ECS Motherboard K7S5A

vicarious george · December 24th, 2002, 02:33 PM

Hello everyone....

I bought the ECS mobo as part of the system that I will be assembling tomorrow morning for a Christmas present.

I have built systems before, and usually with little or no problems.
However, after reading and hearing about all the horror stories with this mobo, I was wondering if anyone has some tips before installation. (i.e. known incompatibility problems, etc...). I've seen this motherboard in this forum before, so I know some of you must use it.

This is what is exactly going into the system:

AMD XP1700 retail
ECS K7S5A
Maxtor 7200RPM 80GB HDD
CompUSA PC133 SDRAM (256mb x 2)
Albatron AGP TNT2 M32 32mb VGA
CompUSA 5.1 "Sound Blaster Compatible" sound card
Antec 300watt PSU
Chieftec case
Phillips 12x CDRW
DVD-ROM (taken from old HP pavilion PII)
XP Pro

This entire system cost me about $350. It's not a gaming rig(already built one last month), but it is a great computer for everyday use. It's basically a cost-effective replacement for my old HP Pavilion PII 300mhz. (I'm even using a few components...)

Wizzard~Of~Ozz · December 24th, 2002, 02:43 PM

It should be fine, make sure you flash to the newest BIOS, It corrects a constant CMOS error on boot, Don't know about your memory, some people claim that it's picky with different types of memory, but I've never had a problem with generic.

sheriff · December 24th, 2002, 02:44 PM

I run two of those boards. No problems. right now they have a 1.3 and 1.4 gig athlons on them but I have had my xp1800 on one it recognized it fine. My boards are several months old. 1 has win2kpro on it nos and linux suse 8.1 pro on the other. NO problems.

jerrygarcia · December 24th, 2002, 02:46 PM

I've built quite a few machines based on this board without a problem. I manually install the drivers instead of their auto setup. As long as you have a good power supply and good ram, you should be good.

Make sure you go into the bios at boot and set the fsb to 133/133.

Richard Cranium · December 24th, 2002, 02:51 PM

I beg to differ with Wizzard of Oz

Never, never flash a BIOS unless you're having specific issues that cannot be resolved another way.

The ECS boards I've run only had two issues.

1. They HATE cheap-o power supplies
2. the sound drivers for W98 fe are not listed under W98 but instead under W95

Other than that they've worked fine.

Wizzard~Of~Ozz · December 24th, 2002, 02:59 PM

Sorry Doc, I have 2 of these boards, one needed the flash to even run a 1Ghz Athlon, the other needs it for the CMOS failure at boot every time, it's been adressed on thier site.
http://www.ecs.com.tw/download/k7s5a.htm
This BIOS is for both of with/without LAN due to BIOS can auto detect LAN

Release Note 1. Fixed CMOS can't be saved issue and support high speed CPU
2. By TSD requested

Marc04 · December 24th, 2002, 03:05 PM

I'm running an XP1600 on one of those boards. Setup was a breeze and it runs flawless. You shouldn't expect any problems with your setup.

My only disappointment was the onboard sound. It didn't work good for me. The output was way too low.

Marc

nukes · December 24th, 2002, 03:33 PM

I have had no problems, except it didn't like my SB Live! 1024 card, so I ripped it out and am just using the intel ICH onboard sound. (or the 7012 as you may know it)

jerrygarcia · December 24th, 2002, 03:58 PM

The sound in all of my machines works very good. Are you using externally powered speakers?

DanU · December 25th, 2002, 03:25 AM

I've built one system with a K7S5A. The only problem I had was that the drivers on the CD didn't work! The reference drivers from SIS's web page worked fine, however.