written by on 18/11/2010
I have use this mobo since Apr 2003, i think this is a durable mobo, especially when i update its BIOS using HoneyX Bios, i never have any problem eventhough random power outtage struck my place for more than 100 times in a year without ups protection, i can even play games using agp 8x vga (i try both ati x1300 and gforce 6200 on 4x agp slot) smoothly and no compability issues whenever i paired a different memory stick brand (i paired 1 gb kingston with 256 visipro) its still stable. Up to now (2010) im very pleased and satisfied my this motherboard.
(pardon my mediocre english)
written by on 13/06/2010
I bought mine for a measley 20 bucks, it didn't and still doesn't have a battery on the board, it was pirated off of the board before I got to it, but, so long as I don't have a power outage, or unplug it from the wall, it keeps just fine, took a while to get the drivers for it, but I burned a disk when I finally found them that worked, other than that, it has been a great board, outperforms this Acer I'm typing on now(my wife's puter) for gaming and number crunching, and it has 3X the RAM and processor!
Am currently replacing the fans in my puter tower for the 3rd time, this board does get a little warm, but it rocks!
written by on 15/10/2009
Found this motherboard in a battered case in a scrapyard, got it for free, brought it home, chucked it in a case i installed an Athlon 1500, 512 meg of pc133 and 2 x 20 gb hdd, and it worked.!!!!
It was really easy to setup and find all the drivers for it too.
It's now running a cable modem to belkin "N" wireless, wireless printer and fax, its not put a foot wrong so far, not a bad bit of recycling, eh.
written by on 16/03/2009
The Elite ECS K7S5A PRO is the best board i have ever had.. Bought it 7 year ago added some RAM.. works great ..running window xp now (was runnign 98 at the time).. no problem finding drivers.. No bad points that I can think of.
written by jdavies01 on 07/01/2009
K7S5a is from my own experience has been totally reliable. I have run mine for 6 years now, having flashed my Bios to upgrade it once, and the Motherboard Drivers once. All PCI slots have been completely reliable, as have all USB and serial ports. I run a pair of Seagate 120 gig drives and a LaCie 500 gig external, using two sticks of DDR 3200 Corsair Memory. Mine is housed in a Cooler Master TAC-T01 Wave Master Aluminum Case, providing the Board and case contents with plenty of air flow. Temperature has never been an issue. Contrary to some reviews of this board, I've used a Sound Blaster Audio Card, and an Invidia G Force FX 5200 video card flawlessly since I built the case up. I've added a PCI USB Card for more USB ports, and upgraded my Athelon XP1800 chip from 1.8 gig to 2.0 gigs. And I did place a Cooler Master X Dream chip cooler fan on the heat sync. The Wavemaster case provides twin 80mm intake fans, I installed a good temp controlled exhaust fan, and added a tripple fan hard drive cooling kit between my two CD drives simply as more air intake. Using also a System Bracket Fan, to help force air across the PCI Cards, the result is a good solid air flow through the case keeping the Video Card, and Chipsets all at reliable temps. In this environment the K7 Board has been remarkably reliable. And I would suggest it to anyone who needs a board of this generation of technology. It's not expensive, and is completely reliable. I have worked on machines who's K7 "clones" had to be replaced, while all the K7's I have seen so far simply work. Stick with Elite for your K7.
written by on 27/11/2008
Absolutely reliable, used this board for over 4 years never had a problem easy to set up and never had to change a thing, have had to change my g card twice, cd/dvd roms twice and chip once but this board is still working! Well recommend Elite ECS K7S5A PRO/
written by on 05/11/2008
I have been dealing with systems for about 9 years, and suddenly, within the past 2 years I have had this K7Pro Motherboard and I have "NO" problems with it whatsoever. Works really well with all AGP Processors installed. I am using a PC3200 DDR RAM in both DDR slots on this machine and flies! I don't know about you other guys who rate this product a "0" But I take care of it and it does run "Flawlessly" like the review stated above. It ' s all how you tweak the system and work with the software installed. Other than that, I rate this board a flat "10".
I have seen a lot of Computers in the past 9 years, and in those 9 years I have seen PC's running with larger Hard Disks, more memory and a faster Processor, and what seems funny thing is, that even newer PC's sold in stores would not compare to the K7 Pro Motherboard from ECS.
There is to me, "NO ARGUMENT ABOUT THAT!".
written by on 11/03/2008
There are actually to different versions of this motherboard one with the C-Media and the other with a soundblaster compatable sound chip, actually when I installed XP Home on my pc it tried to install the C-Media software which is strange as there is actually no C-Media chipset on the motherboard in my pc even though it is a K7S5A motherboard.
