GIGABYTE AM1M-S2H Review: What Can $35 Get You?

GIGABYTE AM1M-S2H Conclusion

Low cost, low power motherboards are difficult to conclude. With high end motherboards containing controllers and where we discuss performance, it is easy to rule out $20 of controller improvements for a better overclocking range. But when the whole motherboard is $35, and the motherboard/CPU/DRAM combo for $120 or so, it all comes down to the market.

If we imagine a digital signage seller, in the prototype stage they will buy a set of units in order to design the system. Because the motherboards are cheap, if they accidentally get the wrong one, then buying another is relatively trivial. The same goes for replacement parts: rather than take the time to RMA, it becomes cheaper just to bin and replace where necessary.

The biggest issue for this type of environment for the AM1M-S2H is the position of the SATA ports. Because they are both right in the middle of the motherboard, SATA cables for the hard-drive and ODD have to reach over components to get there. The only way to mitigate this would be to boot from USB, which is not uncommon for digital signage, but what would make that setup better is an onboard USB port akin to some server designs.

In actual fact, I wonder if having an onboard microSD card reader might be more pertinent for this type of platform. Rather than using a bulky SATA device, or relying on a USB that sticks out, how about an onboard microSD card reader that you can install an OS and boot from for the signage. Although the barrier to this, as always, is cost of implementation.

For users looking to build a daily system, without an add-in card you will have to decide between two HDDs or a HDD/ODD combination. The full-length PCIe slot helps if you want to add in more screens or a full-size GPU, although the CPU performance might be the main barrier to doing anything more than web browsing and word processing. One might argue that for GPU compute work, such as some video conversion or rendering, if it can be offloaded onto the GPU effectively with little CPU involvement then it might be worth a shot.

As a motherboard, it worked in our testing and the results are in-line with what we would expect for $35, if not slightly more impressive than we presumed. There are some style changes that I would put forward, especially the SATA port positioning. Unfortunately users have to put up with the older style software. It might help GIGABYTE in the future to develop some base fan control software for any platform to replace EasyTune 6, which might get bundled with the next generation of AM1 (if there is going to be another).