MBReview's "Ultimate Motherboard"
Stephen Cooper, May 1st, 2006

     It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a year now since I originally tackled the topic of the “Ultimate Motherboard”. We’ve seen some changing winds over the past year, but for the most part there have been few products breaking out and causing a storm for their originality. The motherboard market has been a bit dry in the eyes of this writer. Without a doubt, there are some stellar products in the marketplace today, some of which come quite close to what I would consider as the “Ultimate Motherboard”. But, they all lack that "wow" factor.

     For this portion of the article, I’m going to be covering several topics dealing with the hardware aspects of a motherboard, as well as other features such as the accessories that the manufacturers include. When it comes to purchasing a motherboard, many consumers out there look for the most that they can get for their dollar, or whatever unit of currency that they might be using. Who wants to pay a premium price for a lackluster product after all. Accessories,as an example, are often overlooked by manufacturers to cut costs, thereby lowering the value per dollar of the product.

     Let’s start things off by covering a topic that has fallen to the backburner a little over this past year, aesthetics. After the onset of the modding craze, we began to see an influx of new motherboards that featured unique substrate colors, and overall were far more eye catching than ever before. Since I last tackled this topic, there has been somewhat of a regression in the amount of these unique products. Demand for such products has likely softened as the modding craze has leveled off, but aesthetics can still play a vital role in the mind of the high-end consumer.