In my experience,
Asus and
Abit mainboards tend to be well arranged. My previous board, the Abit P5A-B even had the
CPU clock speed,
multiplier and
voltage jumper settings printed on the board themselves. Expensive boards tend to be
logically arranged, have better
documentation, are more
stable and often have a "
unique" feature to set them apart from the competition.
Don't be fooled by cheap boards with extra features, for example, on board
video,
sound,
modem,
nic,
etc... I have had experience with these before, and they are
nasty! For example, the on-board video on said cheap board used system
RAM, but would only work if there was a pair of matched
SIMMs installed. I was forced to swap one of the
DIMM for a pair of SIMMs from a friend of mine (happy to have his SIMMs upgraded to a new DIMM). (Don't offer to build cheap computers for your relatives for free, kids!)
A different board forced me to
underclock the
CPU because of incredible system instability. More expensive boards with cheaper CPUs can make more sense...
Remember, you get what you pay for... If your time is at all valuable to you, pay the extra and get a decent board. If stability or compatibility is an issue, get a good board from a reputable manufacturer.
Cheaper boards are more expensive in the long run.
Whoops. It looks like I'm pushing Asus and Abit boards here. These are the two manufacturers that I've stuck with, due to the what I've mentioned above. There are other good manufacturers, eg, Tyan, Gigabyte and others. Check out sites like Tom's Hardware and Anandtech for reviews. It's worthwhile doing research on what you're getting.