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Upgrade memory on ECS K7S5A mobo?



 
 
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  #1  
Old February 12th 05, 07:10 AM
Marcus
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Default Upgrade memory on ECS K7S5A mobo?

I see what appears to be a very good deal for 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz
Memory CL3. I was thinking of getting 2 sticks for my ECS K7S5A
motherboard. It is an older board (about 3 years). The specs say it
can handle max of 1GB RAM DDR. The max FSB is 166mhz I think. Will the
memory mentioned above work on this board?

Thanks for any feedback.

Marcus
  #2  
Old February 12th 05, 12:24 PM
Conor
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Default

In article , Marcus
says...
I see what appears to be a very good deal for 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz
Memory CL3. I was thinking of getting 2 sticks for my ECS K7S5A
motherboard. It is an older board (about 3 years). The specs say it
can handle max of 1GB RAM DDR. The max FSB is 166mhz I think. Will the
memory mentioned above work on this board?

Yes.


--
Conor

An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan.
-- George Patton
  #5  
Old February 12th 05, 03:02 PM
Ken
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Marcus wrote:
I see what appears to be a very good deal for 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz
Memory CL3. I was thinking of getting 2 sticks for my ECS K7S5A
motherboard. It is an older board (about 3 years). The specs say it
can handle max of 1GB RAM DDR. The max FSB is 166mhz I think. Will the
memory mentioned above work on this board?

Thanks for any feedback.

Marcus


Marcus,

I too purchased some memory for the same model of MB. Below are my
comments from a Posting dated 12-20-04 I made in a different NG:

___________________________

"I have the above MB and currently have two sticks of 256MB PC2700 DDR
installed in it. One stick is Kingston Value Ram and the other is a
Nanya stick. The computer is solid as a rock running with an Athlon 2200+.

I just purchased a single stick of 512MB Kingston Value Ram
(also PC2700), and installed it alone in the MB. It recognized the full
512 MB upon boot. After encountering many errors I finally tested the
new DDR with DocMem 2.2 and it detected errors at about 256MB. Thinking
I had purchased a bad stick, I exchanged it for another like it and
found I encountered the same type of error with the DocMem test.

After having searched the news groups for comments about
Kingston DDR and this MB, I found no comments critical of it, but I did
find a poster ask someone who was having problem with DDR if he had
double sided DDR?
Is there a problem with DDR with chips on both sides with this MB? I
tried loosening the settings in CMOS to see if that would allow the DDR
to work, but it did not work. I even slowed the settings down to 100 +
100 rather than 133 + 133 and it still failed test. Since PC2700 is
faster than a 133 FSB setting requires, I would have thought it would
have run easily.

Anyone have some insight on using such RAM on this MB? Thanks."
___________________________

Taking the story further, it seems that there is no guarantee that you
will or will not have problems. Kingston is generally recognized as
decent memory and this stick was rated CL2.5. After the second stick
also failed, I took it to a neighbor who tested it on his computer and
it passed DocMem several times. The conclusion is that like others have
said, the MB is temperamental and might not accept the memory. On the
other hand, it might?

Ken
  #6  
Old February 12th 05, 03:12 PM
Martin
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"Marcus" wrote in message
om...
I see what appears to be a very good deal for 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz
Memory CL3. I was thinking of getting 2 sticks for my ECS K7S5A
motherboard. It is an older board (about 3 years). The specs say it
can handle max of 1GB RAM DDR. The max FSB is 166mhz I think. Will the
memory mentioned above work on this board?

Thanks for any feedback.

Marcus


(Don't quote me on this!)

The K7S5A Pro won't boot with a 166FSB - a limit of an on-board oscillator
or timer i read.
So other than the 133FSB, you'd then need to (incrementally) overclock the
FSB using the BIOS (You'd need to flash an overclocking BIOS - easy enough).
I remember a ~150FSB being a realistic overclock - the K7S5A Pro would still
boot.

Once booted into Windows (if that's your OS), you can (or should be able to)
software overclock the FSB to 166 (maybe more?) successfully using Speedfan
utitlity.
(Untested by me).

Or you can just let the memory run at 133FSB - but not benefit from it's
full potential.

I'm itching to ditch my K7S5A Pro and 512MBs of PC133 and get an
Athlon64....
I don't think there's point in wasting money upgrading such an antique
motherboard!

