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I remember a time, not so long ago when I opened the retail packaging on a shiny new C300a Celeron. This box full of joy was the best stepping available at the time, 504MHz virtually guaranteed. My excitement was short-lived however, as I realised that to get the most out of this CPU, I needed a $300+ Motherboard. This mantra still holds true today in most respects. The most widely used motherboards by dedicated users on this site are almost always Asus, Abit or Epox branded. However, this ECS board seems full-featured and costs significantly less than most decent SocketA boards. This begs the question: can a mainly OEM based motherboard manufacturer (ECS) create a motherboard that satisfies our lofty expectations, at a seriously budget price? Read on to find out.

Features:
For full specifications etc, see ECS's K7S5A page.

The most unusual feature of this board, or rather the SiS chipset upon which it is based, is the ability to use either SDR or DDR SDRAM. Not both at the same time of course, but both types of slots are provided, making this an ideal "transitional" motherboard for those with an investment in SDRAM but who are intending to move (with the market) to DDR SDRAM in time.

click to enlarge

When examining a "budget" board such as this, you begin to look at places where the manufacturer may have cut some corners. The 4 layer PCB is a start, as more expensive motherboards tend to be 6 layers. What effect does this have? Minimal to me, the board gets a little hotter than some other AMD DDR boards, but it never seems excessive and I didn't notice any stability problems. The SiS735 chipset is unusual, as it is all in one chip, not split into North and South bridges as is common these days. A consequence of this seems to be superior performance and latency compared to other DDR solutions. The ICS chip is a standard chip, which is easily supported by CPUFSB (a frequency changing program explained in more detail below). Onboard Audio is pretty standard, I wouldn't begin to start playing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and expect to hear oboes in perfect clarity, but it’s bearable and seems to perform well. The Bios of the K7S5A is AMI Based, and as such doesn't quite have as many advanced options as Award based Bios. In terms of Ram Speed, you can select from Safe, Normal, Fast, and Ultra Speed Settings, As Well as CAS 2, 2.5, 3 and the usual 6T and 7T settings. The bios lacks PCI IRQ allocation which is a shame, so all IRQ allocation needs to be operated by ACPI (which works flawlessly for me) or by manual editing in your PNP OS (Such as Windows 98).

Overclocking
The overclocking features of the K7S5A out of the box are ordinary to say the least. No multiplier, no voltage, limited frequency (100, 133). Thankfully, modified bios have become available and although they don’t support altered voltages they do support a number of frequencies (100, 112, 124, 133, 138, 150, 160, and 166). Through a program called CPU Cool, additional frequencies can be used in windows, notably 142 and 146.6, which plugs a gap between 138 and 150. The infamous and simple "pencil trick" can easily set any CPU to 1.85v. Multiplier changing is still not existent unfortunately, but with the price of modern day CPU’s, perhaps this is not a completely dire situation - I was certainly able to wring a decent overclock out of my CPU's despite not being able to change the multiplier.

Layout:

click to enlarge (image from ECS's website)

The board is certainly different to many other designs. Some possible issues:
• Power Connector at extreme edge of motherboard (In Small Midi or Mini Tower Cases, this is almost impossible to remove without removing the PSU first)
• CPU Fan Header (Is very close to 5.25 Rails in many cases, may be difficult to remove or replace)
• IDE Connectors (A lot further down the board than usually, can affect cable lengths to CD-ROM high in a case)

Most of these issues are easily dealt with without too much hassle, but they have caused enough problems to force ECS into considering a new layout with the K7S5a rev 2.

NEXT PAGE - Performance and Conclusions

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