Well ECS is crap as well.
As previously stated in this thread.
In Denmark ECS is the troublemaker number one.
I have seen too many posts regarding wierd ECS boards.
They are all over the danish hardware newsgroups.
The odd thing is that people cannot comprehend that a cheap motherboard is not a good motherboard.
Actually I just remembered a funny story.
A guy asks in a newsgroup what motherboard he should choose.
He thinks of buying a FIC nForce2 motherboard or a MSI nForce2 motherboard.
Me and numerous other said to him that FIC was a crappy motherboard.
Then he replied: But the retailer said that it is a great motherboard.
The funny thing is that the guy wants to OC his system.
Me and three other guys recommended the Abit NF7-S.
But he wouldn't listen, he continued in his quest for experiences with the FIC motherboard.
If you want to OC look no further than Abit NF7-S.
He hadn't done his homework.
And I hope he ended up with the crappy motherboard´.
As he wouldn't listen to the advice given to him.
Interesting.
It sounds like you are talking about a different brand.
They haven't got the best reputation over here.
Here are som examples of failures on the K7S5A:
Random freezes
Insuffcient cooling on the chipset
Need of a very powerful psu
Problems when using 133 Mhz FSB without DDR memory installed
Instability when using two SD-ram modules
Doesn't support SSE instructions on the 0.13 Thoroughbred
Low voltage on the CMOS battery (solution soldering on the board)
These are some of the problems users has experienced.
Don't tell me that what I mean is not what I'm typing.
I'm talking about one ECS K7S5A, and nothing more.
I owned one for 12 months:
Never had random freezes. Northbridge was never more than warm. Ran flawlessly on a 300w power supply. Never had a problem with 133MHz SDRAM when I gave it to my mom. Never had trouble running her dual 128 sticks. Never had problems running her barton.
Low voltage on the CMOS battery is correct, though.
The ECS K7S5A is a damn fine bargain.
0
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited November 2003
MJO, I hate to be contradictory, but:
I've got 4 ECS boards running in systems for habitat for humanity.
The biggest problem I've had is a dead CMOS battery.
I personally don't use them (although I have two sitting in my room right now- my K7S5A, and one I'm holding for someone until they can pay for it) but no one that I've talked to that does has any complaints about them.
Sorry about that Thrax.
I guess I constructed a bad sentence there.
ECS boards can be fine but I have seen too many faulty boards.
My dad actually has a ECS K7S5A running fine.
But he never uses any fancy features either.
But I do believe that US and Denmark receive two different batches of ECS boards.
My experience with Gigabyte involves just one model, and three RMAs :banghead:
The month was June. The year, 2002. I hade decided to order a 7VRXP after seeing some impressive specs (firewire, USB 2, unboard RAID and LAN, 2.15 voltage with out modding) and a cheap price. Well, I get my board, set it up, all seems well. After one day though, the onboard LAN dies. Worse still, when I try to use a PCI ethernet card, it will not work either. Even after a reinstall of Windows, I am still LANless. A day later, the system is left unbootable for no reason. I RMA it, get another one. This time, it takes just hours for the LAN to stop working, and less than a day for the system to be unbootable. I RMA it again, get another 7VRXP.
This time the LAN actually kept working, but another problem that had bugged me on the previous two boards was still present, crappy temp probes. Sure, it wouild be great if my CPU was actually at -50C, but it is not. So, I try flashing the BIOS to the latest version (newer than what it shipped with.) But everytime I flashed the BIOS, when I restarted the computer, it would go back to the older BIOS I RTFM, RTF website, and RTF readme file. No help there. Then I begin thinking about this board's great Dual BIOS thing, and figure that it is automatically going back to the backup BIOS for some stupid reason. So I think that logically, if I flash both chips, I should get the motherboard to use the new BIOS. NOPE. That just makes the board unbootable. :shakehead Call me full of myself, but I don't think that the flash of a BIOS from somebody with more than 3 brain cells should kill a motherboard (and last time I checked, I have more that 3 brain cells.) At that point, I preceded to give Gigabyte the one figured sulute and got my money back (though that the 30 bucks or so I ended up paying in shipping.) Then, I got an Abit KX7-333R, installed it, and it is still powering my main system, a nice 16 months later.
