Reviews for ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A, ATX, 1GB DDR-SDRAM, 266MHz FSB

ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Cheapness (not to be confused with value)

Weakness: Everything: documentation, stability, reliability

I find it amazing that the K7S5A got 3.5 stars (121 votes) and the K7S5A Pro got 3 stars (10 votes) considering the breadth of problems everyone seems to be having. As a Cliff's Notes guide to the reviews, the most common problems seem to be that they break a lot, they often come defective out of the box, they kill power supplies, the BIOS resets and forgets, and crappy customer service. Having bought three ECS boards within the past year (all because of overly tempting Athlon combo specials at Fry's), I've experienced all of those problems to some degree.

The first one I bought is still running, but it fried my power supply at around three months. It also forgot that my Athlon XP is a "2000+", which it initially read as only 1.66 GHz to begin with, then spontaneously downgraded it to 1.24 at some point and has left it there ever since. It was quite a pain to install, since the directions were absolutely WRONG as far as where to install the front panel connector pins (for power/reset switches and LEDs, etc).

The second one (K7S5A Pro) I bought was 5 months ago, which died yesterday. Dead. Muerto. Kaput. Crap. That was replaced today by the third motherboard (a different model, but still ECS), which was crap right out of the box. It beeps at me incessantly every time I turn it on and gives no monitor display, forcing a reset to work at all. The driver CD that came with it was especially poorly designed -- it gets stuck at prompts where it asks you to guide it to directories that don't exist, and then tells you you're wrong. This is reason enough to return it, but then, so is the shaky start-up procedure.
The guy at Fry's says ECS has the highest return rate of any motherboard brand they sell (and they sell 10+), and I believe him. I haven't had the displeasure of verifying the final complaints -- dishonest customer service and refusal to honor warranties -- but I will this week. For now, that's 3 strikes, and ECS is out of my life.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Price, SDR/DDR capability, onboard Audio/LAN

Weakness: Incorrect documentation in manual(correct documentation on website), very poor RMA handling by ECS

System config:
Duron 1.2 Ghz, upgraded to Athlon XP 1900+
256 MB SDRAM, upgraded to 256 MB DDR
20 GB Samsung HDD, upgraded to 80 GB IBM HDD
32 MB SiS 305 AGP video card
Triple booted with Win 98SE/Win XP Pro/Mandrake Linux 9.0

I bought this board with a Duron 1.2 Ghz CPU from Fry's Electronics, and used 256 MB SDRAM. I had no problems with this setup, with Win 98SE or Win XP Pro. Upgraded to DDR RAM shortly after, also from Fry's. Later upgraded to 80 GB HDD, ALSO from Fry's. Finally, I upgraded to an Athlon XP 1900+ processor. No issues, even with Linux!
The only issues I ever had were Windows issues, and the fact that the hookup connections in the manual were incorrect, so I had to go online to get the correct diagram. Also, I swapped with a friend and gave him this motherboard, and it worked fine for him for a short while, then died. However, I would attribute this more to his "touch of death" with computers than the mobo.
I emailed ECS and received an RMA form and # to return the mobo under warranty. The mobo was sent out TWICE to ECS, and BOTH times, the package was returned REFUSED. Once, the RMA # was not on the box. The second time, we don't know why it was refused, just seems like ECS chose not to deal with it.
Unlike some, I have no complaints about Fry's, they usually have good product. If you don't know much about computers, GET SOMEONE ELSE TO BUILD IT FOR YOU! And if you want top performance, SPEND TOP MONEY! Great board, great buy!

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Low cost, uses SDRAM or DDR

Weakness: Too finicky . Freezes , crashes .

I have Version 3.1 . It has had freezing problems like those discussed in previous posts . I have done BIOS upgrades , add chipset heatsink cooling, PS checks , substituted memory and it still freezes .

Also unfortunately the ECS website says they will not handle RMA directly and the retailer won't handle it for me
even though it was retail package .

I have heard it is a good value would even consider trying another if ECS would handle RMA problems direct like many other motherboard manufacturers . But since they don't I would say buying an ECS a gamble of your $ so I will pass next time .

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Price, RAM options

Weakness: Read other people's comments.

I've had not one problem with this mother board at all. Easy to install, configure BIOS, ect.... (my first time putting together a pc) I must be lucky though because alot of people here seem to have had lots of problems. This is a sure sign of bad Quality Control and I would probably not consider buying from ECS in the future unless they make some improvements in that department.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: cheap as hell

Weakness: unstable, unstable, unstable

i've built quite a few systems using mainly asus or gigabyte boards - never had one problem with any of them. when fry's was having an athlon xp 2000 + this board for $69.99 i couldn't pass it up (could you?).

i have a lot of spare parts in my house and tried numerous combinations - 300/400/500 psu's, ddr/sdram (kingston/corsair/samsung), overclocking, underclocking, pci/agp video, bios updgrade, etc.

i exchanged the board three times. they were all slightly different - but nevertheless crap. i didn't know a motherboard could be of such shoddy quality as this ecs k7s5a. it locks up at random point during post and every reboot is different. it's like a slot machine - you reboot and you don't know where and when it's going to freeze, except that it will.

i wanted this board to shine, i really did. the packaging was clean and when it does work, it's fast as hell. speedwise, it beats the crap out of my p4 1.8Ghz machine on a gigabyte board. but the instability is not only annoying; it's impractical to even run dos.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Easy to work with and install

Weakness: Trouble accepting pci video cards. Manual for pro board indicates that pci video will work, but mx prowler 440 SE PCI will not work with this board.

I don't know what all the complaints are re this motherboard. I installed with 512MB SDRAM and tried 512MB DDR and both worked well. No lockups at all. Board runs smooth. Board works well with DDR or SDRAM.
I would use this board again and for the price I can't complain.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: None

Weakness: Many

I do not rate this Motherboard at all, extremely poor quality and extremely unstable also. I have built various Pc's previously using Socket A Mobo's and this Elite K7S5A Motherboard is worst I have come across so far !!!
I have seem to have found many faults so therefore I cannot recommend this Motherboard at all. One to avoid at all costs !!!!!

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Price, onboard Audio/LAN, supports both DDR and SDR and its very stable. It has totally unbeatable quality compared to its price. Its as fast as any KT266A board.

Weakness: No overclocking ablities, but if you flash a new BIOS and make a easy V-core mod then you have overclocking ablities...

Great board with awesome quality compared to its price. If you are looking for a board for 50€ this is yous choise. My next board wont be ECS, because ECS's new boards are crappy. But this one is great. Its stable, never freezes or locks up...

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Big "Oooh factor" and inexpensive-lots of bells & whistles for not much money.

Weakness: Under-engineered. Unstable. Poor customer support from ECS

Problems when some PCI cards are plugged into it--it won't complete a Power On Self-Test (POST). Reboots randomly. Secondary drive controller notoriously flaky. Causes a wide variety of symptoms which are hard to pin down. ECS removed their "knowledgebase" from their website because there were so many of the same complaints on this board--4x more than any other board they sold. Now they can simply ignore your customer support emails.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Cheap and fast enough for gaming.

Weakness: Onboard sound is okay, but not great.

This board is great, I have had absolutely no problems running with AMD 1800+ and now AMD 2000+. Go with only the best DDR memory which is Micron. Costs a little more, but saves headaches in the end. Added a cheap sound card and now I have an excellent gaming rig. Not as fast as some, but I can still afford to eat out! Great board, great price.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Price

Weakness: CMOS Battery Low Message.

I purchased this board with a AMD Athlon 2200XP processor. I am using a N-vidia 64mb GE-Force video card, DVD-Rom, and a 80gb hard drive. After I installed everything and first booted, it read "AMD Athlon 1500+". I made sure that the CPU that I am using is definitely a 2200xp. How can I change this setting since Bios does not allow you access to this feature and there are no jumpers on the main board either. Please help with any suggestions. Thanks

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Fast...... not mean ok....

