Considering K7S5A Pro

[Clocker]

I'm thinking about upgrading my father-in-law from a Celeron 950 in a BX board to a K7S5A Pro (with USB 2.0) amd an Athlon XP (1700+)-(2000+).

I've had pretty good luck with the older K7S5A. My father in law isn't much of a gamer or anything, I'm just looking for something decent for him and I'll probably throw a decent Radeon in it or something....

I really like the $47 shipped price tag with 4 USB2.0 ports as well as 6 USB 1.1 ports as my father in law has lots of USB stuff. Also, I may use his old PC133 SDRAM as well (not quite sure).

Is there something else I should consider or should I just aboid the K7S5A Pro all together?

Ideas? Thanks...

C

 

[honold]

i have 10+ k7s5as that have been in production for almost 2 years. unless they screwed something up later, i would think this would be a fine motherboard, but aren't nforce1 matx boards cheap too?

 

[Clocker]

Thanks for your input honold....I will look at some of those too.

Appreciated...
C

 

[zx]

I had a K7S5A that I sold to my sister. I has a few glitches. Sometimes, the BIOS resets for no reason (1/10 times). Also, on boot, the CDROM drives do not get detected (1/20 times). This board needs good quality memory to work well. The BIOS reset is the most annoying thing. I saw that issue on another K7S5A.

Generally, the board works well. But I would consider a good quality VIA based board (gigabyte) or an old nForce mATX. However, the nForce does not support USB 2.0.

 

[blakerwry]

If you're interested, the Shuttle AK32E provides USB 2.0 via the VT8235CD southbridge. If you don't want to be limited to the kt266a northbridge then the Asus A7v8x-x is looking to be a competitive budget board at $70 (inlcuding USB 2, LAN, and audio). The AK32E will, of course, take both DDR and SDR system memory while the Asus will only accept DDR.

 

[Clocker]

Thanks guys. I opted for the K7S5A Pro since it is $47 shipped....

CLocker

 

[honold]

please report back how it goes

 

[Clocker]

Will do.....mid next week probably.

C

 

[Tea]

:eekers: :errr: :monkey:

 

[Buck]

:eekers: :errr: :monkey:

Typical response from the Redhill camp.

 

[Clocker]

The upgrade went as smooth as silk.

I made an image of the old system on my old 80GB 'Cuda with a Promise Ultra/100. I then took the Ultra/100 and the 'Cuda to the new system and wrote the image to the new 40GB WD JB drive which was attached to the SiS controller on the K7S5A Pro.

Upon attempting to boot the system from the JB it would not boot, presumably because all of the drivers installed on the previous system were for a BX board. So, I ran the automated WinXP system repair and the system was back up and running within about 30 minutes.

All the devices are now installed including the TV tuner and everything is working great. I decided to leave out the old Aureal 8820 and the 3Com NIC and just use the onboard sound and LAN.

I'm very happy with this upgrade...

C

 

[Prof.Wizard]

I decided to leave out the old Aureal 8820 and the 3Com NIC and just use the onboard sound and LAN.

Better. Onboard sound/LAN are fine.

 

[CougTek]

I'm about to build (and sell shortly after) a system with old parts and a K7S5A Pro too. Good to see that it seems to be a easy board to work with.

 

[zx]

I'm about to build (and sell shortly after) a system with old parts and a K7S5A Pro too. Good to see that it seems to be a easy board to work with.

Actually, i did not find it easy to work with. It has a horrible layout and is not well documented.

I had a friend who had one crash on him. But then again, he bought it at LCI so it may be their fault .

 

[Clocker]

Just an update...

The system is still running great. The only problem I had to fix was unrelated to the board. After doing the automatic system repair, it turned out that OE6 took about 30 seconds on the splash screen before it would load. The fix was to reinstall Windows Messenger 4.7 (I had previously uninstalled it before the system upgrade) and then uninstall it again. Now everything is nice and fast.

