Board layout

Board layout

The ECS K7S5A is one of the cleanest Socket A DDR boards we've come across. There are hardly any jumpers on the board, and the capacitors are neatly grouped with the CPU and memory sockets. In fact, the most common spacing issue we've come across on Socket A boards - memory sockets placed too closely to the AGP slot - isn't present on the K7S5A.

Plenty of space between AGP and memory

Likewise, there's plenty of space around the Socket 462 interface for the largest of heatsinks, and, like most of the newer Athlon boards we've seen, ECS has implemented metal plates on the socket clips themselves to protect the board from those evil heatsink clips. We believe this may have killed one of our older DDR boards, so it's good to see motherboard manufacturers addressing this potential problem.

Should be plenty of space for most heatsinks

Pads underneath the socket protect the PCB from heatsink clips

As we mentioned earlier the K7S5A features memory sockets for both SDR and DDR memory types, two sockets each. While this limits maximum memory capacity of each type of memory, it's a nice feature to have for those of you who aren't quite ready to fork over the money for DDR memory. Keep in mind that you can't populate SDRAM and DDR SDRAM at the same time; it's either one or the other.

While the addition of both DDR and SDR sockets is a great feature for the upgrading market, it unfortunately leaves little room for the floppy and IDE connectors (which are traditionally located to the right of the memory sockets). As a result, ECS chose to place them across from the first three PCI slots in a configuration parallel to the slots. Not only does this prevent the use of full-length PCI cards in these slots, it also leaves little space between the AGP card and the second IDE connector. As you can see in the picture below, this leads to an awkward-looking installation. If the designers at ECS had instead placed the IDE connectors perpendicular to the PCI slots, considerably more space would have been freed up.

Messy cables

Miscellaneous

For powering system fans, two fan headers are present on the K7S5A. One for the CPU fan on the upper portion of the motherboard, and a second fan header located across from the floppy connector for powering one system fan. We wish ECS had implemented one additional fan near the CPU fan header, as many Athlon owners have an additional case fan near the CPU for pushing hot air out of the system chassis, or blowing cool air in. These users will be forced to use the power supply to power this fan rather than the motherboard itself.