Weakness: CMOS/BIOS setting not detail (Password, DDR/SDRAM are confusing) and not support Apacer/Pallete 256MB DDR-SDRAM 266 MHz (this come out during I try upgrade to DDR)

Processor : AMD ATHLON XP2000+
Memory : Pallete/Apacer 256MB DDR 266MHz(upgrade)
Op.System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional(registed)
Graphic : Gforce 2 64MB
Hardisk : 40 GB

Before I Upgrade Memory to DDR, I using Pallete 256MB SDRAM PC133 and the performance it ok(Never Stake but so slow)
My summary is this ECS mainboard K7S5A not really support DDR Memory.....So what U all going to think......

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Low Price, stable, supports DDR or SDRAM.

Weakness: Not a good overclockers' mobo. User guide fairly worthless.

This board is the basis of the first system I ever built. Worked fairly well out of the box with Duron 1GHz processor but didn't really perform the way I wanted it to until I flashed the latest BIOS. I didn't like the on-board sound or LAN and replaced them with PCI cards. On-board components were easily disabled in BIOS.

I've made some really big newbie mistakes trying to tweak the board, but the presence of a clear CMOS jumper on the board allowed me to revert to default settings and try again.

Update: I have now built my second system on this board and it is humming along nicely.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Inexpensive considering performance.

Weakness: First board would overheat...had to run processor at 100 MHZ. Second board OK.

The 2ND board seems to be OK. I just about bought the board direct over the internet but decided to have a local computer store buy and install it for me. I don't think the computer store had any trouble sending the first board back to ECS. This board would be a poor choice if you plan to overclock the processor.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: None

Weakness: Junk

This motherboard is junk... DO NOT BUY! Freeze ups, crashes and error messages are the norm. Spend a few extra dollars and save yourself some serious heartache.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: price,easy installation,compatability

Weakness: mfg support from ECS, this board does at times seem to be a bit fickle!

this is the 2nd K7S5A i've had in 6 mos!1st one had some type of problem with BIOS,trashed 1st board,bought new K7S5A@FRYS ELECTRONICS(same as 1st board)reason for trashing 1st board was ECS would not issue RMA since it was sold to FRYS ELECTRONICS through BTC not ECS.BTC issued RMA and honored 1yr warranty,they even said they would send me new board w/newest-latest AMIBIOS chip.it was too good to be true of course!when i was ready to send 1st board back to BTC their attitude changed 180 turnaround.they said i would have to pay $60 for the AMIBIOS chip and that they would only try to repair the board!(thats why i trashed 1st board)after purchasing new board from FRYS & setting-up for 2nd time had no real problems.although,as of late i've had some games lock-up on me.possible graphics card trouble? (3dfx VOODOO Banshee,anybody having similar probs? e-mail me@BuoyFREAK@AOL.COM)then just last week the battery went weak!no problem,replaced battery.now i'm getting BAD CMOS CHECKSUM ERROR.should i try another battery?sometimes my system runs fine at other times it does'nt,go figure!i'm at the end of my rope,i guess there are some bad boards amongst they good ones they ship!my advice is once you run into probs it would be best to look into different board or do the old trial&error thing.in regards to RMA to vendor FRYS used to be good,now their return policy is 10 days! OMFG,as for mfg RMA/TECH **** them.3rd party RMA is the same! GOOD LUCK

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Good and fast

Weakness: Sound. when playing games freezes comp

Using AthlonXP 1800+ CPU
Geforce 2 MX400 AGP G/Card
250 Meg S-Dram PC133
Problem with on board sound crashing Games and computer(Re-boot)when using Win 2k Pro or Win 98. Does any one know of a remedy for this.
The mobo has the latest Bios

Wildbrew

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Over all performance is excellent.

Weakness: Sound

I have to agree with fastmickey. Very good board so far. First boot errored battery low and checksum bad, running Athlon XP 1700 and PC133 memory. Reset both CPU and Memory to 133 and after 48 hour burn-in and atleast 40 re-boots no errors.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Fast and excellent if you know how to :)

Weakness: AC sound is weak but ok with PCI sound or amplified speakers. You need a monster PSU but thats not a weakness anyway.

Built 38 PCs with this board. Every PCI and AGP slot filled ,plus burner DVD , Floppy , 2 X 60 gig hard drives, only one came back with dead BIOS battery (so what easy change).

Tips> Power hungry board especially with Athlon 2600XP chips. Use Kingston Pc 2100 DDR (or simarlar) and most of all use at least a 400 Watt power supply. I cured five of mates problems (not built by me) by just giving the boards the current and Volts they need...result> instant happiness:) all probs solved (suggest Leadtek 500watt best)
Flashing the BIOS is *BS* less you want too (no need), Yes there might be the odd lemon out there but I have much more trouble with High end boards for customers and time is money for me.
Fgood order sake keep it cool with extra fans too.Volcanoe 9 HSF good on my customers, plus Artic silver, not thermal grease.

To re-iterate, only real failing is weak sound but XP plus has noticeable boost on sound with amplified speakers or just use yr PCI sound.

It makes me big money with no returns ( well only the one dead bios battery above) It flies Im an old git been building PCs for 22 years and I will answer yr problems IF you READ above advice and act on it first .. Big PSU, cool it (fans) , good quality DDR ram. All 38 sytems built with XP pro.

Best wishes Mick

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Lan/USB/Audio/Stability just about everything with the board is good.

Weakness: Havent found one yet.

I bought this board back in December of 2001 slowly built my computer from there. Once I got the last part my processor in January which was a AMD Thunderbird 900 MHz with 2 x 512 PC100 Ram chips, 3 x 7200 60GB Western Digital HD's, 1 x Plextor CDRW, 400 Watt Powersupply, and tons of extra stuff she ran just fine. There is a small issue with heat but I fixed that with watercooling :)

In August or September 2002 I bought an AMD XP 1800+ with 2 x 512 mb PC1200 DDR installed and guess what it worked GREAT no problems what so ever. Just last month ( december 2002 I went out and got me a AMD XP 2100+ installed it and for all you people who seem to have trouble with your 2000's mine works just fine. Why you have problems I have no clue but my 2100+ works fine. Just recently I had a lockup but that was Windows XP's fault.

I have built 3 computers in the past year with this motherboard and mine is the only one with a XP 2100+ in it because the other 2 run XP 1800+'s and there not my comp so I didnt want to spend the money on a 2100+ for them :) Seems fair right? lol Well I dont know what I did or if I just got the best of the batch but I have had no problem with my computer or the other 2 however I do have the newest bios on this comp.

I would recommend this to anyone who wants reliability and an all around great computer.

Yall have fun!

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: SDRAM and DDR Compatible, On board LAN, Cheap

Weakness: Locks up constantly, resets CMOS data, doesn't like to hold 133/133MhZ speed, doesn't have LAN activity LEDs

I bought this board just because it supported the SD-RAM. I would never buy one of these again. It requires a big power supply and I didn't have one. I blew something cause it don't boot, I haven't figured it out. This board is optimized for XP 1700-1800+ systems an nothing HIGHER!!! It works fine with my 1800 but with my 2000 I had nothing but problems. Also the hookups for connecting the tower to the motherboard are wrong and you don't have a power LED. I would not recommend buying this board.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Very stable, easy to set up

Weakness: It should be said that if you install PC-100 or PC133 the bus will only run at 100Mhz and not show the proper CPU

I built my system with a XP1700+ and first put in PC133 @ 512 meg of memory and set to best performance, (Windows XP Pro as my OS) the system was quick but when I set the bios to 133 it would reboot but solid as a rock when using 100 mhz bus speed. worked just as well with PC100 memory at 100 Mhz. Replaced the PC133 memory with PC2100 266 memory stick, now I run the full CPU speed. I would recomend this mother board but only with PC2100 memory if the full power of the CPU is important like for graphics work.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Cheap, works with Athlon/Duron/XP processors Supports SDRAM and DDR

Weakness: SLOW! Performance for everyday use is not the best.