Good but tries to install a sound driver for a sound chip that is not on the board. I can't actually remove the C-Media driver of my machine because on reboot I get the cannot find the C-Media cpi extension of my control panel.
written by on 03/12/2007
Although this MB is now out dated, it seems after reading the other comments that you either get a good one or a dud, sort of a 50/50 thing. I've read elsewhere that flashing the BIO's on it can kill this board and or cause all sorts of problems. i.e. "if it ain't broke don't mess with it! "
written by blueside on 13/04/2006
I love it, been running it for years now, for my business, and they have worked flawlesly.
The only thing wrong with it is user error, they are not dummy proof, if you hook it up right, run the right O.S. you will not have any issues with it.
I am still surprized by how well it has worked compared to my other boards ASUS, In the last two years I have had three ASUS fry on me.... Dont get me wrong I love ASUS, but I have had problems with them, and the like especially consitering the price I paid, as I bought them at frys electronics as board/cpu combos.
Not one crash, not one failer, nothing! works great with soundblaster live and pro. I even at first ran the built in sound, and vid, it worked great too. upgrading hasnt been an issue as well.
I currently have ASUS Nvidia, and ATI in them for graphics, no problems.
Various hard drives, still no problems.
I bought 12 of them, price was right, and I needed to replace the computers at my business overnight, as my business was broken into and the computers stolen.
For the bucks you pay, you cant go wrong with this board, just hook it up right.
written by Kevin Murphy on 08/12/2005
The 10 USB ports was a contributing factor in me buying the Elite ECS K7S5A PRO motherboard. I found this board to be one of my favorite boards to use. I honestly have yet to find a reason not to have purchased it. I am slightly disappointed in its limitations - only 4x AGP and Processor socket type, and RAM modules rapidly changing quickly made this board outdated. I have never had lockup problems using this board.
written by miconn on 27/11/2005
The Elite ECS K7S5A Pro motherboard is more trouble than it is worth. The PCI slots are very unreliable. New PCI devices cause all kinds of system freezing and conflicts, especially with a Soundblaster live soundcard.
written by girlygirly on 28/09/2004
As an owner of so called 4 top end mobo computers Asus , et al, I hate to admit that the old ECS K7S5a keeps on, gaming while the others quit. True every slot on the board is filled, 2600 Athlon AMD, XP Pro, Albatron 5800 fxUltra, Pinnacle TV card, 1 Meg Legend pc 2100, Firwire, from card reader (below) floppy disc and usb for digicam. I cut 3 nice holes in the case with a hole saw and couple extra fans. I'm one of those who hated this board when I first got it, I grudgingly admit now it's bloody good, back to fixing my finicky top end (so - called) ASUS pcs .
My girlfriend picked the ECS 3 years ago (with no knowledge) she said it looked *Pretty* !! Does anyone know a better AGP 4X that will fit this ECS, to keep g/f happy please?
Mick Scott
written by BLADE1969 on 17/08/2004
I have been building custom computers for about 4 years now, And in January 2004 I came across the Elite ECS K7S5A PRO mainboard. It seemed a good deal for the price 55$ CAD. Problems started in July 2004 when I booted it sometimes detected my hdd sometimes not!!! So I thought it was an IDE problem so I took it back to my vendor to find out after a 95$ inspection to find out I WAS RIGHT (imagine paying 95$ inspection for a 55 $ board) So my vendor tells me that he will sent it back on RMA, but it is gonna take from 4 to 6 weeks. OK that was my first ECS so I gave it a chance I bought another one just like it K7s5a pro. On July 19th !!! Last week I try to boot, the computer says no way Jose it never booted, the thing is, the computer tells me HDD error and won't boot. So I try to format my HDD to reinstall XP PRO, but it won't format in NTFS only in fat 32 and won't install XP on this board. I've had to remove my HDD form the computer and install it in my wife's computer to reinstall XP. I said to myself I've had beaten the computer and I would have a machine with XP Pro. HOW wrong was I when I transferd my HDD in my own computer it booted with this message systemerror/system32/ntdll.dll I have tried my HDD in four different computers event my daughter's AMD K6-2/500 and it works perfectly fine, only not in mine.
So if you think of buying an ECS motherboard, please search for reviews before throwing your money away for this one.
written by Mitch Gift on 31/07/2004
I have spent way too many hours trying to get this computer to do what it's supposed to do. It won't ever start up reliably.
It doesn't recognize the HDD, or the Video Cards. I'm lucky to get a picture at all. Today it defaulted to an all time low of 766mhz, from a rated 1533mhz XP1800.
I bought this K7S5A Pro at Fryes with the XP1800 processor for an unheard of $79.99 for both! What a deal? Hardly! That is unless you like pulling your hair out for about .50 an hour?
