Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2 Motherboard

I've used one of these boards for over 3 years with no issues. With a Radeon X1650 graphics card its been smooth running and I'm only now thinking of upgrading. I will keep this as an internet browser PC though.

This seems to be a rogue board with a dodgy BIOS. The BIOS failed to reliably autodetect IDE (PATA) and SATA drives. Spent a whole day trying to get this board to work properly. It seems that quality control has been sacrificed at the expense of price. Next time I will purchase a board with a better track record.

Small form factor, some good on-boards: sound-card, ethernet connectivity, Good basic board for a beginner computer, or for a workstation, but poor upgrade ability leaves a lot to be desired. Therefore I do not recommend the Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2 Motherboard.

Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2 Motherboard is a poor design, you get what you pay for and sometimes less, this is a good example of less. It will only support 1.8v memory and this is extremely difficult to install properly.

Was OK about this motherboard - not much scope for expansion later, or chance of overclocking, but otherwise had seemed OK. Then after just 2 months it failed. I wouldn't choose to get another one, not just because of the failure, but because the BIOS options are too limited and the available slots are not great, so it's very much at the bargain basement end of boards.

Good. Till faulty ones appear... and cause your business to have a bad rep.

IT ONLY SUPPORTS PCIe X8 although it has a X16 slot most good video cards will have a massive decrease in performance.