ECS experience?

E

ekorazn

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 28, 2004
Messages
452
I need a new motherboard/proc combo, and I'm thinking of going to Fry's again. I'm just wondering the stability of the cheap ECS boards they pratically give you for free with those combos.

I bought a combo with a 2800+ semp, but after about 4 months the motherboard doesn't work. The same thing happened to my abit NF7 after about 7 months, so I don't know what to expect.

I'm not looking for overclocking capability, just need something stable and solid. Anyone here running a cheap ECS board for more than a year?
 
I got the $150 E6300+ECS combo @ Fry's. Dropped a Celery331 in the ECS and built my girl an HTPC. Honestly haven't used it much, so can't comment on long-term stability, but it has run fine through all the setup, and the limited use it's seen.

-bZj
 
i've heard the ECS is low quality and not a good or reliably maker and piece of hardware
 
I've been running a ECS KN1 Extreme about 7 months now with no problems. Running a 3800 X2 overclocked to 2.4. Runs like a champ. To me it was the best bang 4 the buck at the time.
 
I've had some that ran for over 4 years, and a couply that died fairly quickly.
I bet I've owned 6 or 7 k7s5a's. I have 2 that still work, they just got retired and thrown in a closet.
 
Ive used ecs over the years and have not had any big problems with them.the ones in the last 2 years have been very solid boards. They are the largest maker of boards worldwide.
Many other board makers use their boards rebranded or use their pcb's to build their own...ie abit fo instance.
Like any other board maker you get some that fail early and most go on for years...
IMO nothing wrong with ecs boards for running stock speeds and voltages.
 
I have built 2 systems with ECS motherboards from Fry's within the past 6 months. The first motherboard died within 30 days (wouldn't post any longer) and the 2nd one is still kicking, although the RAID functionality is not working correctly. I dumped the 2nd one and went with ABIT. I gave up on the first one. Haven't bothered to RMA it because it is next to worthless on ebay, even in working condition.

In short, my humble opinion is that while ECS may work for you and work for some, you are more likely to have better luck with a higher-end board. You can save money though if you are willing and patient enough to deal with faulty mobos and can stand to go through the return process at Fry's.

If you do purchase from Fry's, be absolutely certain your serial numbers match the mobo and receipt before you leave the store, or you'll have no hope of exchanging it or returning it should something go awry. I had a sales clerk put the wrong serial # on my receipt for some RAM I purchased and they refused to take it back and all but accused me of trying to pull a fast one. I was not happy with that experience, believe me.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you and your purchse :cool:
 
It's a roll of the dice. Can't complain for free. I have a $60 combo PcChips 825g(same as ECS, AFAIK) with a sempron 2800+ in it been running 24/7 for nearly two years now.

My friend's girlfriend gave him an ECS to try and fix, when we pulled the mobo out and looked closely,
we saw this..

I also had the ECS in my sig running as a server for about a year 24/7 until recently when I went to put a 40-gig HDD in, but I think that's cuz I had the wrong kind of ATA cable, gonna try to get her back up again tonight.

My Mac OS9 server software has no Includes Mudules, no modules at all, actually, so gotta get a Linux box back up.
 
It's a roll of the dice. Can't complain for free. I have a $60 combo PcChips 825g(same as ECS, AFAIK) with a sempron 2800+ in it been running 24/7 for nearly two years now.

My friend's girlfriend gave him an ECS to try and fix, when we pulled the mobo out and looked closely,
we saw this..

I also had the ECS in my sig running as a server for about a year 24/7 until recently when I went to put a 40-gig HDD in, but I think that's cuz I had the wrong kind of ATA cable, gonna try to get her back up again tonight.

My Mac OS9 server software has no Includes Modules, no modules at all, actually, so gotta get a Linux box back up.
 
I just purchased my first ECS board because I was in a jam with my old mobo in my 754 machine having troubles with some ports on it.

I went with the ECS KV2 Extreme. Its a 939 mobo with AGP and 4 SATA ports. It was pretty much the only motherboard with these features I could find.. lol. It was only about $50 on newegg, so I went with it. I'm very happy and it performs just fine for my torrent server. It looks awesome as well. It has a nice northbridge cooler with multi-colored rotating LED's, and LED lights next to each PCI slot letting you know what you have plugged in. It also has LED's letting you know if you are running at 4x or 8x on the AGP slot. Above each memory slot, it has LED's to let you know which RAM module is burned out. I'm pretty impressed with the board for how much I spent on it.

Link:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/mainboard/ecs-kv2-extreme-via-k8t800-pro.html
 
I bought the $150 E6300 combo and have been running it for a month or so now with no problems. I was pleased to find the mobo booted up the first time i set it up
 
back when the a-64's were still kind of new . i built a number of budget boxes with the ECS-a-754 and the ECS A-939 with the nf-4 chipsets .

to my suprise they were all rock stable and ran without a hiccup on 2000 pro and XP home .
strangely they had less issues than expensive -brands . they didn't overclock worth a hoot . and ECS bios updates did seem to be little improved over the shipped bios.

they had very bare retail package--they should be called OEM .

the only ECS mb's i had bought before them were some horrid-little micro atx-socket 370's.

ECS is sort of hit or miss . some of their MB's are as good as anybodys --but others are well --made a bit too cheap . a rule of thumb would be --stay away from a ecs if the mb is made with a chipset that has been troublesome on other makes--
 
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