Carrying out upgrades on your PC used to be a major job, and changing from one type of processor to another was the biggest job of all. These days your PC is more like a kiddy's toy that snaps together in a matter of minutes, but of course some of us make it look like a hard job to impress our more gullible friends and relatives.

This ease of upgrade is thanks to some incredibly clever engineering to ensure that components from one manufacturer are compatible with those from another manufacturer. On the downside it means that your PC is usually a fairly large beige tower, but at least that gives you plenty of working room with access to the innards of your PC.

Right at the heart of your PC is the motherboard, which dictates the family of processor that you have to use, as well as the memory type and whether or not you get features such as USB 2.0, Firewire and Serial ATA. The single most important part of the motherboard is the chipset, as it controls most of the features, but in addition the motherboard manufacturer can add extra controllers for Ethernet LAN, integrated audio, RAID and extra IDE connectors.

On top of that you may get software included with the motherboard, including anti-virus, games and utilities. As well as that, some manufacturers include rounded IDE cables, front panel-mounted ports and a whole array of back brackets with extra ports. This can double the price of a basic motherboard, so the exact model code that you buy is very important.

We've gathered together seven Pentium 4 motherboards that range in price from £36 to over £130 plus VAT, with a huge variety of features, to show you the options available if you're interested in installing the latest and arguably the fastest processor around.