ECS EliteGroup GeForce 6100PM-M2 V2.0 Motherboard Review
Motherboard layout
The box is pretty small, just barely large enough to accomodate the motherboard itself. Inside the box are standard motherboard fare: a driver CD, Getting Started Guide, a paper manual, SATA cable, IDE cable, I/O shield and a driver CD.
The PCB itself is colored purple, and is laid out fairly well. The motherboard has 2 DDR-2 slots (or one bank). The motherboard’s chipset supports up to 16GB of RAM, but you can only squeeze in 4GB if you buy two 2GB sticks, which are pretty standard today. Unless you’re using a 64-bit OS then you probably won’t be able to see all 4GB of memory. The floppy, IDE, and motherboard power connectors are located right near the front of the board, which should give most drives direct access to these ports without routing wide ribbon cables all over the place.
Below this area is the Southbridge, which has a low-profile passive heatsink on it. This chipset heatsink resides right in front of a PCI and PCI-e slot, but unless you have a weird card then it should clear just fine. I like to put a fan on passive chipset heatsinks, so you may not want to put anything in the first PCI slot. Below this area are the standard internal I/O connectors such as case wire hookups and USB headers. The bottom edge of the board has connectors for the internal audio codec: HD_Audio, CD_IN and SPDIF.
The board has room to accomodate four add-on cards. The x16 PCI-Express slot is colored a bright orange, and is closest to the CPU. Below this is a x1 PCIe slot, which also has the motherboards clock battery next to it, but there shouldn’t be any clearance issues. Below this are two legacy PCI slots. The first PCI slot is right next to the southbridge chipset, so I would recommend only using the second slot unless you absolutely have to.
The CPU area has plenty of room to accomodate today’s large heatsinks, like the Evercool Transformer 6 Heatsink reviewed here. There is a standard 4-pin motherboard power connector right beside the AM2+ socket. Unfortunately, there are no solid-state capacitors to clean the power coming to the chipset. The mosfets appear to be a 3-phase design, but use cheaper components. Above the socket is a standard 4-pin fan connector, which allows the motherboard to monitor and adjust the speed of the fan based on the die temperature.
The I/O panel is pretty standard for an inexpensive board such as this. From left to right there is a standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse port, LPT and serial port (I don’t know why these are even used in modern board designs). To the right of the COM port is an analog VGA port. To the right of this are four USB 2.0 ports and a single 10/100 LAN port (I would have liked to see a gigabit LAN, however). To the right of this are three audio connectors, which are usually assigned Line out, microphone, and line in.
Alrighty, well now you know the hype that ECM has provided for their motherboard. Now I’m going to throw it together with my own various parts to see what it can do. I did a little investigative work and found that this board is not exactly prime for overclocking. So this seems like this board will be a good test for my overclocking skills. I am providing the following additions to make the mobo operational:
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPU (check prices)
- 2GB of Kingston DDR2-800 (check prices)
- Evercool Transformer 6 heatsink (read our review)
- Coolermaster chipset cooler (check prices)
- Corsair TX750 Watt PSU (read our review) (check prices)
- Seagate 7200.11 1TB HDD (check prices)
The motherboard did not come with a processor, and this is not uncommon. So since I just upgraded to an AMD 6000+ Dual Core, I am going to use the old 3800+ that came with the original mobo. I don’t want to use my premium processor for an overclocking experiment.
31 Comments
There is a way to increase the core voltage, ive located it in the bios,
It isn't placed where you would normaly look for it and the bandwith is only 0.05 but still….it's possible
It stands under CPU Feature and then you click on NPT Vid Control, the core voltage of my processor runs on 1.325 the max. i can set it is 1.375
I have this mobo, V7.0, and I don't know how to overclock CPU on it. Help me please!
I run this motherboard with a AM3 Athlon II X3 435 and a ATI 5770 without any problems at all. Just remember that the motherboard only supports a TDP of max 95w.
I'm able to play BC2 (in 1920×1080), COD:BO and Metro 2033 without any problems with this setup. Talk about longevity!
Will my AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ work with this board, mine has the 512kb cache. And will my Inno3D Geforce GTS250 1gb work, it needs a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot to work at its full potential.
we hate this mother board.We cant get this drivers after format can u give correct download link.
hey coud u tell me please how to permanently disable on board chipset nvidia.
how to download all driver GEFORCE6100PM-M2 board motherboard driver, from lan, display adaptor, chipset,ect
Please send me a copy of the original disk for the installation for GEFORCE6100PM-M2 motherboard..Thanks a lot, Prime
Is it ok to put an Inno3D 9400GT 1gb ddr3 128bit hdmi video card here? It is PCI Express..!
i put 9600gt in that board, and its running fine
This seems an allright board if you are poor like me, i wanna pair it up with an Athlon II X2 250. Thanks a lot for the review!
good review! i think i will buy this board :)
harold did u manage to get a copy of the installation disk for the mother board let me know malcolm
why am i having trouble installing OS in my GEFORCE6100PM-M2 i just bought it today XD and im really get annoid
looking to now upgrade the processor to a 6000+ at 2 gb of ram i seem to have enough ram but the processor i am using now is really incapable ( 4200+ )when rendering an d previewing while i am editing, also need to upgrade the sound card, ect.
your processor isn't the prob, you need to upgrade your videocard, most video editing sofware using GPU not CPU to preview your work,
My installation disk cracked and is useless. Am unable to get a replacement from ECS. There download drivers don't do the job. Coud someone please email me a copy of the original installation disk for the GEFORCE6100PM-M2 motherboard? Thanks, Harold
hey… my friend may i know were you gonna download the driver of this GEFORCE6100PM-M2 motherboard? Thanks, jonathan
great review man! i learned a lot. tnx!=)
IF I TURN OFF SYSTEM POWER FAN& CPU FAN IS RUNS (MODEL:ECS EliteGroup GeForce 6100PM-M2 V2.0 Motherboard)
Argenteam, according to specs for this mobo, it is capable of running the original Phenoms. As for the new breed that are just coming out, there is no telling unless you are willing to try it.
That's strange. And everything still runs okay when it's on? OS, everything?
I have this motherboard paired with a Sempron LE-1200@2800 mhz + Supertalent DDR2 800@932 mhz. That's a 33 of overclock. Everything works perfect, very stable and fast. I was wondering if a new Bios can make run a Phenom II
i have a question though it seem silly to you still i need to know,,i have thgis very motherboard and my question is, does it support the vista 64 bit os? the sooner i get an answer the sooner i will install my windows 64 bit so i eagerly await your reply.
yes 64bit os is supported
Any Athlon64-based motherboard can support a 64-bit OS because the memory controller is on the CPU, not the motherboard chipset. Intel motherboards needs 965 or better chipset.
was very helpful..As i am new to new builds.. thanks for info on geforce6100 sm-m2 mobo..
Hey, no problem. I try to write me reviews so those with no previous experience will get something out of it.
I personally didn't like this motherboard combined with a CPU over 60 watts. The caps didn't seem very stable. Otherwise it would have been an alright motherboard
Hi guys, just want to ask because when I try to install Windows 7 Ultimate using IDE HDD, it failed. Any suggestions?
It works OK so long as you have the BIOS set to boot from the HD (I'm not talking about the boot sequence).
It'd not as easy, I'm finding, to get it to boot with RAID enabled. :-/