I bought two of these boards from newegg.com (i recommend them!). Both boards work flawlessly. So far, I have not had an issue with either board.
Performance is a different issue entirely. I DO NOT recommend this board if you are into gaming, or use your computer heavily. I just doesn't perform as well as some of the other boards based on VIA chipsets (133,266,333,400).
ON the other hand though, this board would be great if you just do small things like surf the web, e-mail,word processing, etc. All the on-board features also make it a great deal. Would work great as a fileserver, music server, or similar roles where maximum performance isn't your greatest concern.
I have used Windows 2000/XP with no problems.
I've also tried out multiple flavors of Linux on it as well, and have so far unsuccessfully gotten the on-board Lan to be recognized (but I am a Linux newbie, so it is probably my inexperience)

I would recommend this board if your on a budget,or performance isn't your primary concern.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: None

Weakness: Many

I purchased this motherboard brand new from online, which turned out be the biggest nightmare for me. It would not load any operating system successfully (95/98/NT/2000), without crashing each time. I even updated its flash bios to the latest version from their web site. I finally decided to notify the ECS manufacture by email, but they wouldn't respond back to me. I sent several emails after that, but with no luck. No one would answer me. So I decided to call them and let them know about my situation and that I had purchase a new board at an online store with a supposed "One full year warranty". They informed me that I need to ship it back and pay an additional $50 to repair the motherboard. That's how much it cost me to begin with.
After all that, I promised my self never to purchase or do business again with any ECS products.
Very poor product and extremely bad customer service, needs a "face lift".

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Cheapness, onboard NIC, and cheapness!

Weakness: PNY RAM would not work at 133. Wrong documentation on PWR and Reset Switches.

I was skeptical when my local Fry's has this with AMD Duron 1.3 for only $69. But I wanted to use it as a server so I don't really care if the RAM is slower or system is slower. Don't buy if you intend to use it as a desktop. I have a file server built for only $300. It has been running for 5 days and so far so good. No blues screen or anything. I have no intention of flashing the BIOS or anything like that.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Misinformation about FSB and CPU PnP setup information.

Weakness: Still runs 166 mhz on bios screen.

This motherboard sold by Fry's Electronics is misleading to the consumer. Federal government should take action against this kind of consumer practice. User manual does not match what is in the bios information setting.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Price. Ease of setup. Can take old & new RAM

Weakness: Dubious quality by price, but no others so far?

Purchased as a testbed board for checking RAM CPU's etc. Ability to use either DIMM or SDRAM is a definite bonus. So far it seems a very good value board - no crashes, blue screens etc. Haven't bothered updating BIOS yet and haven't used any of the on-board sound/LAN etc. (see other postings) - I'm a believer in using separate boards for these anyway, you know what you're getting.
It's definitely a case of you pay your money you take your choice. It's a cheap board - don't expect superior performance, but so far, so good.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: THIS BOARD IS THE CHEEPEST WAY TO GET INTO DDR MEMORY IT IS A VERY STABLE BOARD. FOR THE NORMAL EVERY DAY USER IT WILL BE GREAT!!!!!

Weakness: I CANT SEE ANY WEEKNESS ON A RELIABLE BOARD.

THIS BOARD HAS SO MANY FEATURES IN BIOS, IT IS INCREDIBLE.
IT IS USER FRIENDLY, IT IS SIMPLE, BEST OF ALL ITS CHEEP. I
MEAN YOU REALLY CANT BE THIS PRICE FOR A BOARD THAT SUPPORT THE XP PROCESSOR. ITS GREAT!!!! THE TRUTH IS THAT YOU CAN PAY 75 EXTRA DOLLARS AND GET NO DIFFERENCE IN PERFORMANCE.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Are you joking , has it got any !

Weakness: Seems to me like the whole thing is one big weakness .

This board is a pile of cack man , i have had 3 boards in the last 7 months . First board lasted about 2 months before it went bad the second replacement was bad right from the start and the 3rd lasted about a month , they all end up with the same problem but how to fix it i dont know .All boards ended up not being able to run at 133/133 fsb but would run at 100/100 fsb , all the forums that i have visited about this board seem to have lots of people with the same problem but lots of different solutions that dont work so if i was you dont touch this board with a barge pole and you will be doing yourself a big favour ... O.A.O L8trs

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: easy setup

Weakness: locks up and freezes. Read the feedback on this board on ECS website before buying. (www.ecsus.com) I bought this board for a deal and have had lockups and blue screens. I am throwing the board away

Horrible support board locks up. ECS does not support thier products save your money and buy a better board!!!!.Read the feedback on this board on ECS website before buying. (www.ecsus.com)

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Stable and very fast. Price!

Weakness: The FPI connector terminals are wrong in the mb book, but are documented correctly on the board itself.

This board is rock solid. Very stable and fast. I have built many AMD systems with many different mb's. Of course I have my favorites, but I had to build one of these K7S5A's after reading all the hype. I must say this is the best board for the money. I will definitely be building more in the future.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: High Reliability, rock solid performance, no problems with 100's of these over the years.

Weakness: NO Hardware Monitoring!! No Overclocking.

nice_lord & scottd unfortunately you proved my point. Again, as I have said, you need a professional technician. These types of items are not intended to be installed by the in-experienced enduser.

You need a BIOS update of course.

AND...I HAVE assembled many K7S5A with 2000+ processors AND every Socket A CPU AMD has ever made including (currently) the 2200+ with 0 problems.

Again, you need to have a qualified technician update the BIOS for CPU support. This is less than a 1 minute proposition for myself. I don't recommend attempting this for endusers however. A download & flash of the Motherboard BIOS is usually a must for most motherboards when building a system.

That's not a defect, that's part of building computers, & that's why there are DELL systems and AOL.

You should have bought a DELL. You probably already use AOL.

Intel has a saying printed on all their packages & I couldn't have put it better myself:

Printed on all (or most) Intel retail packaging is:

"This product is intended to be professionally installed"

That sez it all!

K7S5A is NO PROBLEM with ALL Athlon XP CPUs.

P.S. WOW! ..As I am typing this out, there was just now an earthquake tremor here! COOL!

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: none

Weakness: Does not support the AMD XP2000+ & MOORE

For the P4_DUDE so CALLED technician...
you said that you have installed about 500 of these boards,
but how many xp2000+ processor with?
AS i can see none,so please install the 501 with that processor & then you can talk about that.
For your comment i guess you have a computer store & people are coming back to your store with this board cause they have seen these message board & you tought to fight back for you dont lose your costumers .
I´M not a technician (anymore) because i found a better job but i still work with computers & i still building them but only for friends.
I work with computers maybe longer than you.I ALMOST sure that you only knew computers after windows 98 or 95 .
MY BOY I WORKED WITH LOTUS 1,2,3 WAY BEFORE WINDOWS 2.5
SO DONT CALL PEOPLE STUPID CAUSE YOU ARE THE IGNORANT HERE

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Support of DDR and PC133 SDRAM

Weakness: Not usable with XP 2000+ CPU. Documentation of mobo connections wrong and their web site has same WRONG information. If you upgrade BIOS, say so-long to factory support.

System totally UNUSABLE at when trying to run system at rated CPU speed. The only way to run system is to slow the CPU down 1200mhz and that's just like throwing money out the window. Also, since windows XP has been out for a long time, you'd think they'd have XP drivers for the integrated sound.

I'm sure that I'd be one of the satisfied users if I could run the system at the rated speed but right now I'm in the process of demanding a refund from the reseller.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Price, features(sound, network builtin, UDMA builtin).

Weakness: Documentation for attaching case buttons(power, led etc.) is very poor. I am running into onboard network card problems.

The card worked perfect out of the box.
I upgraded my system to Athalon 1700 XP using above MB and it just worked.
I am still trying to figure out features (network, sound).
The network is not working for me so I will hold on overall quality till I get that working.

Very good card for the $.

NOTE: There are some complaints about using 2 SDDR PC133 mem at the same time. Mine is working (initially I had to go in BIOS and change PnP CPU setting to 133/133).
My cpu is reported as 1460 hz and I see all the memory.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Supports up to 1Gb DDR or DIMM RAM - Reliable board, easy to install and setup. To top it off, ECS have compiled a great driver CD which contains everything needed for the board.

Weakness: One problem: the USB ports seem *under-powered*. You will not be able to setup a USB ADSL modem on this board (I couldn't anyway, nor could a friend), unless you're using a powered USB hub alongside.

Some people are reporting to have had difficulty with configuring IRQ's on their boards - but I've had none. My setup is as follows: AMD Duron 1GHz w/266MHz FSB; 256Mb RAM (2x 128Mb DIMM); ATi Rage 128 w/32Mb VidRAM; RealTek 10/100Mbps Ethernet card; Sony CD-Writer (10/4/32x) IDE; LG 16x DVD Drive IDE and a Western Digital 30Gb 5200rpm IDE HDD. As mentioned above, the only flaws are the USB ports, but that's easily sorted with another £29.99!

