Sound problems with new ECS K7S5A Mobo

Status
Not open for further replies.

krowdpeleeza

Posts: 30   +0
I just upgraded my pc to a Athlon XP 1600+, and an ECS K7S5A mainboard, and everything works perfect except the sound. I'm dual booting between windows xp pro, and windows 2000 pro and i have the same sound distortion and scratching on each OS. Before the upgrade, i had absolutely no problems with the speakers, or the sound card, which narrows the problem down to my mobo. I've also tried 2 different sound cards and the problem persist's:confused:
I'm hopin somebody out there can shed some light on this situation

pc specs

amd athlon xp 1600+
ECS K7S5A mainboard
128mb pc2100 ddr ram
3dfx voodoo 5 5500 pci
soundblaster pci128
AGI 300w powersupply
 
Have you tried moving the card to a different PCI slot? Also, dload the newest mobo drivers for the ECS. You'll have to check out they're website though. Im not to familiar with that motherboard..
 
Thanks man for the help, but yes i did try to change the pci slot, and still the same thing. Also the other sound card i used is the onboard sound card the came with the board. When I had my sound blaster installed, i disabled the other sound card in the bios. Then i tried taking out the soundblaster and using the onboard sound.....and still the same thing......sigh.....@!#$

So I went to the mobo's website and downloaded all the new drivers, I even flashed the bios, and nothing so i'm going to take some action and email ecs's tech support to see if they have anything noteworthy to say.

But there is still one question that i have that maybe someone can answer......with the sound card, would having a 300w power supply have something to do with the fact i'm getting distortion and scratching? Because now that i have a higher end system, is 300w's a sufficient amount of power to run on my system without noticable problem's????

my spec's

amd athlon xp 1600+
ECS K7S5A mainboard
3dfx voodoo 5 5500 pci
soundblaster pci128
128mb pc2100 ddr ram
agi 300w powersupply
 
well, your theory isnt a bad one. You should be running an AMD approved PSU of atleast 300w. Your issue may be because of your PSU. It is tough to say. I would hate to have you buy a new PSU and it doesnt fix your issue. I can say though that if you have 100 bucks kicking around , picking up an Enermax 431w PSU is a great investment. Even if it doesnt solve the sound issue, you'll have one very reliable PSU that you can use for the next few years.
 
You may have a good idea there. See if you can find another power supply to swap it and see if the problem goes away. A guess may be your power supply has a problem with noise or bad filtering. One other question, have you set up everything the way it was before, like your speakers in the same place? I don't know if you could be getting them to close to something that is putting the noise through to them or your speaker cables. You might look at this, or get shielded speaker cables and keep the speakers away from any power supply and monitors. This is just a guess but it may be worth looking into.
 
The setup is the exact same from before. I have heard anything back from ecs (...figures) so i'm going to ask a buddy of mine if i can borrow his 400w psu. Now I'm kind of leaning toward the PSU because I've noticed when I do nothing else except play my music it sounds fine, but if i hit the start icon or scroll through webpages, or even switch windows the music starts sounding distorted, sometimes even slowinging down. But the wierd thing is I havent noticed any other problems/slow downs with the rest of my hardware.
But, thanks guys for helping out, its funny i get more tech support from people who arent getting paid for it, than from the people who are!
 
my setup is similar to your setup and I have no problems. Of course I have a different MOBO, but everything else is pretty much the same. I also have a 300w PSU, and it is a generic came with the case kinda PSU to boot. I have all of my power plugs used and all of my MOBO fan pins filled, and I have zero prob's with power. But, maybe ECS has those problems. Maybe ya should've opted for a different mobo for a couple more bucks.
 
well after hours of beating the hell out of my machine i finally found the answer. This is the weirdest thing, but bear with me.....it's the fact the motherboard is supposedly optimised for an agp video card, so if you have a pci video card your going to be stuck with these sound problems. Now I have been a PC tech for many years and this is the first time i have ever run into this kind of problem. It's probably just the fact that its a cheap mobo, and you get what you pay for!
Well I sure learned my lesson, and thanks everyone for all the help! If there is anybody out there that wants to buy a ecs k7s5a mobo, READ THIS THREAD FIRST!!!
 
I had the same sound problem when I had a PCI video card.
If you flash your board with the 010724 bios, it fixes the problem.
I've also heard rumors that the 020112 bios also corrects the problem, but I haven't personally tested it because I switched to an AGP video card.
 
Interesting, I upgraded my aunts PC to the ECS mainboard as well. She already had an AGP graphics card (S3 virge:dead: ) so I didn't have any problems you mentioned.

However, the 1.13 Ghz TB right now is underclocked to 850 mhz because of overheating. I installed a Volcano 6 Cu HSF which is rated up to 1.5 Ghz, but when I watch the CPU temp in the bios, the temp rose up to 70 degrees celcius before I powered the PC down. I'm thinking its probably the generic thermal grease, so I've got some artic silver on order. But I'm curious if overheating has been an issue for anyone else?
 
I'm using a Dragon Orb 3 with the 7v mod, so the fan runs at 4800 instead of 7000 (Too loud before).

Mine runs at 39C idle 42C under load.
 
Hi! Had a similar board in the past with similar sound issues. My suggestion is to do a search on the forums at www.amdmb.com and www.ocworkbench.com (you'll also find some helpful FAQs). My solution to the sound problem was indeed a different power supply, and it seems that the K7S5A is particularly dependent on the quality of the PSU. While 300W should be enough in principle, you should either have a quality 300W PSU or a PSU with a higher rating.
 
Yeah, I have an XP 1600, a ECS K7S5A motherboard, and a *crummy 300 watt power supply. I've been running fine, no problems. However I never put a PCI video card in it so I don't know about that. Maybe I'll test it out to see if you're right.

(*edited by mod)
 
In responce to PanicX I'd recommend installing some BIOS updates. I remember having some weird numbers with temperature when I first got my motherboard. So install BIOS updates, ECS has plenty.
 
I had the same sound problem with ECS K7S5A. i.e. the sound was very distorted when using a PCI graphics card. Fortunately I had an AGP graphics card available and it fixed the problem.
 
I had a very similar problem on a newly built PC with a Shuttle mobo. Sound poped and clicked in 98 but worked fine in 2000. I uninstalled, reinstalled and tried every driver. One day 2000 crashed and when I rebooted into Win98 the mobo hardware started installing like I just put it in. All the 98 sound problems cleared up. Have you tried running the mobo disk again?
 
Yep I have tried just about everything I can possibly think of. Reinstalled the drivers, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. Still the same old problem. I've written ECS a good number of times, and they still wont write back to me for a fix. But installing an AGP card seems to make everything ok, so I'll probably save up for a Geforce. But thanks to all for the help, I really appreciate it.
 
You've probably already tried this, but try going here:

http://www.sis.com/support/driver/utility.htm

and downloading the newest AGP drivers, and maybe even the PCI IRQ Routing Table Miniport Driver. I'm not sure what the last one does, but it has something to do with PCI IRQ conflicts I presume.

I believe this is the newest AGP driver for your chipset:

SiS630, SiS730, SiS735 , SiS733, SiS635, SiS633, SiS645 , SiS650 , SiS740 , SiS745 AGP Driver agp109f.exe
6,832KB 4/11/2002

Just came out so maybe you haven't tried it yet, but then again maybe you have. ;)

Hopefully this can help you a little!!!
 
Hi friends , i got the same problem.
I use the on board sound and its sound strange, speceally to work like FruityLoops , the sound is very strange !
So , where can i download the last bios update? I searched but i havent found! Someone can help me?
Thanks
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back