P4 1.6Ghz & 256Mb PC2100 and it shocked me to find that the ECS boards actually were stable!!!!!! When the supplier informed me that these were the only boards they had in stock (the customer needs these systems by tomorrow!) I basically almost cancelled the systems.

Stable, fairly quick & cheap. Nice OEM product.
Hopefully ECS have stopped making/using PC-Chips boards now :)

i have built 3 systems with the ECS K7S5A and one with the ECS P4S5A. 2 of the athlon systems i've had nothing but problems with. a bios flash helped alot, but they are still quirky. the other athlon and the P4 have been rock solid so far. i don't know what to think about ECS, the jury is still out on that one.

I have had nothing but good experience with the ECS K7S5A. In relation to its price, I would give it the highest recommendations possible.

Driver updates are a little daunting for the inexperienced, though -- no nice point-and-shoot installation wizard a la Via 4in1 -- and the documentation for the driver updates is zilch.

A quick look through ECS's BIOS download site shows that they are committed to ongoing support for their products - always a good sign.

My (possibly flawed) understanding is that ECS is huge but is not widely known under its own name because much of its product is re-branded. Since it seems to be a "you want crap, we got crap, you excellence, we got excellence" something for everyone type manufacturer, you cannot trust that the ECS branding is any assurance of quality. It is demonstrable, however, that they are capable of making high quality products of great value -- the K7S5A being a shining example.

I have used at least 15 of these boards in systems ranging from Duron 800 to XP 2000+.

The only problem has been battery failure. At least 50% of mine have had to be replaced. Cheap to buy but a pain in the neck.

BIOS support is great and stability is rock solid in all systems.

The K7S6A has a better SIS chipset and is DDR only. Only a little more expensive but still rock solid stability.

Both are great budget boards in my opinion.

I've built quite a few low end machines with um. They seem to work great. I haven't had any battery problems either. They work pretty well as far as i'm concerned. I usually us um with durons and some of the lower end XPs. But I have used them with up to XP 2000. Most Windows XP Home edition systems also

Im running a k7s5a with 512DDR and athlonxp1800, and i think its an excellent board for the price. Ive ran win98, win me and win xp with no problems.

I’v been running a ecs k7s5a mobo with a amd 1600+/256ddr and have put the thing through hell and it hasn’t crash or complained at all, for the price I don’t think there anything out there to touch it.

Well I just ordered one from New Egg about 10 minutes ago, I've got the time to some upgrading! :) $54.00 but $20.00 shipping to Alaska :( . We'll see how she works in a Duron machine I'm going to build.

Well I just put together a system using this board - 1 Gig Duron, with 512 meg Crucial DDR, IBM 40 Gig ATA 100 DeskStar HD, ASUS GeForce 2 MX400, Plextor 12/10/32 A CD/RW, 16X - Pioneer DVD-ROM, on board sound and LAN. I gotta say it rocks. No lock ups or restarts in the 24 hour Si-Soft Sandra burn in. Very Stable, very easy to install and set up. Not exactly an overclockers dream, but I don't OC so no loss for me. Do download the updated user's manual from ECS's site. Other than that no complaints. The best $54.00 I've spent.

First problem to report : USB issues with philips webcam..

Okay here's the story:

Got a philips PCVC720K/17 (ToUcamXS) USB.

Systems Specs (2 different systems similar config):
ECS K7s5a latest BIOS
256 DDR PC2100
20GB WD 7200
GF2mx400 64MB
Windows XP Home (updated)

Okay, I hookup the cam (which btw worked the second I hooked it on my Gigabyte GA-7RXVP)
XP detected installed - no probs so far ..
turn on netmetting - camera showing it's on ... no image, just a green image...

installed a WDM capture driver - still same problems - image is now blue ...

searched the web - installed the SISXPdetect USB patch - partials solution: cam works but image is bad seems like low exposure - cam control no help..