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Price, features, support (see below)

Weakness: Overclocking ablilty out of the box

This is the best board you can get for the money, hands down. The resources online, via forums, is amazing! If you want to make it really do it's job I suggest you make you home the following forum and do the modifications. For instance, chipset heatsink is put on with doublesided tape. Runs cooler if you pull it off and put some thermal paste on it and glue it. Download the updated bios from the following forum and it will give more FSB options in the bios also...heres the link!
pub65.ezboard.com/bk7s...

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Durability, availability, ease of upgrade, lots of available information, versatility.

Weakness: Price

This motherboard is almost a must-have for AMD users. The use of either DDR or SDR memory makes it versatile. The fact that it supports almost all of the new AMD processors, even the ones not yet available, means that if you decide to upgrade your CPU, you don't have to upgrade your motherboard too. Also, if you're looking for information about the K7S5A, you type in the name in a search and you get tons of places. This motherboard is the one to get. The downside is price. The official sites state that the K7S5A has a street value of $65, and most PC component sellers are charging around $80. Still, if you value your boards, the ECS K7S5A is the one to buy.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Price, features.

Weakness: Processer placement. Board needs to be told to run faster than the board's default speed (the actual processer does not sense and get used)

I have built 2 machines from scratch with the board and had good results. One uses an XP1600 with XP Pro the other an Athlon 1.4 with Win98. I downloaded any newer drivers available both from ECS and other venders of option boards (video, sound, external equipment, etc). This is required with XP. Both used cheap power supplies at 300 watts. The XP machine has never had a hang. I recommend this board for any normal user as it has by far the best performance and features to price I have found.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Very inexpensive, supports both DDR and SDR memory. Built in 10/100 megabit LAN support.

Weakness: Only two DDR slots and two SDR slots, limiting how much RAM you can have. (Can't mix DDR and SDR, either.) CPU and RAM placement a little cumbersome for some cases.

Fry's Electronics ran a special on these recently -- buy a K7S5A and an Athlon XP 1500+ for a $99 bundle price. (They ran a similar special this week, only substituted a Duron processor for the Athlon XP 1500+, which is not nearly as good a deal.) My boss bought two bundles, along with PC2100 DDR memory. It fell to me to help him build systems with these boards.

The first system used an 80 GB IBM Deskstar hard drive (ATA100), and we used rounded IDE cables rated for ATA100/133 operation. The system went together very well, and after I tweaked the BIOS settings (since the board ships defaulted to 100 MHz FSB / 100 MHz RAM clock, which I had to set to 133/133), the thing ran like a champ. Installed Windows 2000 without a hitch. The power supply was a minimal 300W supply that was supposedly Athlon rated.

The second system was a Frankenstein monster that contained a PCI video card (less than optimal), a couple decrepit hard drives (including one Quantum Bigfoot drive), and some substandard cabling. The case had a 300W supply which may or may not be Athlon approved. There were some issues with this machine, including difficulty mounting and unmounting hard drives because of the CPU heatsink blocking the drive cage. Since the heat sink was almost impossible to remove, I was forced to partially remove the motherboard tray to swap out a hard drive.

The Maxtor 30 GB drive I attempted to use with the system (ATA66, I believe) had some problems, so I had to swap it.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: feature rich, easy to install, implament, and load drivers for.

Weakness: IRQs of onbaord devices dont jive on win XP (micro$poof probelm)

this is an excellent board. many problems under win XP but upgraded to decent memory and supports xp2000+, dual video cards, and flies like and SR-71. can't OC the board, but can try unlocking the chip. all of my early problems were from cheap memory, get some registered micron DDR and go to a LAN party. the only problem that i have now is that after i go to use the bundled AMR modem, the sound cuts out due to win XP managing IRQ 11

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: This board has been super....it is Stable, I think fast with the DDR had no problems setting up!

Weakness: None that I know of!

This is one of my easiest upgrades yet! Computer has not crashed since changed XP 1800 and lost the ASUS A7V with the 1 gig Thunderbird.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Stable, Fast, Fair documentation

Weakness: Cannot find a matching USB plate. Looks like bezel header are not standard (could no connect power on LED ... may be the case cables)

Never crashed so far - all devices recognized right away.
Smooth upgrade. I won't miss my Compaq K6-2 533 MB, so slow ...

I run a XP1600, under XP.
256 MB of PC133
Video Nvidia GeForce2 MX200

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Cost, SDRAM support

Weakness: Menual, Overclockability, Sound, USB and other Cables are not included

Generally very good, took 8 hours to stup correctly with misleaded by menual. My VIA ASUS K7V133 burn with my powersupply. So I look for a MB can handle my PC133 SDRAM and support Althron XP. Finally I got K7S5A and XP 1700+ and powersupply with less than CAN$320. Works as expected and very fast with Win XP.

Good for lowest cost upgrade, and while waiting for newer, faster CPUs for next year.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: low cost

Weakness: hit or miss on whether it works

K7S5A does not have an ASIC to filter the power. Some boards (like mine) would POST but not recognize all devices. On average I had to boot 5 times before everything would be recognized. This is caused by noisy power where I live.

K7S5A needs a big power supply, more than other boards, to have a high enough rating for +3.3v & +5v. 400W is preferred for XP1800 and up.

Many users say that DDR is more stable than SDR. Some said that rounded cables also helped. Users say that Win98 gave them fewer problems than Win2K or WinXP because the OS timing loops are not as tight.

BIOS updates are issued regularly but my dealer said that ECS would refuse to repair boards that didn't have the factory BIOS installed.

I swapped mine for an ASUS A7V266-E. More expensive but has more features (like an ASIC) and is completely stable on 350W with everything else the same.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: I love this motherboard. I have had it for about 6months and I havent had a problem with it yet. I love that I have the option for SDRAM or DDR. and that it will support any AMD chip out there.

Weakness: None that I can see

I dont know why people have had problems with this board. I
havent used the onboard audio yet but I dont need to.
I run:
1 Ghz AMD Duron
512Mb SDRAM
80 GB hard drive
SB Live
ATI Radeon 7200.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Fast,upgradable,easy to put in,good working skills.

Weakness: hard to figure out.

This motherboard is the right one for you people looking for a good mobo that can hold amd XP's cpu's and it's dependable and good. 256pc133 Ram, Geforce2 mx 100/200, on-board sound,8x cd-rw,30 gb hd, 900mhz amd duron.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: very fast, cheap, great stability (in my case)

Weakness: poor sound quality, doesn't come with XP drivers wich are also not provided on the ECS page.

I installed the mobo and it ran olmost perfect instantly, though I have a problem getting an winXP driver for the integrated SiS 7012 audio. If you like send a link for it to me: gras.junior@zonnet.nl
My system:AMD athlon 1800+, 256MB DDR, 60GB Maxtor HDD, 20GB seagate HDD, Matrox millenium G400, Soundblaster 1024 live, PCI network card, and PCI modem.
Note: I first ran it with winME and it allowed me to work with two (!) soundcards simultaniusly (the internal Sis and the sound blaster), now I'm looking for the XP driver for the Sis sound.
This mobo runs VERY fast on XP!

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: PRICE AND EVERYTHING ABOUT IT!!!!

Weakness: NONE SO FARE.... THE BOARD WORKS GREAT!!!

THIS IS A GREAT BOARD IS U ARE NOT WILLING TO SPEND THE BLING BLING THIS BOARD RUNS WELL WITH ALL AMDS THAT ARE 1.4ghz AND BELLOW. THIS THING RULES

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Cost, Performance, build in Lan, BIOS easy to flash

Weakness: Over Clocking, Poor onboard sound drivers.

I don't understand why so many people are having problems with this motherboard. When this motherboard hit the store last year it has an early BIOS and would only boot if the Dram was set to 100/100. There's a New BIOS for this motherboard that fix's the problem! Remember to use the AIM flasher from the ECS web site if not you will render your system dead. When I got this motherboard I added an ATHLON 1.4 but the BIOS reported the CPU as 1045. After Flashing and changing the clock speed it reported 1.4 the correct speed!

