ECS K7S5A Problem

[Chris]

Hey guys. I just received an ECS K7S5A mobo from a friend of mine. when I cold boot the board, it gives me the following errors:

"CMOS Battery Low"
"CMOS Size Wrong"

When I set the BIOS settings and power cycle the board, it won't post, and only will after I clear the CMOS. Then it gives the same errors again. It's a new battery, and the PSU is fairly large (400W), so I don't know what the problem could be. It seems to be a common issue though. If you need any more info, just ask.


Thanks in advance.

 

[iladelf]

Had a K7S5A board myself years ago; they were known to have cold boot issues of the like you mentioned. Believe the solution was to fasten the southbridge passive heatsink better and that fixes the problem.

My issue would go away upon reboot (after a cold boot) as I remember.

 

[Chris]

I see. How would I go about doing that exactly? It's not something I've had to do before.

 

[iladelf]

I believe it had something to with physically removing the heatsink by carefully twisting the heatsink off (it's attached with some sort of sticky tape), and then using some kind of thermal adhesive to attach the heatsink in better fashion to the chipset.

That was years ago. There used to be some kind of K7S5A forum somewhere, but who knows where it went.

 

[Chris]

Unfortunately, I don't have anymore thermal paste. Do you think I could use something else?

 

[Skyhooker]

Unfortunately, I don't have anymore thermal paste. Do you think I could use something else?

You'll need a heat conducting material of some sort, either thermal tape or thermal adhesive. Arctic Silver makes a thermal epoxy, and that bond will be PERMANENT! Google will bring up several options.

 

[Chris]

OK, I reseated the heatsink. But now the system randomly restarts itself. I am starting to think this board is more trouble than it's worth...