There's as broad a choice as there's ever been for those in the market for a motherboard. It's for that reason that, in this brief guide, we'll sort your processor out first to help narrow down the motherboard choices. Fortunately, in a way, the processor market offers a lesser number of options, and as usual your choice must be defined by your budget and what use the eventual PC will be put to.

If you're after a machine for basic office tasks, with little demand for any higher performance graphical work, then the budget processor line is your best bet. Here, your options are the Duron from AMD or the Celeron from Intel. Some of AMD's Athlon XP processors may also fall into this price bracket, but we're coming to them later.

How to find the Best Motherboard?

This is a brief starter guide to buying a board and processor, and it's wise to research further once you've worked out roughly what your requirements are. While your processor choice is quite narrow, when it comes to the motherboard you can spend anything from £30 to over £200. Just make sure you're getting the features you want and need, rather than falling for fancy box copy.