Read More about this awesome Mobo at:
www.amdmb.com/article-...

Im now Running Quake 3 at 250-300 FPS with Full Options and High Resolution!
This Motherboard Rulez and Im going to order another one today. The going price is around $50.00 what a steal.

My System has:
Athlon 1.4
256Megs SD133 ram
GeForce (Ti) 4400 128k DDR ram
Sound Blaster 16
20 gig HD

Theres a problem with the onboard sound, Just get a real Sound Blaster.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: The Lan function works great.

Weakness: This board was not designed to handle a high speed processor mine has an AMD 1800XP

After two days of no sleep trying to correct my freezing up problem when I try to load any operating system. I started playing with all the bios settings. The only setting that this machine will work right on is setting the CPU frequency to 100/100. Which means the processor is not running at full speed. There is a definite flaw with the motherboard and using a high speed processor. I went to the manufactuers website and they do not have any support for this problem. I have emailed the manufacturer and I am waiting for a response. Once I lowered the CPU frequency the board runs like it supposed to. I dont think this board is really as good as its been rated by so called experts. Someone needs to take another look at it. It doesnt run as it is advertised it will. If your a power user I would not recommend this board at all.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Setup, Stability, Speed, and most of all "PRICE"

Weakness: Some Dr thermal heatsink will not fit.

This is one of the better Socket A motherboards I have come across with. As long as the power supply is of top notch quality, this motherboard will respond well. It also likes good quality RAM. I will definitely build more of these. I believe the newer versions are better ( the ones with the new packaging.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Very inexpensive, easy setup,and accepts DDR and SDRAM for future upgrades.

Weakness: Wiil not detect CD rom unless you choose your CD rom to be your first boot device. Audio Drivers incompatable with windows XP, Only 1GB of total memory, no jumpers for Power LED, only SW,

Purchased motherboard and it was very easy to set up. Only problem was figuring out the power jumpers. Upon loading win XP home edition, I noticed that I had no sound. Just go to the ECS website for updated drivers. Download the motherboard drivers dated 1/15/2002 for SIS 730. You should be on your way to sound heaven. If you experience cracklin noises, get some powered subwoofers or just purchase a separate sound card which works much better. Can't beat this board for the price. I reccomend this board for your mothers upgrade because its inexpensive and the quality is very good.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Is extremly fast, works fine.

Weakness: Bad sound, sometime filesystem corruptions.

I had very serious problem with filesystem corruptions. I have Amd athlon XP 1600+, 256DDR, 40GB seagate HDD, Asus V7700TI deluxe Video Card& Ess solo sound. i have 2 OS, linux rad hat 7.2 & win 98. I have underclocked bus speed from 133Mhz to 100Mhz & ofter It everything works perfectly. if you have the same problem try it.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Use standard SDRAM or DDR RAM, support for all current Athlon processors with BIOS update.

Weakness: On-board sound requires quality amplified speakers, no over-clocking options.

This board can't be beat for the features and low price. On-board sound and network are adequate for the most part. I am using an Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4 GHz), 512 MB Crucial DDR RAM, 20 GB WD Hard Drive, 8x CD-RW Drive, GeForce 2 GTS-V AGP... Board works flawlessly in either Win2K or XP. Great value board.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: I like convenience and choice: on-board network adapter, sound and DDR - SDRAM. Easy to install and configure. Lots of expansion room. AGP 4X.

Weakness: Some possible crowding between the 5.25" drive bays and DDR slots. No CPU temp controls. No overclocking.

I'm running 1000MHz Duron, 1GB SDRAM, 40 GB WD HD, GeForce 2MX 100/200, the onboard network adapter and sound on Win 2000 Server.

Given the reviews, I have been lucky with quality. No problems with install and everything works fine. Has not frozen running either MS Office 2000, ColdFusion Server, Homesite, etc. It's the first PC I've built and it was a good experience. I can't say I would buy another K7S5A, but I can't say I wouldn't.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Cheap Cheap Cheap

Weakness: doesn't seem to stay stable at any chip greater than 1700+

I purchased 2 of these, one worked fine with a 1700+ processor, the other received a 1800+ and 1900+ chips. Both chips would freeze up before making it to windows. When I tried getting technical support from ECS's web to find out that quite a few people are having the same problem I am, just with all the XP processors. Be careful with this motherboard. It seems unstable with many processors at 133/133. Even at 100/133 it freezes up often. If your lucky enough to get a board that will run it, good. The 1700+ works wonders but I will probably never buy a ECS Board again. (the company seems unreliable and unsupportive to me)

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: PRICE,Easy Installation, Very Customizable bios, dual memory types(DDR/regular SD), Kicks A** at LAN parties

Weakness: The gain level of the on-board sound needs to be a bit louder, but with a good set of headphones/speakers its not really a huge problem.

Athlon 1.4,Win2k Pro,256meg SD(I'm saving up for DDR..:)), GeForce4 MX 440 dualdisplay, 2 IDE HD 30gig total, 32xCDRW, 16xDVD. This MoBo rocks. Since Day 1 I've loved this board. Everything I need for a fraction of the price.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Can use SDRAM OR DDR, excellent performance in either SDR or DDR use, very stable.

Weakness: Must update the BIOS to gain access to the SiS 735's overclocking abilities.

SDR or DDR, integrated LAN & sound, not to mention fast, stable performance....for 40% (OR MORE!) less than the competition. I flashed the BIOS to the one at a well-known overclocker's forum web site, and I have the system overclocked about 15% (to 114Mhz FSB with very aggressive memory settings using SDR, and to 147Mhz FSB with DDR 2100)....it's still rock stable and fast as hell. I have been building and programming computers for the last 15 years, and I say this board is the best socket A board in "bang for the buck"! While it isn't intended to be an overclocker's board, by flashing the BIOS you can squeeze even more performance out of it. I even tested it with my Duron 1200Mhz overclocked to 1368Mhz...it bested a P4 1.7Ghz w/ RDRAM on Sandra Pro 2002 on everything but memory bandwidth performance using SDRAM!!! With my Athlon XP 1800+ the board just screams it's so fast. Now just go get the darn board! You could do a LOT worse for $115, let alone this board's price of a measly 60-65 bucks!

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: On board LAN, Supports AMD CPUs from Duron to the current Athlon XP, DDR and SDRAM slots, sturdy PCB

Weakness: Layout, Minimal BIOS bugs, tends to be picky on certain brands of RAM and Power Supply Units

ECS and SiS have hit a homerun at half the price. My own personal benchmarks with this ECS board are neck and neck with the reviews on many major webpages.

Only three disappointments: Because of the inclusion of SDRAM slots, ECS had to place the IDE ports close to the AGP slot, which can become a problem for large AGP cards like the GeForce 4, but if you're gonna cram a $300 video card into this board, you have no excuse not to spend $20 for those less cumbersome rounded IDE cables. Problem solved.

Secondly, for SDRAM users, there's no option to run PC100 SDRAM at 100Mhz with the FSB at 133Mhz. The extra 33Mhz overclock could stress some RAM modules, but you're fine if you have PC133 SDRAM. If you're using DDR, ignore this.

Lastly, a bug in the BIOS can disable the floppy drive. With the floppy cable in hand, plug one end into the mainboard but use the plug with the twist in the wire on the floppy drive itself - don't use the middle plug (the one without the twist in the wire). Next, make sure "Boot Up Floppy Seek" is enabled in the BIOS. Problem solved. You're floppy drive should work fine.

Make sure you have quality RAM (Crucial, Kingston) and an quality AMD Certified 300 Watt PSU (I'm using one by AGI - no problems!)

Cheap, stable, uses either SDRAM and DDR, supports all Duron/Athlon K7 CPUs. Lots of possibilities with this board!

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Board is a fiarly easy install, been building systems for 2 yrs, size issue is not the problem as many have stated, Case sizing is your issue. relatively cheap in price , compared to other MOBO mfg's

Weakness: TECH SUPPORT!!!! got to be the worste i've seen yet, especcially for the beginners in this field. RMA issues, there are alot of bad boards being shipped,souds like they need to get rid of there QC Tm.