For OCing and gaming rigs I will stick with trusty Abit, with the occasional glance at Epox. For budget boards, give me an ECS or MSI. For a flaming POS, give me a Gigabyte.
My last gigabyte board! where is it?? I believe I dontated it to sm19 since it was brand new and I could not sell it to anyone without feeling bad. So i gave it away! I even paid the shipping! So really i PAID someone to take it!
Gnomewizardd had this to say My last gigabyte board! where is it?? I believe I dontated it to sm19 since it was brand new and I could not sell it to anyone without feeling bad. So i gave it away! I even paid the shipping! So really i PAID someone to take it!
I RMA'd a board to them. they sent me the same one back and it still does not work. (dead PCI-E, Dead SPDIF)
This is a dual socket board, and I expected a BIOS that didn't get something disabled at every update, and better customer support from them.
they dragg their feet deny anyone else having issues w/ their product untill something is EOL and they don't have to support it anymore,. Their documentation is wrong, incorrect, and in some cases a FLAT OUT LIE.
I will NEVER again buy any their products. and I hope their hole company takes a flyleap.
I have never been more pissed off at a single company then I am at them.
0
LeonardoWake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, AlaskaIcrontian
edited December 2007
Holy thread resurrection, Batman!
Dvlhntr, welcome to Icrontic. Sorry about your bad RMA experience. I've never let (well, seldom) let one bad experience with a manufacturer rule out future purchases from them. I've got a Gigabyte board now for an overclocked Q6600 and am very pleased with it. It's the first Gigabyte anything I've owned in countless computer builds/rebuilds.
it's a few years later, and IMO gigabyte still sucks. maybe their desktop stuff has improved, but I will never venture into their server/workstation stuff again...
on paper the board had a lot of good features.... till they disabled them w/ bios updates trying to get other things to work.
0
LeonardoWake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, AlaskaIcrontian
edited December 2007
OK, I see. I have no knowledge of their enterprise hardware. For years I had stuck with Abit and Asus, with a couple of forays into ECS, Iwill, and MSI. I had no interest in Gigabyte at the time, as they were deemed by the enthusiast crowd as too OEM and mass market. At least with desktop, the new Gigabyte is a force to be reckoned with.
Anyway, stick around. We welcome you to the forums. You'll find we are a very pleasant blend of computer tech interest and lively community.
I have seen a few posts of late on other boards where people have liked the a few of the GA-P35 series.
still I expected more from my dual socket motherboard purchase. and while one person did actually try and expedite my RMA it still took to long to get my same board back, unfixed and no log that anything was done. (and since one of the PCI-E and SPDIF are still dead......)
I won't even start on the absurdness of listing a few Linux distros as "fully supported" and then getting to board to find out it was using multiple PCI domains.... so yeah it works but not w/ expansion cards to speak of.
Comments
Praise allah, Didn't Thrax have a fan club at the old Icronticforums.com?
:kneel:
Everyone...you can all stop bowing now.
As previously stated in this thread.
In Denmark ECS is the troublemaker number one.
I have seen too many posts regarding wierd ECS boards.
They are all over the danish hardware newsgroups.
The odd thing is that people cannot comprehend that a cheap motherboard is not a good motherboard.
Actually I just remembered a funny story.
A guy asks in a newsgroup what motherboard he should choose.
He thinks of buying a FIC nForce2 motherboard or a MSI nForce2 motherboard.
Me and numerous other said to him that FIC was a crappy motherboard.
Then he replied: But the retailer said that it is a great motherboard.
The funny thing is that the guy wants to OC his system.
Me and three other guys recommended the Abit NF7-S.
But he wouldn't listen, he continued in his quest for experiences with the FIC motherboard.
If you want to OC look no further than Abit NF7-S.
He hadn't done his homework.
And I hope he ended up with the crappy motherboard´.
As he wouldn't listen to the advice given to him.
If not, I believe they send all their bad motherboards to Denmark.
Odd, that is the motherboard causing the most trouble in Denmark.
Many of our ICx/SMx rigs run ECS boards, and several people here have had personal machines using them as well as machines given to other people.
