K7S5A mobo with 2 strips of sdram at 133 = EVIL!!

PPC

This started off last week when I got 2 pc's in to work with problems running at an FSB of 133 but ran perfectly at 100 or at 133 with only 1 strip. Which left his XP1600 running at 1050.

So....
I tried

• New bios (current one)
• New ram (same spec)
• New chip
• took all the cards out
• reset the cmos about 20 times to try differnt setting
• better cooling
• Tried XP instead of the customers ME

And then day 2.
Still searching for an answer i tried some of the same things again.
Then i remember Tac is always going on about VIAARENA.com so i said i'd try for one for the board. (cheers for the viaarena link Tac)
So i went to Google and searched for K7S5A +forum and lone behold the 2nd site was a forum dedicated to the mobo (Link )
In there i looked at the problems board and found out this is a very common problem. Too bloody common.
What they recommended doing was taking off the hs of the northbridge and replacing the thermal frag tape with some thermal paste and some super glue, has never worked for me in the past so i got some artic silver adhesive, but this would void the warranty imho.
So day 2 ended.

My dad had a meeting in Dublin today so i was in work for 6.45AM (wtf is there a 6 in the am for??)
So i said i might as well try to finish them as i was going insane.
So went back onto the forum and downloaded the OC'able bios and installed it and lone begold it worked

The XP1600 chip is now running at XP1600 speeds and works in Windows ME

I'd recommend this bios to anyone who has this board and is having problems.
I will never use one of the ECS boards again.
so ECS go onto the never use this motherboard again companies.

• Gigabyte
• MSI
• PCCHIPS

Although i hear the new GB and MSI boards are good so i'll give em a shot.


Anyone having problems with their ECS K7S5A boards?

KdjaCL

I hate ECS
previous posts about what they did to me ,got me barred from Maplin too ....

Had k7vza died 3 times ,now you can put 3 gigs of ram into it will still only show up as 64mb...

emailed everyone of their support techs and a Chinese replied with a special Bios...LOl
didnt work

Ecs= bad.

kdja

Gerry

If you had your eyes open PPC, you'll see a shedload of topics on this board about the evils of the k7s5a. Quigs snr in particular has had fierce trouble with it. I also dunno how you thought a different os would solve what was obviously a hardware problem.

Kix

Yeah, I had two k7s5a boards. Had to RMA them. Apparently nice little boards when they work, which isn't often enough.

K

Mr. Fancypants

Working grand for me......

*runs of franticaly looking for some wood to tap*

Quigs Snr

Yup, got burned by ECS several times. Unfortunately I got a good one first, which made me think they were great, then got a whole load more in a batch of machines I had to build for other people. Didn't half hurt my pocket when I had to send em back and pay extra to get the far superior MSI boards instead.

Still have a K7S5A working great in one of my machines at home (although I have noticed it crapping out a bit of late when running for a long time (2 or 3 days). Am waiting for the MSI 333 to arrive to replace it. I regard the ECS board so highly that even though it works, I am giving it away to a mate of a mate. I couldn't charge for it, cos I'd feel guilty when it fell to bits.

PPC

Originally posted by Gerry
If you had your eyes open PPC, you'll see a shedload of topics on this board about the evils of the k7s5a.

Yeah i saw them.

Originally posted by Gerry
I also dunno how you thought a different os would solve what was obviously a hardware problem.

Windows ME was on the pc and it had 512MB ram. And we all know ME is crap and can't handle its ram.

Gerry

yes, but if it runs fine at 100 and not at 133, thats not windows me's fault, windows me has a problem with memory usage, and memory handling, but that is completely independant of memory speed.

JustHalf

Originally posted by PPC
so ECS go onto the never use this motherboard again companies.

• Gigabyte
• MSI
• PCCHIPS

Although i hear the new GB and MSI boards are good so i'll give em a shot.

Nice one PPC. Make a statement, then contradict yourself.

sinus

Originally posted by PPC
I will never use one of the ECS boards again.
so ECS go onto the never use this motherboard again companies.

• Gigabyte
• MSI
• PCCHIPS

and please god add FIC mobos too (az11, az11e, az11ea etc etc)

PPC

Originally posted by Gerry
yes, but if it runs fine at 100 and not at 133, thats not windows me's fault, windows me has a problem with memory usage, and memory handling, but that is completely independant of memory speed.

I only tried the OS as a last resort.
Then i found the modded bios.
It was worth a shot any nobody got harmed.

Originally posted by JustHalf
Nice one PPC. Make a statement, then contradict yourself.

Well thats my list but i've just so many good things about MSI like Quigs Snr getting the MSI board and i'm sure Gerry I read Gerry saying they were good.
I'm still not going to buy one as the next board will more than likely be a Soyo or an ABit or Asus.

JustHalf

You do know ABIT are getting ECS to make some of their boards?

PPC

Originally posted by JustHalf
You do know ABIT are getting ECS to make some of their boards?

I heard ECS weren't going to do mobo's anymore, not sure how true it is. Sounds like bs to me.

TacT

There is a particular bios flash required on that board so that it properly recognises your cpu as an XP and not just a standard athlon. could possibly cure your problem....

no problems here on mine anyway, loaded 2kpro on it the other day, brought my fans back to life, downloaded chfsb and whacked her up to 112. Cranked my duron 1100 up to 1233 no problem, solid as a rock.

I'm happy with mine but I will avoid them in future due to everything that has been said and what I've read about them.

I may just try that overclocking bios but it works and I don't want it to not work! good ol if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I'm also v.unsure about how my board will handle 133mhz fsb when I do upgrade, so I am v.skeptical. I have run the ram at 133 nps, but I discovered very quickly you need both the cpu and ram at the same fsb speed to get any decent performance from the board. Something to do with how the single chipset handles everything afaik.

Gerry

well that really applies to most boards, running the ram faster than the fsb rarely gives that much performance boost, compared to synchronous fsb and ram.