The board itself is not all that bad, Set up was as breeze, AMD 1400 and 720mb of sdram, For those of you trying to get proper IRQ settings, try the basics, when installing your hardware. IE video first, exctra. As stated above tech support could be improved. QC s***s(fill in the blank yourselves) :)My first board fried to chips, so I bought a second and still have the original, cant seem to get the support to find out if it was a short on the case or just the board itself, RMA time. Other than that ladies and gents, you cant be the price and all around performance, when done right and you did not get a lemon is superb. Dont forget to read up in Tom's about those AMD heat issues, youll save alot of headaches.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Obviously price and features such as on-board LAN, 5 PCI slots, DDR and SDRAM memory slots, AMR slot and AGP slots don't require PCI slots.

Weakness: Sound is a little weak. I turned volume up more on these speakers than on older system.

I built the system in a full tower case with 3 fans + PS fan. I had some initial problems porting the old system disk over and getting stuff copied to my new 80 GB disk. I've heard it's recommended to install the O/S from scratch, but I had so many apps, and I wasn't sure if I had all the media to reinstall. I installed a 1 GHz T-bird (266 FSB) and 1/4 GB Micron DDR stick. Systems screams compared to my old one. I did make sure everything was compatible, including the PS from the AMD web site. After I actually loaded the MB drivers to my old system disk, Windows booted fine.

I'm about to order another board, but after reading some of these reviews, I have some reservations regarding out-of-the-box reliability. There's either a lot of lemons out there or a lot of people who ignore issues such as proper cooling and ESD. I do believe these are made by Chi-Coms, which causes some personal political heartburn, but it was too late by the time I realized that. That may also explain perceived QC problems.

I wanted room for expansion, both in my enclosure and on my MB. The only PCI slot I've had to use so far is for my video card. My only gripe with the entire system is that with all these fans, it's much louder than my old (233 MHz AMD K6) system whose only fan was in the PS.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: included features, support for SDRam and DDR, CPU range, PRICE, PRICE, PRICE. you cant get a better deal.

Weakness: I will have to agree with some of the other reviews, that capacitor is too big, or needs to be moved

very pleased with this board. it runs faster than my MSI board, both have same CPU and MEM and windows version.
to date it has been a very stable board, I haven't had any problems with it. win xp found and installed all drivers with no problems. gaming on line has been flawless as well as 3D programs.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Inexpensive, Lan

Weakness: I have found none yet

The board fit the case perfectly. I did have to move one of my CD Roms down a bay as the connector was not long enough and I did not want to run out and get another. Took about an hour to install, fired it up and have had nothing but great results. I do miss the overclocking features of my old MSI board but it did crash so maybe thats OK. Good Price, No problems.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

gives me 10% increase in performance than with the MSI6380 I have had for a little while. Plus it accepted my XP1800 no probs while the 6380 would not even boot at 133FSB and it had the latest bios and all.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Easy build, great performance, supports SDRAM or DDR, built-in LAN, super price point, a real WINNER!

Weakness: Not many that I noticed.

This was only my second build and the K7S5A was easier than the first. It worked like a champ once I got the power-on jumper setting right. I had none of the driver or OS incompatibility issues that others have seen.

Don't know about the onboard audio, as I used a Soundblaster Live OEM (that sounds great!). I also don't understand the problems trying to fit into a case -- mine fit with room to spare into my mid-tower ATX.

Initially, I was using a cheap 128 MB SDRAM stick. I just replaced that with a 512 MB DDR module and it is running great.

Onboard LAN is nice. I only used it to perform an initial Windows Update (using XP Home). It's now on a WLAN USB client, which was the easiest install of any PC hardware I've ever done.

It's been rock solid so far (XP1600+). For the price, I can't imagine how you could beat this motherboard.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: PRICE AND FEATURES

Weakness: ON BOARD SOUND OKAY: NO MONITORING OF CPU TEMP ETC WITH THIS BOARD.

HAVE BOUGHT NINE OF THESE BOARDS. ALL HAVE BEEN GREAT. ALL SET-UP WITH 300 OR 350 WATT CASES AND AMD 1.4GHZ 266FSB T-BIRD, AT LEAST 256 DDR KINGSTON AND PNY HAVE WORKED PERFECTLY. TNT2 32MB TV OUT CARD, WD60GB ATA 100 7200 HDD, 56K MODEMS, CDRW AND DVD PLAYERS IN ALL. SOME HAVE ALSO HAD JAZZ, ZIP, AND VIDEO CAPTURE CARDS W/TV AND FM TUNER PUT ON THEM. NO PROBLEMS.

OTHER REPORTED PROBLEMS WITH HDD COULD BE PROPER PIN SETTINGS ON THE DRIVE ITSELF. THEY ACT VERY WEIRD WHEN YOU DON'T PIN THEM RIGHT. COOLING AND POWER IS ANOTHER AREA. YOU NEED 300 WATTS MIN AND GOOD COOLING IF YOUR RUNNING TBIRD AND XP PROCESSORS.

VERY EASY BOARD TO WORK ON. STRAIGHT FORWARD. OVERCLOCKERS WILL NOT LIKE IT BECASUE THERE'S NO SETTINGS TO PLAY WITH.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: I found none.

Weakness: Completely unreliable, mercurial.

When I showed my new PC with this motherboard in it, 2 independent PC shops made the comment that I had bought a "lemon" which it has turned out to be. Among other faults it has the following:
It doesn’t print always, the way it is on the monitor. Although I have a brand new printer (which works on my other PC) it doesn't print properly from all the programs.

It doesn’t “read” from RW C/D ROM at all when data is on it.
When I go to “My Computer” and want to pull down a menu, the Window starts rolling etc. many opening at the same time; causing confusion.
It doesn't run "Word 2000" properly either!
“Device Manager” disappeared while viewing it!
The way it runs now I cannot use it which means I lost all my money?!

It started installing a program automatically when it was already installed!
When using the “Copy” function of my “Epson 640SU" scanner sometimes only 50% of the image gets scanned instead what was fed into it! Other times it prints the image the wrong way round. It changes the percentage figure I feed into it, automatically and erratically. The rest I don't know yet because I don't feel like working with it of course. When I asked for my money back I was brushed off with the remark:
"nothing doing"!unless it is a hardware fault. It very much seems to be so, or I don't know what to put it down to.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Solid no hassle install, recognized everything first time. Booted up with no problems. Sound worked great, Lan worked great. Don't understand other peoples issues. Sounds like bad luck. Good Board!

Weakness: I had none. Installed in Antec sx-830 case with no issues. People complaining about case size need to buy a real case!

This MB was a very good deal. Works fine with AMD duron 1.2. I purchesed from Fry's for $99.00 for the combo. Installed in Antec 830 case. (sweet case) Everything went well. I do want to make one claim, and that is I had the updated version of the board. It came in the new style box. I don't know if if was just a box change or hardware change but this mobo will do the user good! Be sure you use a clean HD. And start your install from scratch. I bet alot of issues are coming from users that are moving there hard drives over without FDISKing and formating, etc..

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Ability to use either SD RAM or DDR RAM. Price.

Weakness: Gotta agree with everyone's problem with the large transistor size. Had to move my cd-burner to the top slot in my case so I could fit the board in.

Good all around board. Only locked up once on me so far and that was after 7 hours of gaming :-).

I notice a lot of people here crapping on this board but your really have to remember that there are serious heat issues with the AMD Socket A processors from 1 GHZ to 1.4 GHZ. You really want extra fans for those puppies. I'm running a 1.4 GHZ AMD processor on mine without problems but I do have 2 extra fans running in the case. Try to make sure it isn't a processor heat issue before blaming the board.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Price, onboard LAN, highly upgradable

Weakness: Terrible onboard sound, huge size, 1GB memory ceiling, loose pci slots, sudden lockups.