I will play a little with BIOS and USB settings as well as some IRQs and we'll see - I'll keep you posted .

if anyone has some input on something similar I'd want to hear about it - TIA.

btw, USB tips are from

<a href="http://www.usbman.com" target="_blank">http://www.usbman.com</a>

seems it has some good tips there - worth checking

I have had an absolute nightmare in the last week or so with an ECS P4S5A. Intermittant 'STOP BSOD's' (Page Fault in Non-Page Area) upon start-up with ANY DDR module used. At present they are using one of my own personal 512Mb PC133 DIMM's to see if that solves the problem. Been a few days now and no phone call yet, but I am not holding out on it fixing the problem. The other 3 systems are working fine (as they get a lot less use than this one that is playing up).

Just had a call from my supplier regarding the DDR DIMM I returned to them as faulty, and it is testing fine. Looks like it is the board then (which is a sod as it looks as if another drive to London is in order to replace it under warranty).

I just had my first problem also. A bad primary IDE channel. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />

ECS, like any other cheapie mobo - you get what ou pay for. When your boss wants to meet a certain price point, they don't care if it was assembled by 5 year olds in taiwan or not. Actually the biggest problem with the ecs boards we use (K7EM) is: when loading windows xp, you need extremely reliable ram to get the setup to complete. I usually get many bsod's during setup with cheap ram, install some crucial ram, no problemo.

I think i'll stick with asus.

I've heard this is actually a pretty stable board but I have not used it. Heads up for everyone, Outpost.com/Fry's currently has this packaged with a 1ghz duron for only $79. Check it out.
<a href="http://shop1.outpost.com/product/3190650" target="_blank">http://shop1.outpost.com/product/3190650</a>

i have to praise my ECS K7S5A Mobo, due to the fact i have not had one single BSOD hardware related crash on XP Pro since i started using the mobo a month ago.

i had an MSI 6330 mobo before which recently went tits up, it worked great under 98, but really gave me grief under XP Pro. '

Windows XP Pro (dual boot)
Windows 98 SE
384mb SD Ram
1.2ghz Athlon Thunderbird
ECS K7S5A Mobo
Creative GeForce 2Mx 32mb AGP
20gig Seagate HD
10gig Western Digital HD
Soundblaster PCI 128
Creative x6 DVD Rom
LG 16x10x40 CD-RW

Condor,

I am the only full fledged tech in this little town of 50000 people and I build at least 20 machines a month.

9 out of every ten has an ECS board
You wanna see results
<a href="http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=3196989" target="_blank">http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=3196989</a>
compare it to any like system, exact CPU or Approx. CPU.

As far as stability and reliability, I spend more time working on Compaqs Dells and Gateways than anything I build (9 times out of ten if I get one of mine back in it is for an upgrade/add-on). On any P3 or P4 system they get the Sis chipset and DDR. I have heard that Sis gives ECS extra help and advantages in producing boards with their chipsets.

I would advise ANY of the "do-it-yourself" types, or system builders alike to use an ECS board. The only thing that is even a remote drawback is the lack of O/Cing capabilities, but for a system builder who has to provide a warranty that isn't a bad thing. :D

Oh yeah, in the past 10 months I've been using ECS, I've sold 221 of their Mobo's.
I've had to RMA 3 of them for problems.

Not a bad track record.

Actually I couldn't get that usb cam to work properly.

I tried it on my KT333 mobo and it works fine.

I think I will RMA it and get an Intel or Logitech webcam see if that would work..

I'm small fry compared to most of you but aside from day job I've built about 10 PC's around this mobo. And I'm useing one as my mane pc now that I did a build on an Asus A7M and had to replace with my own KG7 after it went bad :-( then I bought an Asus 333 mobo and that was D.O.A.

I have not had one prob with ecs boards, yeah they dont o/c but as some other guy said: who wants that when your building for users who dont understand whta fsb means.....

I use em for all budget builds but really try and convince folks who want high spec pc's to go with asus/abit/epox/msi,

personally I only want to use Asus or Abit.