ECS/Specs

ECS: Motherboard heavyweight

While this is the first motherboard from Elitegroup Computer Systems (or ECS as they're commonly known by) we've reviewed here on FiringSquad, ECS is by no means new to the motherboard market. In fact, they've been around for over a decade and are actually older than ASUS, a name you're probably familiar with.

In terms of volume, ECS is actually one of the world's largest motherboard manufacturers shipping over 1,000,000 motherboards last month. While names such as ABIT and, more recently, Epox and Iwill are well known in the US retail sector, these companies are actually small in comparison to ECS, which is traditionally a large supplier in the OEM channel, much like Gigabyte Technology is. Like any company of this size, ECS offers a wide variety of solutions for its customers. Looking for a Pentium 4 motherboard? ECS has got it. KT266? ECS has that too. From high end to low-end, ECS has multiple products for each processor platform to suit the needs of its customers. The K7S5A appears to be targeted at the mainstream consumer who demands high performance with the added flexibility of both SDR and DDR SDRAM memory support. And for the needs of this market, it delivers in spades.

Network built-in

Another shot of the sytem

K7S5A features

The first thing you'll notice about the K7S5A is its black printed-circuit board (PCB). With the vast majority of motherboards donning green or tan PCBs, it's great to see a board sporting black. While some would say the orange heatsink ECS employs on the SiS 735 chipset clashes with the shiny black PCB, as you can see in our pictures, it matches perfectly with our copper CCK-6035D cooler from Vantec.

From a features standpoint, the K7S5A is fairly plain. There's no onboard ATA/100 RAID or even many settings for overclocking. Instead what you get is a simple, no-frills design for an inexpensive price, we've seen a few online vendors selling K7S5A's for under $70! This is partially due to the use of the 735 chipset, it's priced lower than KT266. In addition, its single-chip design saves space, further cutting costs for motherboard manufacturers.

The low cost of the K7S5A can also be attributed to ECS themselves. We've noticed that all of their motherboards are priced extremely competitively. When you combine this philosophy with an inexpensive yet powerful chipset like SiS 735, you've got an extremely attractive package that's hard to pass up.

However, to some extent this low cost comes at a price: the K7S5A doesn't come with a USB header, which means you're left with the two ports on the back of the motherboard, even though the SiS 735 chipset natively supports up to six ports. The manual is also a bit brief; inexperienced users may need a little more guidance when assembling a system built around the K7S5A.

Clean board layout