If you plan to use this board with just the cpu, Ram, and video card for occasional web browsing, this system will be acceptable for you. I was able to set this board up and get windows xp running with no problem. The problems started afterwards. The driver cd that comes with this board is useless for Windows xp. I had to search around online for XP sound drivers. When I found them, the onboard sound worked, but cracked and fizzled whenever the mouse was moved. I tried adding 3 different network cards that didn't work. The computer often freezes when doing very simple tasks like browsing menus or scrolling through webpages or typing. The bios also fails to detect the hard drive approximately 1 in 5 restarts... And forget about overclocking with this board.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: good cheap board

Weakness: Too big for any case, USB ports are crap

I just built a system for a friend with a duron 1Ghz and this cheap mobo. First thing I ran into was the fact that the USB ports are all screwed up and blew out my friends Logitech Optical mouse and not to mention my own. It is a good cheap mobo but the chances of getting a lemon right off the bat are too great. I recomend to anyone to stay away from ths mobo.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Inexpensive, Rich in features, SiS735 Chipset.

Weakness: None.

This board has worked perfectly for me, my whole time using it. I built my system from scratch, the board runs flawlessly. Onboard LAN & Sound, which can be disabled at your discretion. ATA 100, SDR & DDR Support.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: none

Weakness: real bad usb support-tried using a buslink and blue screened on reboots. Blue screens while using WinME in REBOOTS!

I would avoid this board at all costs it has bios and chipset problems from the ghetto. not supported properly from the manufacturers website as i have had nothing but MAJOR PROBLEMS with this MB hardware! I tried downloading drivers from there and the new AMD CPU support is far from there! Something is Fishy with this one and they are ripping the public OFF! THIS IS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF GET IT OUT THE DOOR FIRST AND QUALITY CONTROL NEVER!!! THERE IS NO WAY THEY COULD HAVE TESTED THIS BOARD FOR COMPATIBILITY ISSUES WITH COMMON EVERYDAY USE AND ADAPTABILITY! AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Excellent board for the money, WinXP installed easy, completely stable for most applications!

Weakness: On-board sound chip requires amplified speakers and ACR in-package modem EXTREMELY SLOW connecting.

I installed the mobo in the case, hooked all the hardware up and we were off! Powered on, set up the bios, put the WinXP CD in and that was it! I never had any lock-ups, crashes, or any other problems with this board. With an Athlon 2000+ CPU, EXPERT 128 vid card, 6 GB ATA 66 HD, 16x Sony CD-ROM, and 256 MB of 133 PNY SDRAM. With just these basic components....this system performs very quickly, starts and loads fast, and with great stability! The rest of you guys that are having problems running this board, may want to consider going back to school or have a proffessional install your board. A major issue might be when your installing the MB, to only install the screw studs in place where only screws are installed. If you don't do this, your causing other chips to short and you won't get past the bios when starting up your system....or you may not get a beep or anything on-screen from power-on. I would highly recommend this mobo to anyone who can install a mobo properly.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: cheap, reliable

Weakness: the soundcard

I run a net-cafe, i have used several of these motherboards in my computers, they all works fine, recently i have made 20 new computers with this motherboard, XP1700, 256 DDR, Chaintech G-force, they all run perfectly with Windows XP Home edition, i dont understand al the other complains i read on this page, dose people know that things like Static Electricity exists?

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: DDR

Weakness: Everything else

I bought this board as a combo package with a 1Ghz Duron. The Duron is fine, the board sucks.

First thing I had to do was upgrade the BIOS and all the drivers. What I received in th box wouldn't load.

On the ECS site the Win98 AGP drivers I downloaded crash the system. So now I have a system that is suppose to run AGP at 4X, not.... it only works with a PCI video card.

DON'T BUY ONE OF THESE UNLESS YOU FEEL THAT HALF A COMPUTER IS OK.


I built several systems (100+) this is the worst one yet.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: none

Weakness: loading os

after 12 days finally got w98 loaded, could not upgrade to win me.. kept crashing, took it back and got another one from frys. worse,,, would not load any os,,, hate, it , beware ECS,,, you get what you pay for

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: easy setup, cheap, stable, fast

Weakness: starts everytime on the second try, other than that it works perfectly

i'm using this as a base for my video editing system amd athlon 1600+, 512mb ddr ram, geforce 2 mx, pinnacle dv 500+. the system works great. other than having to start it twice everytime it's been the best computer i've ever used.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: A very quick board - when it works.

Weakness: Very many IMHO

The first board seemed to have trouble with the primary IDE controller - Sometimes the BIOS didn't detect my HD and had to CTL-ALT-DEL or go in to BIOS and detect manually then restart. I got tired of that and took it back to the store. Unfortunately, I returned it after my 30 day money back guarantee had expired and was givin a new one instead. I just installed this board and as I had just got into the bios to do the initial setup everything goes dead with a nasty churning sound. Now it won't even get past the POST, think my Athlon 1200 is dead now. Has a funny smell. I'm very pissed off, should have read the reviews here first.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: good

Weakness: not to many settings in the bios

coulnt over clock the bourd, but just for a 7 year old girl that just plays games and teachin skill games works fine with a 950 duron and 125ddr 2 hard drives a 20 and 5g and my old gfource 256 32sdram card. runing win nt4.0 and winXP. tinking about buying one more and hopefully it comes with the award bios or that might be the one to stay away on this bourd

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Low price, DDR, onboard Lan, plus a lot of other nice features if the board works

Weakness: Could not get to work. Large board with BIG capaciors- could not fit CDRom into a mid size tower slots because of interference.

Failed to boot. Power turned fan and disks on for a a few seconds, then nothing. Changed power supply but still nothing. I saw lots of returns of this board when I returned mine.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: cheap

Weakness: doesnt play well with some of the PCI components I tried to use, tight clearing.

Considering the price, I generally like this motherboard.When I installed it dough, it wasn't cooperating with PCI VGA card, it was getting stuck on checking NVRAM it didn't even let me get into bios to change the video settings from AGP to VGA at that point.So I replaced the VGA with a generic AGP card and it worked...I noticed that some of the capacitors on the motherboard are quite large. The clearance in the case I used is pretty tight and one of the cap. was in the way of my CD ROM.Also, onboard audio connectors for CD ROM are set close to one of the PCI slots.It's a challenge trying to connect a cable without unplugging whatever you have in that PCI slot. Other than that, motherboard is decent.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Good, quite stable. Haven't has a problem with the actual board.

Weakness: The onboard sound is a pain. I have two of these boards and the drivers stop working whenever you entre a game. Trying to look for new drivers.

Works fine and is very cheap for a ddr board, the sound cards the only problem.
Sound: SIS 7012 chip-set.
Recommend you buy a separate card if you want this board.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Can't think of any.

Weakness: Lots - from the very beginning.

As soon as my new ASUS board comes in I am ripping this one out. Maybe it is me but I think it is them. Either way, I have wasted enough time trying to make this board work. From day one it has been a time sink. Poorly written manual, confusing documentation for drivers (they had to be upgraded right out of the box) and a continual hassle with IRQ assignments. Try to get them for help? They don't respond.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: it runs occasionally

Weakness: does not work consistently

every time i put in new hardware (e.g--sound card, video card, cd-rom, new usb devices, even ram) the motherboard dies on me--not even a beep to let me know its still in a workable condition. every time this happens i have to wait about a half an hour before it works again. i do not reccomend this to anybody trying to build a computer, unless you are God--then you could fix it whenevr you choose as fast as you would like. garbage garbage garbage.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Inexspensive. Ready to go right out of the box. Onboard Lan, sound, USB.

Weakness: Some quality issues, (First board was bad). Could not get Soundblaster Live card to work.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the setup I have. Purchased as combo with 1.2ghz Duron for $109. First board and CPU were faulty (what are the odds?).

Since then, it's been great other than the sound card issue. The onboard sound is good, and the onbaord Lan works well. Just replace the DDR memory I had purchased that went bad, and was giving me many issues, so my Live card might work now.

Running the 1.2 Duron with 256mb DDR2100, 80gb Maxtor, 40xCD, with Philips 12xDVD 20x10x40 CDRW combo with NVidia Riva TNT2 card

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Steady performance.

Weakness: BIOS a little funky. Tight PC-100 RAM clearence in my case.

I'm a novice user and had some help upgrading, but it seems to work fine with a 1 gig, 266 frontside bus AMD chip and handles a mixed bag of PC-100 RAM my old PII had trouble with.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Works well once you iron out the IRQ conflicts.

Weakness: Very poor IRQ handling, no tech support.

