Motherboards are dull. Decide the specs you need, compare on price and, maybe, take branding and reputation into account, and pull trigger. It's that simple.

The mini-ITX form factor has been around for a while, but it wasn't until the Sandy Bridge crowd tipped up that we started to see some lovely-looking, teeny-tiny motherboards worth a damn.

With the usual big brand suspects rolling out motherboards based on Intel's H77 chipset, it's time for something a little different.

Ultimately it's a excellent, bargain Z77 board, offering impressive options for the PC gamer without breaking the bank.

A rather weak debut for ASRock's middle-order X79 mobo

The pro gamer has put his name on this AMD 990FX motherboard, but is it any good for amateurs?

The ITX format has finally come of age

The Extreme 4 makes good use of the latest Intel chipset at a very good price point

An affordable Intel Z68 chipset motherboard has landed

This motherboard offers a high-end package with a small price

A competitively priced AMD motherboard but some corners have been cut

Once again Asrock has done some of us a favour and taken last year's chipset and made it compatible with this year's technology.

Conspicuous bargain or false economy? Just what to make of Asrock's slightly zany LGA775 socket motherboard? For starters, it's based on Intel's 945 chipset which in theory does not support the Core 2 family of CPUs

AMD's Athlon chip sure makes life easy. By integrating many functions into the CPU die, there's a lot less to muck up. Which perhaps explains why this socket-AM2 board delivers such convincing performance.

The nonchalance with which Intel defenestrates motherboard chipsets can be extremely irritating. Especially if you've recently paid big money for a premium board, only to find a minor processor revision has left you with no upgrade path.

Unconventional to a fault. That's the Asrock CONROEXFIRE. It's not allbad news however. Indeed, this is the kind of board you really want to like.