ASRock P4I65G - motherboard - micro ATX - Socket 478 - i865G

If your like i was before stuck with a pretty decent socket 478 CPU such as a Pentium 4 2.8 , then this is one of the best motherboards i would recommend to get.

There are lots of great advantages with this motherboard such as the size, its a Micro ATX motherboard meaning that you can have a smaller case such as a media centre case.
It has 2 DDR 400 (backwards compatible with DDR 333,266 and 200) slots which can be used in Dual channel Mode if both Ram modules are the same.
The northbridge chipset on this board is an Intel 865g which supports a front side bus up to 800 mhz , but you can also use 400 and 533 mhz bus CPU's with this board.
It has two SATA slots which i would say is the most future friendly part on the motherboard meaning it wont be a problem when upgrading your hard drive or some optical drives which are now SATA interface. Although these SATA ports are 1.5 gbs unlike the newer 3.0 gbs slots on newer boards,this wont make much difference to your pc's hard drive reading speeds if any difference.
The onboard 5.1 channel sound is decent and is good quality, but if your fussy about your sound and want the best sound quality from your pc then i recommend a card like the Creative X-Fi series.
If your not into playing demanding games or using graphics hungry applications then the onboard Intel extreme graphics 2 will be fine for you as this is onboard and will mean that you wont have to buy a graphics card, but if you do like playing games then i recommend a half decent graphics card such as a 6 series Nvidia card or an equivalent ATI card.
This motherboard doesn't lack in USB ports as it has 6 in the back and 2 USB port headers for plugging in the front USB ports on your case, you can use all six USB ports on the back and one port header but if you use two port headers then the two middle USB ports on the back of the board are non functional (each port header can receive two USB ports.
This board features 3 Pci slots for installing expansion cards such as a TV card or sound card. It also features an AGP 8x expansion slot for a graphics card.
Other ports on this board are a Parallel port, com port and a Ethernet port capable of speeds 10 and 100 mbs. There are 2 ATA 100 IDE headers for hard drives and optical drives and 1 Floppy port header.
Included in the box is 1 SATA transfer cable, 1 4 pin molex to SATA power cable, 1 floppy cable, 1 40 pin IDE cable, I/O backplate for case, installation guide booklet and driver cd which includes McAfee Virus scan. The BIOS on this motherboard is pretty basic, you cant change any of the Voltages but you can change the FSB speed for overclocking your CPU. The power connectors on this board are one 20 pin and the separate 4 pin power connector.

Obviously there are some disadvantages with this board which include the fact that it doesn't have a Pci express slot on it which is now widely used for graphics card's meaning you are very limited to the Graphics card you can buy, the ram slots are DDR and not DDR 2 which is also now widely used, but this isn't that much of a big deal.

I've been using this board for about 1 year now and it hasn't let me down, the performance on it is decent and the chipset never overheats. I have an old GeForce mx440 128 mb graphics card plugged into this board equipped also with a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz and 2 512mb slots of ram running in Dual channel mode and my pc is running quick and smoothly most of the time,it has had a few crashes now and then but what pc doesn't. It plays a few decent games at a smooth frame rate such as Half Life 2 and Need for speed Most Wanted at a resolution of 1024 x 768.

My overall conclusion of the P4I65G is that if you dont want to upgrade your whole pc, have a socket 478 CPU and lack features such as SATA and AGP 8x then this is the motherboard to get as it only costs about £30 - £40 which in my opinion is a bargain.