SEXY BOARD FOR A SMALL PRICE! K7s5a (K7-S5A Motherboard Socket A)

Name: kensplace

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Product:	K7-S5A Motherboard Socket A
Date:	15/05/02 (6934 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: CHEAP, FAST, DDR & SDRAM

Disadvantages: ONBOARD SOUND, CANT MIX AND MATCH RAM

K7S5A MOTHERBOARD


After a long break from writing, I have returned to write a op on my latest purchase, a new motherboard, its been a long time since I Last wrote an op, so bare with me, I may need oiling, as I am a little rusty.

Manufactured by ECS (the Elite Group), the board is based on the SiS 735 chipset (nice and fast, as it's all on a single chip) this is a excellent board for the price. The manufacturers website states it will support any AMD K7 type processor, so it (always ensure you check with the supplier first tho, to cover your back) should work fine with the XP 2100+

So what do you get when you hand over the cash to the guy at the shop.


* THE ON BOARD FEATURES

SOUND

All boards feature built in sound playback/recording (AC97 Codec) facilities.

The manual states you get AC97 2.1 compliant specification, with 18 Bit ADC and DAC as well as 18 bit stereo full duplex codec.

What I experienced is that you get a bare minimum of rear-sound connectors, ie line in, line out and Microphone. The sound on my board worked, but I was not impressed by it, it was far to quiet, it struggled to power a decent set of PC headphones, and even amplified speakers were not that loud when watching DVD's.

Other people have had problems with the sound level, and some people have reported problems with the sound if they use a PCI graphics card. Maybe some boards are louder, I do not know, I just know mine was not that loud, unless I'm going deaf in my old age.


The board also has a FP_AUDIO Header for a front mounted headphone jack and/or microphone jack, should your case support this feature.

I gave up using the onboard sound, and In the end I stuck a SoundBlaster 16 PCI in it (decent card, especially when it cost less than a tenner), and its MUCH louder now.

USB

The rear section hosts 2 standard USB ports, nothing special there, but t
he board itself can support 4 USB in total, by simply purchasing a cheap connector with the two extra ports on it, and plugging this into the board. I have tested this, and it works fine.
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(This means you should be able to front mount two USB connectors if your case supports it, idea for digital camera users etc who are sick of fiddling around the back of their PC to use USB)

OTHER

Standard PS2 keyboard, Mice, 2 Serial (9 pin) ports, and a midi/game port and a parallel port. (Ports are PC99 compliant - which basically means they are in different (but standardised) pretty colours.)

AMR (Audio Modem Riser) slot
Never used one of these, but the manual states that it is an "industry standard slot that allows for the installation of a special audio/modem riser card."

OnBoard Sensors.

The motherboard has built in temperature sensors (one for the processor, which sits under it) and one for the system, there seem to be another couple of temperature sensors that are readable using software, but don't show up in the bios, no information on those is supplied in the manual.

Voltages are also measured, they can be displayed by downloadable software (motherboard monitor, or CPU cool) and also the speed of the two fans that can be fitted (one fan, the CPU fan should be fitted, as well as a adequate heatsink, otherwise if you have a AMD processor it could start producing smoke in about 1 or 2 seconds!




Optional LAN.

Some variants of this board have a built in Local Area Network card, mine didn't so I cant comment on this any further without making stuff up, which is pointless!





EXPANSION PORTS

One of the benefits of the PC design is its upgradeability, allowing you to replace large parts of the system by just plugging in a new part (and crossing fingers that it's compatible).

This board has 5 PCI slots and a
4xAGP port for "highly graphics" display, as the ECS website puts it. I don't know about highly graphics, but it works fine with a geforce 2 mx400 AGP graphics card.


Sadly no ISA slots are present, but that's not really a problem for most people, I just miss them that's all, ISA served me well for many a year.


THE BIOS

ALTERNATIVE BIOS's

ECS supply official BIOS upgrades via downloads from their website ( ecs.com.tw ) so you can upgrade to the latest version if your board has a older bios. Alternatively you can download one of several "hacked" bios sets (cheepomans is one of them), these are available on the Internet, and allow for additional overclocking features, changing bus speeds, etc.

Remember - if you flash your bios you do so at your own risk, and may void your warranty,

What's in the Box?

The box reveals

One mother board (obviously)
One manual (better than some I have seen, not too many translation problems)
1 UDMA/66 IDE cable
1 Floppy Drive Cable

and the following software

PC-Cillin2000 anti-virus
Media Ring Talk
Win DVD 2000
Various Drivers and utilities.

Please note, that the software states it is not compatible with XP when you autorun the cd. Some of it is, as there are XP directories on the disk, I have used xp on this board and it runs fine, but I don't use the supplied software, as I have no need for it.

Board Configuration/Jumpers.

This board is almost jumperless, all voltages and speeds are auto detected and set by the bios, the main jumper you will have to deal with is the CMOS clear jumper.

 IMPORTANT NOTE *

You must set this jumper to the normal operation position (short pins 2 and 3) BEFORE using the board, as it is supplied in the CMOS clear position.

You will also need to clear the CMOS if you play around wit
h the BIOS setting and the machine then refuses to boot, as has happened to me when trying to squeeze that little bit extra out of the settings.


MEMORY

A maximum total of 1 gig of memory may be installed, you can either use SDRAM up to 133 Mhz or DDR up to 266 Mhz

Please note, that you cannot mix and match DDR and SDRAM, it's one or the other with this board.

IDE

Primary and secondary PCI IDE channels are provided, supporting PIO, multiword DMA, a Kitchen Sink and a cuddly toy, plus nice fast Ultra DMA modes from 33 upto and including 100

Power Supply / Management

ATX Form Board, ATX Power supply connector
Meets ACPI 1.0b and APM 1.2 requirements, keyboard power on/off (jumper controllable)
Supports RTC (real time clock) alarm, so you can have the machine turn itself on to wake you up in the morning (time set in the Bios),
and AC97 Wake up and USB Wake up/Modem Wakeup.

I am using a 350 Watt power supply to power my system, as I noticed a few posts from people who suspected that their old power supplies were not capable of powering the new boards/processors/cards, if you have a old low wattage power supply you may want to get a new one (or a nice new case, as it's the same price)



SUMMARY

This board is * nice *, mine has performed flawlessly once it started to work, and is very stable. It's perfectly ok running my AMD XP 1700+ chip, and 256 DDR ram.

I said, once it started to work, as when I first got it, I thought it was dead, it would not boot at all, it didn't even beep. Turned out the shop had given me a ram stick that it didn't like, this board is apparently fussy over DDR, it prefers good quality modules.


It is also a fast board, almost certainly helped by its chipset which is a single chip solution, so the Northbridge and Southbridge are on the same bit of silicon, instead of on different chips sp
read apart, thereby massively reducing the usual bottleneck that occurs on a board.

Even better than reliable, and fast, this is also a very CHEAP system board, at the time of typing, expect to pay around 55 UK pounds for it. This is a real bargain, considering the board's features, and blistering speed.

Whilst I'm sounding of about how much I like this board, I should also say, it looks sexy too, if you are into that sort of thing that is, its well laid out, and just looks nice.

"A brilliant man once told me that if I were to buy a new board this year, I should go for this board, but then my shrink told me to stop talking to myself."

The board also has a loyal following, it gets great coverage in the

Alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.elitegroup

Newsgroup, and even has a very active forum at

http://pub65.ezboard.com/bk7s5amotherboardforu m

which is great for troubleshooting or general info about the motherboard.


Looking to upgrade? Check this board out, it's worth a look!

© 2002 Kensplace

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