ECS K7S5A Power on problem

[Etch]

Hi all. New to the board and thought I'd start by presenting my problem with my new ECS K7S5A motherboard.

I bought this board yesterday to replace my old Pentium board that was running my Win 2K server. I needed a board quick so I bought it locally and it was one of the cheapest one. Anyway, here is the problem:

Installed the MB into a case with a 300W PS. Everything powers on and the power LED and HDD LED come on, but nothing on the screen and no beeps. Tried many things including swapping out the video card, reseating the CPU and power connectors, removed all PCI cards and IDE ribbon cables from the board...etc.
Now the strange part. AFter unplugging the power cable from the PS and the power cable from the MB and reconnecting, it powered up and I had video and the BIOS detected everything just fine. I thought, cool, it's fixed. NOPE! Changed some very minor things in the BIOS, like the date and then rebooted, NO VIDEO again. After reseating the power connectors a few times, it came on again. It's intermittent, but 9 our of 10 boots will fail.

I'm not new to putting computers together as I've done it hundreds of times, but this one has got me baffled. I'm pretty sure the board is bad, but I thought I'd try my luck here to see if anyone else has run into this problem.

[BipolarBill]

Kick it once really hard and see if it works. :D

I would loosen all of the screws on the main board except for the one closest to the floppy drive.

You should really test it outside of the case first.

[gibsinep]

May be a bad board or power switch. First take every thing out of the case and put in the video,ram,cpu, plug it into the Power Supply. Next take a screwdriver and put it were the Power led goes from case to motherboard. This should short the board and should power it up. If this works then you either have a bad power button from case to motherboard or the board is touching the metal of the case. Make sure you have the motherboard propped up above the case with the pegs that came with the case.

Do this "operation" on the box that the motherbaodr came in. That way you wont shock anything with static.

[Rocketmech]

Hey Etch

Welcome to SysOpt!

This mobo does have a history of case grounding and P/S issues. Its possible its P/S related. So give it a check.

[Etch]

Ok, I did some more checking. Completely removed it from the back plate which I had out of the case anyway. Plugged in a video card and the PS cable and it worked fine. Not once did it fail to power on. The case I have sucks anyway, so I guess I'll getting a new case to see if it resolves the problem.

Thanks for all the help!!

[BipolarBill]

Just be sure not to use all of the mounting screws. Three will do fine because the expansion cards hold the board in pretty well. Do not overtighten the screws and use those little red washers.

[gibsinep]

Yea useing to many mounting screws can cause shorting or no video.

[Peter M]

I've been using all the mounting holes. You got to take care with the center one of the nine holes, it has traces nearby. Don't short them out, put a washer inbetween when your screws have large heads.

regards, Peter

[hoodedrat]

this board has been great to me other than the bad quality onboard sound...