With AMD processors increasing popularity it's not a surprise that so many chipset manufacturers try to bit from VIA's cake. The main problem of VIA chipsets is not performance (or at least most manufacturers can't compete with VIA in the performance segment). Of course that there are a lot of users who seek for more performance from VIA based boards, but the price is the real segment where VIA can be easily attacked. We all know about ALI's tries to manufacture a board able to compete with VIA in the low market segment, but only a few manufacturers integrated ALI and further more no many users trusted ALI's reputation to choose such a board. I don't mean that ALI disappointed in the past, but you have to agree that they haven't shown much to the market. SiS (Sillicon Integrated Systems) are not much better known than ALI, but as manufacturer SiS is recognized to be quite innovative. Their latest gadget, the 735 chipset, received a lot of positive feedback from media due to its performance and, most important, its price. This low price enables manufacturers to come up with really low priced motherboards, but until now only Elite Computers Group made the big step and pushed an $80 board on the market. Today we'll take a look to K7S5A2 the latest SiS 735 based ECS board.

First look

This board is version 1.0, but K7S5A2 is the second SiS735 board from ECS. The first version K7S5A was highlighted on many hardware sites and most people were satisfied about its performance and features. Quite unexpected the second implementation does not even look the same. We will test K7S5A2 today and we will see if it brings important improvements.

The board package is decent, but it doesn't reveal a particular taste for high quality. The board is shipped with one Ultra DMA cable, one floppy disk cable, one drivers CD and a users guide. From my point of view this users guide is the most disappointing part of the package. I do know that the board is targeted to a group of users that want a good board with a low price. But they also have to consider that these users may not have the technical touch to be able to install the board with minimum installation advisees as provided by the K7S5A2.

Surprisingly the board layout is a good one for its price. The board comes with five PCI slots, one AGP, one AMR slot, two DDR and two SDR memory slots. That's the SiS 735 advantage. It allows the user to choose between SDR and DDR memory, but you should know that only one memory type can be used at a time. That's a very nice feature because many users would like to upgrade their computers without buying new memory. Instead they can use their old memory DIMMs and buy new DDR modules later. The space around the CPU socket is quite clear and you can easily use a large heatsink. The ATX connector is placed not very inspired next to the board's edge. On the SiS chipset there is a gold heatsink with no fan on top; SiS 735 runs quite cold. It is glued with adhesive thermal tape. There are three fan headers on board one of them being quite close to the socket and the other one in the opposite corner. Also on board there are two USB headers so you can add other four USB ports. Unfortunately an additional bracket is not included in the package. The IDE and floppy connectors are not very well placed perpendicular to the memory slots because this limits the air flow. But it's a positive thing that ECS used an onboard led that lights on when the board is powered. This small feature prevents users playing with memory modules and PCI cards without first removing the power cable.

There are three jumpers on board: the Clear CMOS one, the jumper that enables / disables the keyboard to power on the computer and the jumper that allows the user to block the write access to BIOS. The presence of these only three jumpers made me think to a hardware free installation. On the board you can also find an AC97 Audio Codec. No high quality, but you can disable it and add a decent PCI card.