There are literally hundreds of Pentium 4 motherboards available, offering a huge variety of features. The seven motherboards that we've looked at range in price from £36 to £132 plus VAT, which is a massive variance, but we are satisfied that the more expensive motherboards include so many integrated features and functions that they often offer good value for money.

If you're building a new PC with an eye on the future you'll want Serial ATA, loads of USB 2.0, perhaps some Firewire and you may as well have six-channel audio as it's practically free of charge.

The decisions come when you have to decide how much legacy support you need for the old serial connectors and Parallel ATA devices. A fairly basic motherboard such as the ECS Photon PF1 will save you money in the short term and offers you everything you need, but doesn't support many parallel devices or Serial ATA drives.

The rather expensive Abit IC7-G has connectors for four Serial ATA drives and also has an AGP pro graphics card slot, which could be ideal for workstation users. Albatron went a slightly different route by offering eight-channel integrated audio on top of a whole host of other features. The gaudy DFI LANparty is visually impressive and has front panel-mounted ports, while the Epox is a very neat and tidy design despite its long features list.

Mercury squeezed integrated graphics and audio into a micro-ATX design, but the most impressive motherboard of all is the MSI 875P Neo-FISR2. It's slightly cheaper than most of the 875P models and has three Parallel ATA connectors as well as four Serial ATA connectors. The design is well thought out and the over-clockers among you will find plenty to fiddle with in the pursuit of yet more speed.