Martin.


  #7  
Old February 12th 05, 03:24 PM
kony
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On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 14:12:01 -0000, "Martin"
wrote:

snip

I don't think there's point in wasting money upgrading such an antique
motherboard!



Plus quite a few of them had turquise and silver sleeved
G-Luxon caps that seemed to prefer a vented disposition
(failure).
  #8  
Old February 12th 05, 07:05 PM
Ken
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kony wrote:
On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 14:12:01 -0000, "Martin"
wrote:

snip

I don't think there's point in wasting money upgrading such an antique
motherboard!




Plus quite a few of them had turquise and silver sleeved
G-Luxon caps that seemed to prefer a vented disposition
(failure).


Your comment regarding "Turquoise and silver sleeved" caps prompted me
to look at my MB. I have a few of those type caps, but they are not in
the regulator circuit. On the MB you are citing, are they everywhere or
in some area other than the regulator??? I was just wondering if I have
a MB I must watch. Thanks.
  #9  
Old February 12th 05, 07:48 PM
jaster
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Default

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 14:12:01 +0000, Martin wrote:


"Marcus" wrote in message
om...
I see what appears to be a very good deal for 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz
Memory CL3. I was thinking of getting 2 sticks for my ECS K7S5A
motherboard. It is an older board (about 3 years). The specs say it can
handle max of 1GB RAM DDR. The max FSB is 166mhz I think. Will the
memory mentioned above work on this board?

Thanks for any feedback.

Marcus


(Don't quote me on this!)

The K7S5A Pro won't boot with a 166FSB - a limit of an on-board oscillator
or timer i read.
So other than the 133FSB, you'd then need to (incrementally) overclock the
FSB using the BIOS (You'd need to flash an overclocking BIOS - easy
enough). I remember a ~150FSB being a realistic overclock - the K7S5A Pro
would still boot.

Once booted into Windows (if that's your OS), you can (or should be able
to) software overclock the FSB to 166 (maybe more?) successfully using
Speedfan utitlity.
(Untested by me).

Or you can just let the memory run at 133FSB - but not benefit from it's
full potential.

I'm itching to ditch my K7S5A Pro and 512MBs of PC133 and get an
Athlon64....
I don't think there's point in wasting money upgrading such an antique
motherboard!

Martin.



I couldn't agree more with all of your comments.

  #10  
Old February 12th 05, 11:31 PM
kony
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On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 14:56:26 +0100, "Zdenek Sojka"
wrote:


"kony" píse v diskusním príspevku
.. .
On 11 Feb 2005 22:10:24 -0800,
(Marcus) wrote:

I see what appears to be a very good deal for 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz
Memory CL3. I was thinking of getting 2 sticks for my ECS K7S5A
motherboard. It is an older board (about 3 years). The specs say it
can handle max of 1GB RAM DDR. The max FSB is 166mhz I think. Will the
memory mentioned above work on this board?

Thanks for any feedback.

Marcus


In theory it should work but in practice a lot of those
boards were quite buggy, particularly with regards to
memory. I'd suggest CAS 2 or 2.5 as a better attempt with
that board, possibly still needing to manually lower the
timings to CAS3, OR if that didn't work you could then try
another motherboard. It could work though, should work, but
may not. Be sure to test with memtest86 for several hours.


I was using memtest86 with no errors, but later tried goldmemory
(shareware), which found some problems.


It's good that you found the problems but based on what was
needed to solve them, the memory wasn't the problem. I
will typically suggest someone run Prime 95's Torture Test
for several hours to check the CPU/related.


The way to get all working was increasing CPU voltage (1.65-1.70) (AthlonXP
2600+, MSI KT6 Delta)
Another CPU - Duron 1300, Abit K7T133, GF4MX440 - had big problems with
running 3D apps.
The way was increasing voltage again - 1.75-1.825. But I am so unhappy this
happens. There are good PSUs
(350W first case, 400W fortron second case).

I really dont understand where is the problem...

Zdenek Sojka


Are they running hot?
The cooler the CPU the lower the voltage needs be. It's not
a very large difference but if it were borderline... could
just be the boards though. Your problems are unusual
compared to those I've seen, usually the CPU stays quite
stable at stock voltage and frequency.

 




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