Make sure your motherboard is physically and electrically compatible with your processor. The two main factors to consider are: the processor form factor and bus speed support. Desktop processors come in the following form factors: Socket 7 for Pentium, Cyrix, and AMD K5/K6 series; Socket 370 for Pentium III (Coppermine, Tualatin), Celeron/II; Socket A/462 for AMD Thunderbird, Athlon, Duron, XP, MP; Socket 423 for older Pentium 4 CPUs under 2.0GHz; Socket 478 -for the current generation of Pentium 4 processors and Celeron Processors; Slot 1 for older Pentium II, Pentium III (under 1 GHz), and some Celeron processors; and Slot A for original classic Athlon processors and some older Thunderbird processors (under 1GHz).
If you are building a new system we highly recommend going with a CPU and motherboard that is of current technology such as, the AMD Athlon XP or the Intel Pentium 4 (Socket 478), in order to maintain an upgrade path. Once you know what form factor you are going to use you must make sure that the motherboard you are going to use supports the bus speed of your processor or higher. For instance, if you were buying an Intel Pentium 4 processor with a 533MHz bus it doesn’t make sense to buy a motherboard that only supports a max bus speed of 400MHz. If you were to try to do so then the processor would either not work at all in the motherboard or at the very least it would not work at the right speed.
Likewise, you wouldn’t want to purchase an Athlon XP processor with a 333MHz bus and run it on a motherboard that only supports a 266MHz bus. For the best upgrade path go with a motherboard that supports the fastest bus speed of the processor form factor you want to use (533MHz for Socket 478, 333MHz/400MHz for Socket A, and 133MHz for Socket 370).
The reliability of a motherboard as measured by return rates is roughly correlated with the price you pay. As a rule of thumb: the higher the price the better the reliability. We suspect that manufacturers who have higher profit margins do more extensive testing and quality control before shipping. Therefore, we suggest that you buy a motherboard of the highest price your budget can afford. It is not easy to replace a motherboard, even for professional technicians. Besides, if the motherboard is bad, your whole system is likely to be in jeopardy.
On the other hand, motherboards do not have any moving, consumable parts. If they go bad, most often they do so within a month. If you can take your chances and are willing to learn how to replace a motherboard, the less expensive motherboards are just fine for budget minded buyers. To help eliminate the chance of failure we highly recommend using our testing service.
Buy current but proven technology. Purchasing yesterday’s technology can mean greater difficulty or limitation in future upgrades. For example, it doesn’t make sense to buy a Socket 423 motherboard anymore since Intel stopped making Socket 423 processors when they reached the 2.0GHz speed. Socket 423 processors are now starting to become rare and their performance is lacking compared to newer Socket 478 versions. Similarly, it doesn’t make sense to buy a motherboard that doesn’t support ATA100 or ATA133. Most hard drives are ATA100 or ATA133 now and they can run significantly faster then older ATA66 or ATA33 drives.