It sounds like you are talking about a different brand.
They haven't got the best reputation over here.
Here are som examples of failures on the K7S5A:
Random freezes
Insuffcient cooling on the chipset
Need of a very powerful psu
Problems when using 133 Mhz FSB without DDR memory installed
Instability when using two SD-ram modules
Doesn't support SSE instructions on the 0.13 Thoroughbred
Low voltage on the CMOS battery (solution soldering on the board)
These are some of the problems users has experienced.
I'm talking about one ECS K7S5A, and nothing more.
I owned one for 12 months:
Never had random freezes. Northbridge was never more than warm. Ran flawlessly on a 300w power supply. Never had a problem with 133MHz SDRAM when I gave it to my mom. Never had trouble running her dual 128 sticks. Never had problems running her barton.
Low voltage on the CMOS battery is correct, though.
The ECS K7S5A is a damn fine bargain.
I've got 4 ECS boards running in systems for habitat for humanity.
The biggest problem I've had is a dead CMOS battery.
I personally don't use them (although I have two sitting in my room right now- my K7S5A, and one I'm holding for someone until they can pay for it) but no one that I've talked to that does has any complaints about them.
I guess I constructed a bad sentence there.
ECS boards can be fine but I have seen too many faulty boards.
My dad actually has a ECS K7S5A running fine.
But he never uses any fancy features either.
But I do believe that US and Denmark receive two different batches of ECS boards.
The month was June. The year, 2002. I hade decided to order a 7VRXP after seeing some impressive specs (firewire, USB 2, unboard RAID and LAN, 2.15 voltage with out modding) and a cheap price. Well, I get my board, set it up, all seems well. After one day though, the onboard LAN dies. Worse still, when I try to use a PCI ethernet card, it will not work either. Even after a reinstall of Windows, I am still LANless. A day later, the system is left unbootable for no reason. I RMA it, get another one. This time, it takes just hours for the LAN to stop working, and less than a day for the system to be unbootable. I RMA it again, get another 7VRXP.
This time the LAN actually kept working, but another problem that had bugged me on the previous two boards was still present, crappy temp probes. Sure, it wouild be great if my CPU was actually at -50C, but it is not. So, I try flashing the BIOS to the latest version (newer than what it shipped with.) But everytime I flashed the BIOS, when I restarted the computer, it would go back to the older BIOS
For OCing and gaming rigs I will stick with trusty Abit, with the occasional glance at Epox. For budget boards, give me an ECS or MSI. For a flaming POS, give me a Gigabyte.
ahaha, I bet that makes the F@H team feel great
NS
I RMA'd a board to them. they sent me the same one back and it still does not work. (dead PCI-E, Dead SPDIF)
This is a dual socket board, and I expected a BIOS that didn't get something disabled at every update, and better customer support from them.
they dragg their feet deny anyone else having issues w/ their product untill something is EOL and they don't have to support it anymore,. Their documentation is wrong, incorrect, and in some cases a FLAT OUT LIE.
I will NEVER again buy any their products. and I hope their hole company takes a flyleap.
I have never been more pissed off at a single company then I am at them.
Dvlhntr, welcome to Icrontic. Sorry about your bad RMA experience. I've never let (well, seldom) let one bad experience with a manufacturer rule out future purchases from them. I've got a Gigabyte board now for an overclocked Q6600 and am very pleased with it. It's the first Gigabyte anything I've owned in countless computer builds/rebuilds.
it's a few years later, and IMO gigabyte still sucks. maybe their desktop stuff has improved, but I will never venture into their server/workstation stuff again...
on paper the board had a lot of good features.... till they disabled them w/ bios updates trying to get other things to work.
Anyway, stick around. We welcome you to the forums. You'll find we are a very pleasant blend of computer tech interest and lively community.
still I expected more from my dual socket motherboard purchase. and while one person did actually try and expedite my RMA it still took to long to get my same board back, unfixed and no log that anything was done. (and since one of the PCI-E and SPDIF are still dead......)
I won't even start on the absurdness of listing a few Linux distros as "fully supported" and then getting to board to find out it was using multiple PCI domains.... so yeah it works but not w/ expansion cards to speak of.