K7S5A Motherboard, Rev. 1 Elite Group (ECS) (K7-S5A Motherboard Socket A)

Member Name: luismorais

Product:	K7-S5A Motherboard Socket A
Date:	03/03/03 (10336 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Read the review please

Disadvantages: Read the review please

The K7S5A Motherboard has been the most popular purchase for those individuals willing to upgrade to a socket A (AMD) system affordably in the last 2 years. I myself upgraded from an infinitely inferior Chaintech 7CTKJD to a faster K7S5A but would like to add that when it comes to motherboard upgrades speed will be one of the features you will complain least with this one, continue with me to know why.

Upgrading motherboards is not an easy task, although one can find a plethora of web pages and discussion boards teaching the bits and bolts of the art, printing all that stuff and then going the step by step road does not guarantee any success. If you are the daring type and are willing to learn through practice go for it but be warned that no motherboard is so easy that advanced experience might not be required.

Although the K7S5A Motherboard has 2 SDRAM (168-pin DIMM) slots in addition to the 2 DDR (184-pin DIMM), you are going to discover that you?d better never use the SDRAM slots. Many problems have been documented about SDRAM modules not being recognised by the motherboard and it is well-known how temperamental the motherboard can be if you don?t use identical DDR Ram modules as well. So if you are upgrading your old system and can?t afford a memory upgrade, forget the K7S5A by Elite Group as it will run with less problems on DDR only.

If you are upgrading to an Athlon XP for the first time, you would like to know that you have to set your RAM and Processor to run at a frequency of 133/133 instead of the default 100/100 to get the system to work at the speed it was made, this overclocking procedure is normal and all Athlon processors need to be set to run at 133. The only problem is that the K7S5A becomes an unstable beast if you try to set the frequency to 133/133. Boot and post problems can render your machine useless and inoperable.

Then if you go to the discussion boards you will hear a lot about flashing the BIOS as a po


ssible solution. I flashed my original BIOS with the latest enhanced version of the BIOS and I got my system to work as badly as it was before. Luckily I did not render my system useless as a friend of mine did. Follow my advice; if you have to flash the bios just do it when your system (Hard Disks, Diskette Drive and CD-ROM drives) is working fine. Make sure all the cards are fully inserted into the board as this is not a forgiving mainboard. If you still can see the golden bit of the pins when inserting a card into the PCI/AGP slots, it is loose and the motherboard will ignore it.

If you still feel like buying this motherboard and going through the trouble, remember to leave the modem or NIC card to be installed last thing. You will discover that if you are the happy owner of certain cards (i.e., Netgear) the motherboard will ?lose? your CD-ROM drives randomly and sometimes even the hard disks. Sometimes a BIOS update can help the board not lose your hard disks at least but if you have reached this point you are blessed.

The good points about the K7S5A are that its manual instead of being a direct translation from the Cantonese as the Chaintech motherboard for example, with inverted jumper illustrations and broken sentences, is a somewhat useful piece of writing, nothing brilliant or beginner-friendly as it should be. The board itself is quite clear, everything is written on it but, last but not least, it overheats and you might be advised to superglue an additional fan over the chipboard heat sink just to guarantee it will not crash every couple of hours.

Over the internet you can also find instructions on MODding the board so that it does not overheat so much but by then you will have realised that all the money you saved with the board you spent with new memory, a new little fan, a new source (ah, didn?t I tell you your power supply has to be 300 watts at least?) and so it goes.

Customer service at Elite Group, in
the
UK at
least, is not helpful at all. If you have problems with their piece of hardware, they will simply tell you to contact the person you bought the motherboard from. (Can I hear the cry of millions of EBay buyers???).

Verdict:

The K7S5A motherboard by Elite Group is a great motherboard in the realm of good intentions but completely dull when in the real world. Elite Group and other motherboard manufacturers with their products have created a new rule of the thumb almost as invariable as the old laws of physics:

if a motherboard is as cheap as the K7S5A, be aware that the basic elements that should make the hardware minimally workable and user-friendly have been taken out.

I am sure you do not want to trade quality for price on such a low currency.

Useful K7S5A Web Resources:

1. The Mother of all K7S5A
http://pub65.ezboard.com/bk7s5amotherboardforu m

2. K7S5A Problems with AGP and Floppy
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/ 813/

3. K7S5A and Enlight Case Compatibility
http://www.techimo.com/forum/t47277.html

4. K7S5A Shutdown Problems
http://www.eio.com/public/motherbd/0520.html

5. OCworkbench Forum (BIOS and Tweaks)
www.ocworkbench.com/ecs/

6. K7S5A General Problems (Very Good)
http://www.geocities.com/mrathlon2000/

7. Power Supply Issues with K7S5A
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?thr eadid=125963

8. K7S5A sound problems on XP
http://www.tekguide.net/cgi-sec/helpdesk/messa ges/msg.cgi?361.shtml

9. A Few Other Reviews on K7S5A
http://www.reviewcentre.com/review11904.html
http://crn.vnunet.com/forums/thread.jsp?forum= 7&thread=7982
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,1930673 ~root=hwreviews~mode=flat
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2001nov/bch2 0011129009082.htm

Summary: