The driver
rtl8187se chipsets (that's the PCI express version), used the r8187se kernel module up till the 3.14 kernel.
From linux kernel version 3.15 and up, r8187se is removed and rtl8180 module gained support for the r8187se chipsets.
The problem
So far so good, except that the rtl8180 driver does not seem to work properly for the owners of rtl8187se cards.
A friend has reported getting only 15% signal regardless the network.
The solution
I grabbed the module from version 3.14 before it was deleted, changed the Makefile a bit to allow building it as an external module, and made packages for Archlinux / Gentoo to make the process easier.
It may need to be rebuilt across some minor / major kernel updates.
To blacklist the rtl8180 module enter the following:
echo "blacklist rtl8180" > /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8180_blacklist.conf
If the r8187se is not loaded automatically, you can add it yourself in Archlinux & Gentoo (with systemd):
echo r8187se > /etc/modules-load.d/r8187se.conf
For Gentoo with OpenRC, add it to the modules array: modules="... r8187se" in /etc/conf.d/modules
Distribution packages
Archlinux
The package is provided by the AUR. You can install it with an AUR helper of your choice: rtl8187se or manually by invoking the following commands as a regular user. (to build packages from the AUR, the base-devel package group is assumed to be installed)
wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/rt/rtl8187se/rtl8187se.tar.gz
tar xf rtl8187se.tar.gz
cd rtl8187se
makepkg -si
Gentoo
The package is provided by the gentoo-el overlay. You can install it with the following commands as root. (you need to have layman installed and configured)
layman -a gentoo-el
emerge net-wireless/rtl8187se