ECS K7S5A PRO

[mre]

i am having a lot of troubles with this board so far, and i hope you guys can help me...
first of all... i have a AMD Athlon 2400 and, with help of the cheapoman BIOS, i can only get it clocked to 1.2ghz... why?
and also, when i play warcraft3, it will just shut down and send me back to the desktop with a 'fatal error', and GTA vice city will crash as well about ever minute....
i boaght brand new DDR Ram for this mobo, when my 2 sticks of SDRAM wouldnt work, so im not too keen on buying new ram. i doubt i can return this board. can someoen help me?

[John Prophet]

everybody and theyre cousin have this board...and it is probably the most discussed board EVER online, lol...with opinions varying wildly. At least the original k7s5a was wildly popular, I suppose the pro is similar.

Its late so Im not sure how many people are online right now, but this will bump you up again to the top.

Do a search on google for "k7s5a Pro lockup" or k7s5a pro freeze or error etc, youll find more reading than you can handle.

If nothing helps, bump this again tomorrow in the evening, so itll get some attention.

JP

[twiztidtruckie]

Trouble with K7S5A Pro:

I am now currenlty building my 203rd build with the same board(k7s5a Pro) and am always getting contacts from my customers with these problems. Here is a quick reference to what you are experiencing:

1. Make sure you use ONLY ecs verified BIOS with this board. (found on ecs's website)

2. Use the winflash program on the utility disk given with board only. Other types of bios flash programs and such will cause errors.

3. Be sure you use a graphics card taylored to the 4x agp slot/or pci slots. Using a faster or slower video card will cause game play errors.

4. Using the correct bios with the k7s5a pro will enable your 2400 xp to be run at a minimum of 2.0ghz, after uping your fsb to 133/133 in the cmos settings.

5. Trying to go above 133/133 will cause malfuntions. Going below 133/133 will cause your system to detect your cpu at lower rates(ex: 2400 at 100/100 will become a 1800)

6. Be sure your game is compatible with your current graphics card. To check, see game box/manual for exact compatability.

If this wil not correct your problems then it is something i cannot help you with. These are my trouble shooting tasks when I need to correct a problem with a customers build.

PS: I'll try to post a link to ecs's bios page...give me a few minutes.

Truckie

[mre]

ok, i put the origional bios back in... i origionaly put the cheapoman bios in because the bios that came with the mobo wouldnt get my processor to 2400. nither would the cheapoman, or the honey-x bios.
however... now that i put the origional bios back in, my keyboard will ONLY work in windows, so i dont have access to the bios anymore... does anyone know what this means?
and the video card that i have is a GeForce2 MX 400
could that be the problem?

[JPMiller]

However much I respect your opinions twiztidtruckie... I have to disagree with your statement regarding the bios... the newest cheepoman bios is superior in my opinion to the "official" ECS bios's available.
This is the K7S5A Bible... I VERY much recomend the cheepoman bios and the chipset heatsink upgrade for stability and performance...the doublesided sticky tape adherence of the HSF is ridiculous and needs to be corrected... active fan cooling of a properly affixed HSF is optimal but just doing the lapping and paste with superglue fix is mandatory to make the board more stable.

I personally doubt the MAIN problem your having is the video card...as long as it works and isnt faulty, it should perform ok with this game... swapping it out to rule out that possibility wouldnt hurt though...

[ragtop]

In addition to the items outlined above, that board is known to be picky about RAM and power supply. So make sure you have a good quality and adequately sized power supply (preferably 350+ watts). And download and run Memtest86 for a while to make sure that your RAM isn't throwing any errors.

[JPMiller]

good call ragtop... very true about ram and PSU... watts isnt the main issue either...clean power and strong rails are the real issue.
use Aida32 to check the power on your rails and run either a Sysoft Sandra memry test or the memtest mentioned by ragtop to test memory... good luck... good board once its tweaked...

[mre]

alright i will try those things, thanks guys... i shall be back...