GIGABYTE GA-M61SME-S2 AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: You get a lot for the money here. Very stable and very fast with good matching hardware.

Cons: Why did they hide the overclocking?

Overall Review: You -can- overclock this board. Go into the BIOS by pressing DELETE during POST, and at the BIOS menu, press CTRL+F1. This will unlock a new menu option "Advanced Chipset Settings." You can change your FSB, multiplier, and RAM speed here. You cannot change your voltages.

Pros: Latest bios update includes Phenom support

Cons: need to boot with Athlon/Sempron to flash bios before installing Phenom.

Overall Review: running stable with Phenom 9500 for about 3 days now (upgraded from x2-3600)

Pros: Extremely good performance. Manual is excellent. Q-Flash updates BIOS without bootable floppy. Video quality and performance much better than I expected.

Cons: 8-channel sound requires an optional part that is difficult to find, so if you want to keep this board inexpensive, you'll have to live without surround sound.

Overall Review: I bought this board to replace a very disappointing ECS 690G that did poorly with Linux. WOW what a difference! Every piece of hardware and software attached to this board runs out of the box and in an optimal fashion. This was my first Gigabyte board, and will not be my last.

Pros: Works great - very easy build. Loaded in Antec NSK 4400 case/380w PSU. All standoff holes lined up right on target, the included back i/o panel fit perfectly. Using Samsung LCD and installed AMD Athlon 64 3200 with retail sink & fan, two 512 sticks of Kingston DDR2-5300, WD OEM SATA HD, Lite-On cdrw-dvd combo, and Sony FDD. Easy BIOS setup - didn't update. All worked, first try.

Cons: Instruction book needs a little better detail/text on FP pin line-ups. This board has little space for add-ons, board is only 9.6"x8.6"(only one ide, two SATA 3.0, etc). Best for simple build.

Overall Review: I used this board to build extra home Internet/OpenOffice PC. Running OpenSuse 10.3 Linux out of the box great. Onboard Nvidia 6100, sound, and LAN worked without separate driver loads needed. Would buy again.

Pros: Awesome price for budget builds, quality board, flex-ATX size fits in about any case, 6100 chipset (need I say more?!), sharp looking pcb, easy-to-use drivers CD

Cons: BIOS boot time seems to be slower than most of the ones I have built lately & why doesn't it have onboard gigabit LAN?!

Overall Review: I have used this board twice in recent builds, although I think it is wrong to call it a budget board. The price is right, but I love Gigabyte boards as of late, so I used it in a build for a neighbor where price wasn't necessarily an object. It does everything he will need it to do with great speed and I'm able to use all top-end components and still keep it under 350 bills. My only complaint with this board is that the BIOS doesn't seem to have a "fast boot" option and spends about 8-10 seconds before it gets to the "system loading" XP logo. That isn't necessarily an issue, since they keep it on all of the time, as many people do. I paired it up with an X2 3800+, 2GB of Corsair DDR2 & a 320GB Seagate. BTW, I have found, from sad experience, that Seagate hard drives work the best with the 6100 chipset. Once it is booted into XP, it rarely hesitates upon opening an app & things load quickly, thanks mostly to the DDR2. All in all, it is an excellent board for fast, stable builds.

Pros: easy to install and almost everything worked well

Cons: onboard sound was dead. rather than rma i bought a sound card.

Pros: Inexpensive, yet has plenty of options. Will hold 4 gig of ram. Video on board. Everything seems to work. Has current drivers with set. Gigabyte support IS outstanding if you are technically competent. Am using Microsoft XP Home.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: Must insert memory chips until they click or won't post. Windows will not recognise the hardward until you load the Nvidia drivers, no sound or internet. Gigabyte makes good stuff. New egg delivers, it to less than a day for the order to ship and was here in a couple of days.

Pros: I received this motherboard cleanly packaged. You get exactly what you ask for, and I think the price is pretty fair. Also, you get plenty of screws and the proper cables to securely install it onto your motherboard and connect your other components to it. Great Buy!

Cons: The ethernet can only go up to 100mbps, and it could be lower priced.