That's money I thought I saved, verses hours spent fighting with my computer? This is the Motherboard from Hell and I can't believe it happened to me! I've been taken! Buy MSI.
written by Xodius on 25/07/2004
Great board, I bought from Mwave and built a newer machine running XP Home and it works flawlessly! My GF loves it and uses the machine for gaming so it can't be too bad. No clue what others are complaining about.
I have built systems for over 15 years and have had some great boards and some rubbish ones but this one is solid!
written by rasinhl on 17/05/2004
Too numerous to name them all of the problems with the ECS K7S5A PRO motherboard but by far the worst has to be the bios. I bought 2 brand new, still in the shrink-wrapped boxes, identical K7S5A PRO's and after meticulously installing into my case, I immediately start having problems. 1st thing, instead of detecting my cdrom, it gives me the ol' *^%$$#^**&$#@ rubbish, which will sometimes happen if the cdrom's screwed up the firmware. I change units 5 times with known working ones with same result. Suspecting a bad secondary, I install as slave on primary, and Bingo, it reads cd's just fine, but for some reason it is still showing the %#@#%&^*& after detecting on post. I flash bios to newest version, and I'll be damned if it didn't corrupt my bios to the point of no boot and no chance of recovery since it would not even detect floppy. So I switch bios chips with other board just like I have done countless other times, and it corrupts this chip with out even one decent boot to the floppy. I suspect the majority of the problems in this board are not in any way related to software, rom, but are truly engineering problems inherant in this model. I snagged new bios chip, installed into OTHER new board thinking it was a problem with just the one board, but guess what? This sucker works perfectly up to re-booting 1st time after OS install, and pops up saying the board battery is failing, so I put the meter to it and it's fully charged. It does the ol' checksum error where it is supposed to reset back to defaults, and re-booting pops up with the EXACT same problems as the 1st board. I tried the same menuver as Salem Cat, and with the exception that windows ran fine, but I had NO secondary IDE except for it detecting cdroms and any other IDE device as ()&^%$#@#$$%&! I have to say I have seen motherbards have their problems, and I don't even think most ECS board have any of these problems, but I do have a problem with them not even having a support choice other than faq and send them an e-mail. If you try to follow their support instructions, then you pick from a list the MB type, in this case K7, and then it has you pick your MB model, and gee, the K7S5A of ANY VERSION is not listed. The closest it comes is K7ASA which is NOT the same board. My recommendation to anyone thinking of a purchase from ECS Group should do their homework and check out Google or other search engines to see if the model in question has a history of problems, then grab your wallet and run.
written by azrael on 09/02/2004
I've built several systems with both the ECS K7S5A and the ECS K7S5A PRO. Both were easy to setup and after over 2 years since the first, no problems whatsoever. This is a good board at a great price. Use quality components and it's unlikely you'll have problems. These boards are inexpensive but good quality. Great if you already have SDRAM.
*building computers since 92*
written by SalemCat on 03/02/2004
I've been building and maintaining computers for nearly twenty years, and the ECS K7S5A PRO is by far the worst Motherboard ever.
It starts up fine, and even loads WIN98 w/o problems (usually). But try to upgrade to WIN98SE - forget it.
I haved swapped EVERY component, all of which tested good on other systems. I tried tweaking the BIOS every which way, and flashing the latest Version, of course.
Finally I got the Board to work by installing the OS and several programs with the HD in another computer and then swapping the HD to the PRO. But this did not satisfy the K7S5A for long!
Within just a few hours Registry Errors began occurring, and programs which worked fine before were failing.
I've owned ECS MBs before - I have an ECS K7S5A non-PRO for a year now. It's only issue was the Front USB Ports never worked - and yes, I know how to set these up - done it countless times successfully. Finally I decided Front USB was not important - but not before I wasted a few hours.
The K7S5A was simply annoying - but when I look at the hours I've wasted with this ECS K7S5A PRO - I'll never buy ANY ECS again.
Written on: 08/12/2005
This motherboard does not do well with outdated Software like win98 or windows me due to the usb2 ports and their respective drivers. this is why windows xp pro is recommended for this board due to the stable drivers included with the op sys
Written on: 08/12/2005
Yes, I agree - this MB SUCKS with WIN98. But that does NOT excuse ECS, who to this day, on their Web Site, still claim "Windows Me ; Windows 9x ; Windows 2000 ; Windows XP" are all supported. Is it unreasonable for them to admit WIN9x does not work with this MB ? All I ask is for ECS to be HONEST.
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Dbrucereed's Response to 172153_girlygirly's Review
Written on: 06/05/2005
Mick, try a G-Force4 128, I have one in my girlfriends machine and it has never hesitated or missed a lick in 15+ months of use by her and abuse by her kids and my grandchildren.