Power at your fingertips (K7-S5A Motherboard Socket A)

Member Name: Bob Barley

Product:	K7-S5A Motherboard Socket A
Date:	11/04/02 (921 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great compatibilty, Cheap, Excellent quality

Disadvantages: None

I bought the ECS K7S5A because it was the cheapest motherboard I could find. There were a few cheaper ones but they were all Micro-ATX pr PC CHIPS ones with everything built on, which I didn't want.

So I sent off for the K7S5A. I'd heard mixed reviews about the board, but I can confirm now that it's a seriously good piece of hardware!

First off it supports both DDR and SDR RAM (both 100mhz and 133mhz RAM), it has 2 slots for each. This is particularly good because it means you can use your existing RAM if you're upgrading until you can afford some (much faster) DDR RAM.

Next it supports both Duron and Athlon CPU's, including the XP brands, all the way up to XP 2000+, so if you want to build a seriously fast PC this motherboard will suit you fine.

It came with on-board sound which I disabled because I wanted to use my SoundBlaster 512, apparently the sound on the board is fine, more than adaquate if you just want to play a few games, it also save's on the amount of expansion slots you'll have to use.

Some models come with on-board LAN which can be particularly useful if you want to network you're PC at any stage, and all boards have AMR (Audio Modem Riser) slots, so you can buy special modems or sound cards to fit into those slots, another good way to save on your expansion slots.

The board supports AGP 4x so you can pop in pretty much any graphics card of your choice, I use a GeForce2 MX-400 myself, an excellent card, and it runs perfectly.

It features 5 PCI slots, which I find more than enough, for adding you're extra pieces of hardware.

It has 2 USB ports, with the ability to connect another 2 if you get the right little piece of hardware for it.

You can install 4 IDE devices of either DMA 33,66 or 100, offering maximum compatibilty with most IDE devices.

The BIOS is straightforward to use as well.

It probably sounds like I'
m trying to sell the motherboard to you, I'm just giving you the facts. It really is a good board.

I did some hunting around and found out that AMD use this motherboard to benchmark their CPU's with!

I've been using this motherboard for a while now with 256MB DDR ram and a 1GHZ Duron CPU in it and it's been excellent. The PC runs very well and I can't reallt fault the board. I'd definitely buy from ECS again, I can't believe they offer such good hardware at the prices they do.

If you're thinking of upgrading your computer in the near future then I recommend that you consider this board.

Summary: