GIGABYTE GA-E350N AMD E-350D APU AMD A45 FCH Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo

Pros: Playback in XBMC was flawless.

Cons: Could not handle Youtube/Twitch/Netflix without problems. The CPU was hitting 100% utilization.

Other Thoughts: Perfect if it's only going to be used for XBMC. Not so good if you want to watch Flash content.

Pros: Easy to install, small form factor, processer onboard and ready to go. 2 memory slots instead of 1 like other Mini ITX form factor boards, Price is right for an inexpensive HTPC experiment.

Cons: No USB3, HD works but color and clarity is a little washed out, Might add a seperate video card with more horse power to get better HD. Pin's for Power button and Led connections aren't easy to read so take your time and make sure they are hooked up right.

Other Thoughts: This is my first attempt at an HTPC and this board seems to run W7 with Media Center pretty well. No stutter or slow responses yet we will see as the drive fills up or when i try to record and watch more than one thing at a time.

Pros: Compact, seems like a quality component, cpu and heatsink included and installed, hdmi, 3 year warranty, I got it on sale.
Nice cpu/mobo combo for web stuff like streaming video. Decent onboard graphic solution suitable for old games like pac-man.

Cons: I have bought 3 of these to power mame machines and they work great in this application. One of the three arrived with a loose cpu heatsink. Upon inspection, I found that one of the screws that hold down the heatsink had broken off and was rolling around in the anti-static bag that the board arrived in. Rma in process.
Hopefully I will get a working replacement in time to send in the mail in rebate.

Other Thoughts: Newegg customer service absolutely rocks! I have occasionally found parts on other sites for a slightly lower price, but discovered that neweggs service makes the difference and is my go-to internet retailer.

Pros: Small, fairly fast, nice case

Cons: I have constant graphics problems since I put it together.
I keep getting the message "Display driver AMD stopped
responding and has recovered" This hangs up the entire PC.

Anytime I bring up IE 9 the display flashes, hangs and I get the above message

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your comments. We apologize for your difficulty with your GIGABYTE product. Please contact us at newegg-support@gigabyteusa.com with the case number 94665 in the subject line. We will provide personalized service and analysis to help solve your issue ASAP. If the matter is urgent, please send us your contact number, and we will contact you.

GIGABYTE VIP Support Team

Pros: Good board for the price I got it at. Supports up to 16GB of memory. 4 SATA 3.0Gbps ports, good on board video that should be able to play 1080p videos just fine. Youtube 1080p works on this. You can overclock this board and the on board VGA clock! Free 90 day Norton Internet Security 2012 came with this so that is a plus I guess if you use that stuff.

Cons: No USB 3.0 as seen in other models... Not really an issue for me as I don't really need it that much. No SATA 6.0Gbps ports, BIOS is okay, Sometimes takes a while to post. Not able to use 1333 DDR3 memory. I am stuck with slower DDR3 1066 memory which is okay. Processor is a tad slow at times.
Can't use a PC speaker on this for some reason?
Finally, why does this thing have a parallel port and a serial port? I guess the PS2 ports are okay as some boards still have them, but the PS2 mouse port I see no reason for. Maybe remove that and use a PS2 keyboard and 2 USB port stack there? As for the other 2 ports, in my opinion they are a waste of space. Why not replace those with a DVI port so we can use VGA, DVI, or HDMI?

Other Thoughts: Overclocking this board has its down sides. For one, if you overclock the board too high, you have to go and reset the CMOS which can be a pain if you are in a small PC case. No PCI Express port if you wanted to upgrade the video with something much better. Only PCI port on this one. You can actually play do some low end gaming on this board! It gets okay FPS on some older titles and has better performance than a Geforce 8400GS card as I have those in a number of PCs.

Pros: Great features and CPU/GPU combo. HD 1080.

Cons: Flat out doesn't work. I'm on my 4th board. First two wouldn't even power up, second two power up but have no video on either output. Total junk. Avoid this board unless you want an overprice paperweight. Support is useless as well.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your comments. We apologize for your difficulty with your GIGABYTE product. Please contact us at newegg-support@gigabyteusa.com with the case number 94199 in the subject line. We will provide personalized service and analysis to help solve your issue ASAP. If the matter is urgent, please send us your contact number, and we will contact you.

GIGABYTE VIP Support Team

Pros: Worked and installed without any issues. Makes a great HTPC machine.

Cons: None. Works as advertised.

Pros: fairly quick runs most 1080p with out issue. HDMI on board works with windows 7 fairly easily.

Cons: Drivers on CD/DVD, who uses them any more? (available for download as well)

some 1080p just does not want to play well. haven't tracked the problem but other devices are fine.

Higher power requirement than i initially expected.

no eggs off cause could just be me.

Other Thoughts: the 1080p issue could be as simple as a codec issue, I haven't put any time into tracking it down.

I wish manufactures would start using usb sticks for drivers so i could quit having to dig out my optical drives.

while it runs okay off a cheep-o 200W it seems they suggest 300w

I have this board, an istar case (with 200w power supply) Ballistix Tactical 1 4gb stick and an Agility 4 256GB on windows 7.

Pros: Fairly cheap. Runs XBMC 12/Linux just fine

Cons: No USB boot support, I tried everything. From searching around on various forums I found many people reporting the same issue. Considering I haven't had a CD-ROM is years this made it pretty difficult to load an OS. This is inexcusable, hence the 1 egg.

My board is rev 3, there are no newer BIOS revisions available.

Other Thoughts: I was turned off to Gigabyte years ago due to various problems. Thought I'd give them another shot after all these years, learned my lesson, I will NEVER buy another Gigabyte product again.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your comments. We apologize for your difficulty with your GIGABYTE product. Please contact us at newegg-support@gigabyteusa.com with the case number 93344 in the subject line. We will provide personalized service and analysis to help solve your issue ASAP. If the matter is urgent, please send us your contact number, and we will contact you.

GIGABYTE VIP Support Team

Pros: Good Mini ITX board. CPU fan is quiet. 4 SATA II ports. up to 16gb DDR3 memory.

Cons: SATA II not SATA III, no USB 3.0

Other Thoughts: I'm using it with 8gb of Kingston Blu memory and a Samsung 470 SSD. Gets a Windows Experience Index score of 3.8. Here is the WEI score breakdown:

Processor 3.8
Memory 5.9
Graphics 4.2
Gaming Graphics 5.8
Primary Hard Disk 7.5