It might help if you understand who ECS is and how they operate.
ECS is a very large and well respected maker of inexpensive motherboards. They sell more than 10 million motherboards a year, almost entirely to computer manufacturers (OEMs). Their focus is low cost, rather than high performance and high end features.
The K7S5A designed to be inexpensive, proved to also be among the fastest available. This created unexpected demand from hobbyists. There were shortages for a long time, likely because ECS is not used to serving this market.
ECS expects systems using their motherboards to be professionally engineered and to use the latest parts meeting the latest specifications (ATX, PCI, AGP, memory, etc. - latest versions). They are expected to be assembled in large quantities on standardized production lines and loaded with the more or less current OS using default settings. The K7S5A was designed some time ago with this in mind.
ECS has a big downside potential if they put out an overclocking bios. People who buy an OEM machine would download it, get into trouble (maybe flashing, maybe overheating), and complain to the OEM, saying they got the bios from ECS. The OEMs would complain to ECS about causing problems. The OEMs are ECSs' bread and butter, probably 99+% of their market. The hobbyist market does not have enough upside potential to risk this downside.
It is unknown how many problems seen here are due to faulty motherboards and how many to noncompatible parts, strange software settings, or poor technique. But consider this. ECS has a huge downside risk if they have poor quality control and sell boards with a high return rate. The OEMs looking for low cost wouldn't like it. So, if you have a problem, my money is on something other than a faulty motherboard.
If you want to simply build a fast and inexpensive computer without problems, build it like an OEM. Good standard parts, assembled and configured strictly by the book. Even something seemingly simple like disabling ACPI (what OEM would do that?) can cause problems. Update any older pieces or generic pieces with unknown specs.
If you want to experiment, have at it. But ECS is geared up to provide support to OEMs who are professionally designing and building thousands of very standard computers. It is unrealistic to expect them to support a very small market of hobbyists (probably less than 1% of their total market), who have much different problems than OEMs. If the hobbyist market went away, it wouldn't affect ECS. If it doubled or tripled, it wouldn't affect ECS.
Your support can best come from the hobbyist community, such as the people here. The overclocking bioses are a great example. Telling ECS enthusiasts the motherboard sucks and/or ECS sucks and you're tired of dealing with it is probably not going to encourage them to try harder to help you.
|