We purchased 2 of these boards when upgrading our main systems. The cpu's are Athlon xp 1700's, video is geforce 2 mx 400's, ram is generic pc 133 512mg. We were both unable to use onboard lan and sound without conflicts which made playing online games impossible. After no replies from tech support, we added sound cards to the systems and that fixed the problem on one. The other works for awhile and then another irq conflict arrises and the sound card needs to be moved. The company doesn't answer emails or messages left on their support board about this problem and after much searching I have seen many others with the same problems, but no solution. I would not recommend this board and wish I had done more research on it before I ran out and bought 2.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Fast, Good looking, many options, ddr/sdram

Weakness: Its big, transistor size

Its a stable and with quake i got 200 frames :> but with 3dmark 2001 se the results were very low, thats realy strange.
Specs:
1.2 GHZ duron
320Sdram 133mhz
Hercules 4500 (64mb)

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Cheap !!! runs with both SD133 and DDR good for upgrading ? its fast, stable and the price worth !!!

Weakness: exp. some problems with bad produktion series !!! few slots for ram !! onboard sound is very bad !!

My Mainbord works very well with the rest of my system, but one of my pals exp some problems with his. it cannot run faster then 1 ghz, and 200 mhz on the bus. and another freind of mine had some bios problems, but the problem is now solved by installing a new bios !!! there is a chance of 50/50% of getting a flawles bord so good luck ! I was a lucky chap.

My system !!! Basic:
Ecs K7s5a
T.Bird 1.333 Ghz
Gforce 2 Ti 200
IBM 120Gxp 60GB HDD.
soundblaster 128 pci

and its runs perfecktly !

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Cheap, nice features, has DDR and DIMM sockets, will take AMD xp2200+ processor!

Weakness: Seams unstable with Duron 950 and PC133 W/win98, many GPE's (BSoD) Maybe my memory (??)

This was the cheapest MOBO by far that would take an AMD XP processor and DDR. With its latest BIOS, it can use an AMD XP2200+ ! It also has an 4X AGP slot that a competitors similarly prices XP board didnt have. Would have been nice to have 1 ISA slot, but great board for the price.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Probably fast, cheap, both DDR & SDRAM support.

Weakness: Completely very unstable when using SDRAM and Athlon TBird 1 Ghz.

Interest in computer magazine review to this ECS k7s5a that have been rated as a very stable and fast motherboard --and didn't believe to some tomshardware's reviewers:(--, I decided to purchase it.

Sound on board, Sound quality was good but couldn't run midi file. I had to use my old sound card to make my midi run as usual.

Hardware monitoring program in CD (genesys) doesn't fit to this board, so you never know the values of temperature and fan rpm from your windows.

It hangs up very often from the beginning, even when I was in BIOS setting. I replaced my Athlon TBird 1 Ghz to Athlon XP 1.6 Ghz and getting better for the first couple hours before my system freezed, stop responding for about 7 times after restarting, and thats enough, I'm not interest using this Mboard any longer. Now I use Jetway 867 AS that also support both DDR and SDRAM. And the most important thing my system is very stable now.

I use:
Athlon XP 1.6 GHz
Geeforce 2 MX400/64mb
SDRAM 128 mb
CDRom Aopen 50 x
Next 17"
Win 98

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Price, Speed, Ease of installation, Reliable

Weakness: Considering price....none

I bought this board as a replacement for a mainboard i was having trouble with.

It is superb.

I have found it to be very quick with my Athlon T-Bird 1200MHz. I am only using the SDRAM (133MHz) option, but still quicker than previous more expensive mainboard. Runs all applications well. Maintains steady CPU temp of 43C. I have seen many of these sold through the shop i work for. I wasnt convinced that you can get performance from a budget board, i am now.

If you want excellent value and performance get one. They are not the overclockers choice.

It supports 10x sustained data transfer on my pioneer 32x CDROM. I have used that CDROM on 6 different mainboards, and that is the fastest yet.

I am running win98se, and the machine is faultless, no hangs yet! Very happy with this board. Buying another tomorrow to use in a friends system.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: NONE

Weakness: Maybe its my lack of "know how", but the lan and the sound, were not working. Possibly bad winXP drivers.

Maybe its my lack of "know how", but the LAN and the sound, were not working. Possibly bad winXP drivers. Gave it back to FRYs electronics. Guy told me that, this motherboard does not work well with anything faster than 1300MHz.
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME!

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Fast

Weakness: Unstable. Lots of lock ups.

Would not recommend. Too many quirks. Sudden freezes running simple programs like word processing. Look at the different forums like the overclockers. Thousands of complaints. Stay away from this one.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Very low cost, easy to install, very fast, great entry level motherboard.

Weakness: Somewhat unstable in some applications, has a lot of incompatability issues with many video cards, bios is very poor, and very hard to get in touch with ECS (motherboard company.)

This motherboard in my opinion is a great one for entry level PC's. I think this board was easy to install because there are no jumpers than need set, furthermore all the settings are either auto detected or can be changed in the bios. This board features the SiS 735 chipset which of course is on a single chip, unlike others with a north and south bridge, and ultimately the chipset gives off hardly any heat.

The motherboard does have quite a bit of disadvantages, such as; very little changes can be made to the bus speeds, CPU frequency, vcore voltage, etc. The 735 is on a single chip which requires a patch for windows OS for video cards to function properly. Some video drivers overwrite this patch which will cause system instability and lockups. I think this single chipset is accountable for most of the instability issues. The onboard sound is nothing to brag about but it is not all that bad like others make it out to be. In conclusion, I would not recommend this board to users that plan to use their system for any business related software or uses that require rock solid stability, but instead for the ultimate gamers, or for other high end applications.

My Configuration:
K7S5A w/AMD Athlon 1700XP
256MB DDR RAM
ATi RadeonVE 64MB Video Card
40GB WD 7200RPM HD
LG 16x10x40 CDRW
56K Modem (S L O W!)
Windows 98SE

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: NONE

Weakness: This board is a piece of SHI%!

Let's see, I had problems with the first one, yes first one and returned it. The only reason I returned it was I couldn't get any support from ECS! NONE!!! I sent email, checked their web page... Nothing. Board would not POST. Got a second and the same problem. Finally got it to POST and now all I get is error after error. Win ME wont run nor will Win 98. Maybe I can get Win3.1 to run... NOT... It's going back and I am going to go back to my ASUS boards

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Great price, onboard sound and NCI, support for SDRAM/DDR RAM.

Weakness: Limited possibilities for overclocking.

I have built 4 systems based on this MB, all work just fine. In all cases I used a 250W P/S (different $40 generic models), 40Gb Maxtor 7200rpm HDD, 56X Mitsumi CD-ROM, Mitsumi FDD, TEAC CD-RW, DP5 6H51 Coolermaster CPU cooler, and memory blocks from Crusial. No configuration problems were detected. Sound quality in all systems was not a big issue, so the onboard AC97 sound was quite satisfactory.

One of these systems has 512M DDR memory, runs W98se and is hardly used for games by my son. He has never had any problem playing all his 30+ games with overclocked ATI Rageon LE 32Mb videocard and AthlonXP 1600+ CPU.

Further two systems were built for office use, run Win-XP ProfEd and are based on Duron 1Ghz, 256Mb SDRAM, ATI Expert 2000 videocard and AthlonXP 1600+ CPU with 256Mb DDR, respectively. Two my friends have never reported me a single problem. They mostly use MS-Office applications and Internet browsing.

The last machine I have built about 4 month ago is used as a server running SuSE Linux 7.3. It is based on AthlonXp 1600+ CPU, 256Mb SDRAM, and ATI Expert98 videocard. The machine runs permanently day and night, I have even not rebooted it since then. Rock stable. It serves about 70 users which have their own logins, and about 100 users via the HTTP server. Nobody of then have ever reported a problem. The onboard devices (sound and NIC) are fully supported by Linux.

Unless you are an overclocker, I highly recommend this MB.

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ECS (Elitegroup Computers) K7S5A Athlon Socket A,...

Strengths: Besides the one everyone knows its really a stable board

Weakness: the drivers that come with the board,ecs has very little suport, but I went to the sis site and found all of the drivers i needed and it has run great every since

this bord is a very good board for the money, its easy to set up but the only draw back was the drivers that came with it but a trip to sis and that was all it took ,i am amazed that somthig this good could be so cheap

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