GIGABYTE GA-H61MA-D3V LGA 1155 Intel H61 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: I ordered this motherboard to resurrect an old XP machine of mine that died on me. Works great and was easy to install.

Cons: No issues so far

Other Thoughts: Other parts:
CM Wavemaster (all the rage in 2003-2004!)
Intel Core I3-2100
4GB of G. Skill RAM
500W PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mark III
Radeon Sapphire HD 4870
320 GB WD Caviar Blue

Old machine was:
Pentium 4 3.4 GHz
Abit Max II
3GB DDR 3200 RAM (1 GB Corsair XMS, 2 GB G. Skill)
Antec True Blue 430W
Sapphire Radeon 3850 HD AGP

Pros: compact design, solidly built. Supports almost all peripherals. Inexpensive

Cons: Not good with full size graphics card - ends up blocking one of the 4 SATA sockets so I can only access 3 of the 4.

Other Thoughts: Too bad about the SATA socket location on the board. I have a Radeon HD 6870 graphics card and it ends up covering 1 of the 4 SATA sockets so I can only hook up 1 DVD drive and 2 storage systems (SSD and HDD). 4th socket is squarely under the graphics card. I guess they should have said you need a 1/2 size graphics card for this board otherwise you sacrifice one of the SATA sockets. Very frustrating. Will have to look at configurations of socets for MBs for future builds. Not very well designed.

Manufacturer Response:

Thank you for your comments. Honest and constructive opinions are always welcome. We apologize for your difficulty with your Gigabyte product.

This model is part of our value line of models. Most configurations using this model will either use the onboard graphics or as an upgrade, use single sloted graphics cards. If you require further assistance, please contact us at newegg-support@gigabyte-usa.com with the case number 2013050301 in the subject line.

GIGABYTE VIP Support Team

Pros: Good Budget System, Just needed something simple to surf the web.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Wish Onboard GPU was more powerful.

Pros: Great board for the price. Gigabyte customer support is excellent. SATA3 RAID support.

Cons: Poor instructions for setting up RAID. No SATA2 RAID so your limited to just 2 HDDs. That's why its 4 not 5 stars.

Other Thoughts: RAID is only for the two SATA3 ports. In order for you to get your RAID to function you must boot to UEFI. The only way to do this is with a windows installation disk that supports UEFI and pressing for the boot menu then select the UEFI DVD drive. Inside windows installation when you will then need to load the drivers. In order for it to work you need to load the 32bit drivers for the drive to appear in the windows installation. THAN YOU MUST select load drivers again and select the 64bit drivers otherwise windows will not install correctly. ( ignore previous instructions about 64bit drivers if you are wanting windows 32bit). I recommend going to Gigabytes website and downloading both 32 and 64 bit drivers and having then handy on a flash drive. It makes finding the correct ones much easier than browsing the install CD. This is not a Gigabyte issue, it is a marvel RAID issue which is used for the SATA3 RAID. If your Windows 7 install DVD does not have UEFI on it their are instructions online on how to create one using the one you have with UEFI. Just Google it.

Pros: seems to work well with a single ssd.

Cons: I have been unable to setup a raid 0 array with the onboard utility. I have 2 identical 500GB HDDs and have done much research on the issue I'm having. Basically the drives show up in the bios, and raid utility correctly, but when I attempt to install windows 7 it does not show the drive as an option to install to. while trying to install the driver for the raid you get an error saying that the driver is not signed. I have downloaded the most recent driver from the website to get the same error, and it cannot be bypassed.

Other Thoughts: The bios screen looks pretty cool for what its worth.

Manufacturer Response:

Thank you for your comments. Honest and constructive opinions are always welcome. We apologize for your difficulty with your Gigabyte product.

This model supports RAID on the GSATA ports. Configuring RAID as your boot drive, you will need to download the Marvell preinstall driver. Use the F6 command during your Windows7 setup to install the driver before the Windows setup will see your RAID array.

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4184#dl

If you require further assistance, please contact us at newegg-support@gigabyte-usa.com with the case number 2013030601 in the subject line.

GIGABYTE VIP Support Team

Pros: None

Cons: Dead on arrival...

Manufacturer Response:

Thank you for your comments. Honest and constructive opinions are always welcome. We apologize for your difficulty with your Gigabyte product.

Please check:

1. be sure to connect both the 24pin power and the ATX12V power cables.
2. Power supply issue - be sure the wattage of our PS is adequate to support your installed components
3. Memory issue - try 1x memory module as a test.

If you require further assistance, please contact us at newegg-support@gigabyte-usa.com with the case number 2013022002. Include your complete system configuration.

GIGABYTE VIP Support Team

Pros: Purchased two of these to pair with i3-2120s for budget gaming machines. They've been solid, no issues.

Windows 8 recognized and installed drivers for all the onboard components. (SATA6, USB3, Audio, and Network)

Cons: A full size video card will obstruct some of the SATA3 ports.

Pros: Used this board to build a machine to replace a lethargic AMD tri-core phenom. What a difference!! This machine runs circles around the one it replaced!!

Cons: None so far!

Pros: Worked fine for a bit. Latency problem seems to be only occur with some odd usb objects. (I've only had a problem with one)

Cons: Sometimes depending on what you plug in to the USB ports you get some serious latency going on. Went from 120 fps in games to 20. Although it only seems to be with this motherboard past motherboard and new one work fine.

Pros: -No problems so far
-Supports my overclocked Core i5 3570K
-Supports my SuperSuperClocked GeForce 650 Kepler GPU
-Got this MB on sale for $54 a few months ago. No problems yet; great buy.
-Pretty blue! Matches tower's other internals and LED lighting. Sweet.
-Plenty of USB ports, especially for such a small MB
-Both VGA and DVI onboard

Cons: -What!?! No IDE whatsoever? That's what I get for not buying a new motherboard since 2004 and just assuming, lol. Oh well. New SATA DVD-burner was only like $17.

Other Thoughts: If you can't get it on sale, there may be better MB's in the $70-$80 range, but for the $54 I paid for this one, there's no complaining. I'm playing Crysis 2 at 1080p on my 23" monitor just fine.