The physical layout of components on the PCB is excellent and Gigabyte's engineers deserve a round of applause for designing a board that is so easy to work with. The IDE/floppy and main ATX power connectors are in the best spot possible to the right of the DIMM slots. Even the Serial ATA II slots are tucked away nicely at the edge of the PCB as are the USB/IEEE 1394a and Front Panel I/O headers.

The motherboard comes with a copy of Norton Internet Security 2005 software which is good for 90 days. All capacitors found on the Gigabyte GA-K8N51PVMT-9 are made by Rubycon.

Users with long videocards like the GeForce 7800 series or Radeon X1800's have to use a bit of caution when installing into the Gigabyte GV-K8N51PVMT-9. Because of the lack of space, the videocard and DIMM slots are quite close and it's possible for the memory locks on the bottom to come in contact with the videocard or its heatsink.

The Gigabyte GV-K8N51PVMT-9 motherboard we tested showed some stability issues that appear to have been related to chipset heat. Without any additional cooling, the GeForce 6150 Northbridge would apparently overheat causing the system to lock up or to reboot itself when running 3D benchmarks, pointing a fan in its general direction solved this. Perhaps Gigabyte should use an active heatsink on the GeForce 6150 instead of a passive heatsink. Be sure to check out the expert tips on video system memory and using the nVIDIA trial nStant video software.