k7s5a ECS Motherboard

[newclockr]

I'm very surprised at the number of probs with this board! Maybe I'm just lucky, but everything went so smoothly it was scary. The led 3-to-2 thing wasn't too much of a brain-squeezer (there's only 2 wires!!). Following the instructions, I believe, is the key to building anything.

After 2 weeks, I'm quite happy running this board in a gereric case w/300 watt PS, 512Mb cheap PC133 ram, XP1800+, and WinXP Pro.

[TCG]

i'm with you on that. I have a bunc of pals with the same board and no worries at all.

[Cryptic I]

You need to break the power led connector & connect the two end conectors to the two pins. I had the same problem & it works fine. This board has been rock solid since I bought it. However it needs proper grounding & installation or it will get flaky. Very little room for newbie errors.

[corrupted]

care to explain that mk?

[morpheus kain]

sorry, i goofed up the message. I put corrupted as the title for a play on words cuz you r obv corrupted. Buddy you need all the processor power u can get and system temps don't matter if it is all good and stable. Also, you are wasting money on a duron cuz the only things that you could waste your money on more is Pentium 4's and celeron. Why do the suck you ask? Cuz they skimp on essentials. Cache, core, on and on, don't get one, trust me. Get a thunderbird.

[corrupted]

actually, i'm using the duron in question right now, and it works great. the syustem flies along without any hint of lag anywhere. for the light gaming and simple home use this system is intended, it's more than adequate. i don't have the time or money to waste on high-end games, so i don't need any of the high end equipment you put into your system. i'm still more than confident that it would give your system a run for money with similar hardware, and when i'm happy with this system i'll download any benchmark you name and post my scores for the world to see.

btw, the system temp i have seen on this thing, with insuficient cooling for my liking, is 41 degrees CPU, 28 degrees sysetm ambient.

[ajruckle]

Take the white wire out of the connector and put it next to the green wire. you should now have a connector that works. Don't mind the fact that there is an empty pin. Those two plug in and the other one hangs out.

[ajruckle]

That was a little late!!!

I'll read the WHOLE thread next time.

[KidKasha]

Put 2 systems together. The first was flawless, and the seconed gave me problems and did not post. I changed the case, and made sure everthing was screwed down and grounded. It posted perfectly. As far as the led connection went on HDD, I cut the three pin connector in the middle, and hooked up the two remaing. This problem arose on the two systems that I put together. Great board one cpu is xp1600 andt the other is 900.

[morpheus kain]

how does the 1600 perform? also for the grounding thing i bet that is the prob w/ 90% of these posts. People don't understand how important grounding is.

[scottsaxman]

Anybody had trouble with the onboard sound on the K7S5A? I can't seem to get mine to work, though it is enabled in the BIOS and says everything is working in the device manager. Everything else seems stable, though.

Thanks,
Scott

[maurice7]

I had a similar problem with an ECS mothboard not starting, and it turned out to be an AGP card not seating properly. I had to put washers under the offsets on the case to raise the motherboard about 1/32 inch. That did the trick. (In this case, the cards did not screw down far enough because of the case design.) BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT TO KNOW IS THIS: If anyone learns of a program to access the BIOS hardware monitoring without rebooting and entering setup, I would really like to know. Related to this, what IS the proper operating temp supposed to be for the Athlon 1.6 XP processor? The AMD site says 50 - 55 Celcius, and mine runs consistently at 53 (129 F), but that still seems rather hot. (I have had no noticeable problems.) I have three fans (2 case fans and a big CPU cooler) but I wonder. . . Any ideas?

[corrupted]

i had a similar problem with the sound being at an extremely low volume despite all settings being maxed out, so maybe that's a problem with the design and grounding?

i've found that running idle in winblows seriously lowers the operating temp of the system, so perhaps if you're concrened about the operating temp being too hot you should get a cooling program like rain/waterfall to close down some cycles and keep the system cooler.it's fine for apps, and depending on the games you're running it should be ok with most of those.

[scottsaxman]

Just to clarify, my onboard makes no sound at all, even with powered speakers turned up to the max, and every other volume enhancing device I can think of. No sound whatsoever. Any thoughts?

[kvk007]

scottsaxman.

Firstly, did you enable your built in sound card in BIOS settings? If no, then enable it from the BIOS setup by pressing DELETE at rebooting.

Secondly, did you install the drivers for the sound card? It doesn't mean you enable it, then it will work. You will need the drivers. If your motherboard is K7S5A (ECS) then go ahead to http://www.ecsusa.com/ecsusa/www.ecs...driver/k7s.htm and download the drivers from there. Else check out http://www.ecsusa.com then choose >> Support >> Download >> Drivers >> then search for your drivers there