Best of all, my father-in-law is impressed with how quiet and fast the system is compared to his CII 950 384MB. I have the cheap/small Antec SLK1600 300W smartpower running with an Enermax 80mm exhaust fan turned down to about 2450RPM so it is nice and quiet. The 400JB and the power supply are a dream noise-wise and the Speeze cooler we all love is great too spinning at about 2400 rpm or so.

Btw, he's running a 1700+ that is about a year old (the hotter ones..it's one of the old CPUs out of my dually system that runs at 1.75v.), with 512MB of Kingston Value 2100DDR (almost free after rebate), and Geforce4 MX440 64MB.

I'm considering installing F@H as a service but the system runs so nice and smooth and relatively cool right now that I'm not sure if I want to mess with a good thing. He doesn't run it 24/7 or anything anyway....

C

 

[CougTek]

Actually, i did not find it easy to work with. It has a horrible layout and is not well documented.

What's so horrible about the layout? I assembled my last box with this motherboard Saturday and I had no problem at all. Apart from the socket-A being a bit too close to the DIMM sockets, there's no issue with the layout IMO. Just start by installing the CPU/heatsink before plugging the RAM and everything's fine.

My main concern with this board, in term of reliability, is the fragile USB ports. I had two of these boards blowing up their USB ports. One because of a defective printer, the other one because of a USB thumb drive. I've also had one that arrived with a dying CMOS battery, but since I replaced it (cost me 3$), it has run just fine, 24x7, for almost a year now. Hard to ask more for a mainboard that can be bought for 60$CDN nowadays.

 

[zx]

1. The SDRAM slots are placed too close to the edge of the board.
2. The ATA connectors are almost on the bottom of the board. Plus, somehow, they are too close to the AGP slot. So the ATA ribbons are blocked by the graphics card.
3. The power connector is right in front of the power supply fan.

Plus, everyhing seems so cheap and fragile inside.

Anyway, I did not like working inside that board.

Has anyone of you get some BIOS problems where the board resets it's settings? I had that with two ECS K7S5A (non-pro) boards. Very annoying problem for a novice user (who does not know how to set his BIOS, so his CPU's FSB is at 100MHz).

 

[Clocker]

I had a K7S5A that I sold to my sister. I has a few glitches. Sometimes, the BIOS resets for no reason (1/10 times).

THe board I bought for my father-in-law is showing this condition. The CMOS sets to default settings occasionally (100mhz memory & fsb instead of 133mhz) along with some other settings. It brings his 1700+ AthlonXP down to 1100mhz.

He doesn't notice the difference in speed, but he does notice that the feature by which you can start the PC just by hitting the keyboard suddenly stops working. I wish I could make that a CMOS default option and there would be no problem for me.

Anyway, from the net research I have done, I'm hearing that using SDRAM unstead of DDR memory solves the CMOS issue. Wonder if you have found the same thing?

My K7S5A (an older vinetage) is on 24/7 but I amd shutting it down for a while to see if it exhibits the issue (it has DDR).

Thanks,
C

 

[Clocker]

Other research I've done indicates that disabling QUick Boot solves the lost cmos memory issue on many boards...

C

 

[Tea]

:eekers: :errr: :monkey:

See? Lookz like I waz right all along.

 

[Clocker]

That was useful. Thanks Tea.

 

[Tannin]

Please excuse her, Clocker. She's a bit too much of a smart-ape sometimes.

 

[zx]

Anyway, from the net research I have done, I'm hearing that using SDRAM unstead of DDR memory solves the CMOS issue. Wonder if you have found the same thing?

The board was used with PC133 SDRAM all along. So I doubt it solves the problem. However, the quick boot setting might solve the problem. I'll give it a try.

 

[zx]

Please excuse her, Clocker. She's a bit too much of a smart-ape sometimes.

Don't tell me you don't agree with her :wink: .

 

[Clocker]

Anyway, from the net research I have done, I'm hearing that using SDRAM unstead of DDR memory solves the CMOS issue. Wonder if you have found the same thing?

The board was used with PC133 SDRAM all along. So I doubt it solves the problem. However, the quick boot setting might solve the problem. I'll give it a try.

I have not been able to try it yet, zx. Arfe you having any luck with the Quick Boot option disabled?

Thanks,
C