Verdict: Gigabyte redefines the definition of bargain with this awesome motherboard.

Gigabyte appears to have spotted the same market opportunity as ASRock, which is that, while the budget Intel P31 chipset officially supports up to only 1,066MHz FSB CPUs, it can easily be tweaked to support the higher 1,333MHz FSB of newer CPUs.

The end result is that Gigabyte's GA-P31-DS3L is not only one of the cheapest motherboards ever to grace the pages of Custom PC, but it's also one of the best budget products we've reviewed.

Despite being a bargain basement model, the GA-P31-DS3L supports most of the features you'd expect to find on more high-end motherboards, such as a 16x PCI-E slot and Intel HD Audio. What's more, the BIOS automatically detects when a 1,333MHz FSB CPU has been installed and adjusts the frequency accordingly, which means that you don't need to 'overclock' the motherboard to make new Core 2 CPUs run at full speed. Clearly, Intel was being somewhat economical with the truth when it stated that the P31 chipset doesn't support 1,333MHz FSB CPUs. In case the on-board audio and single LAN port don't meet your requirements, there are three PCI slots and three 1x PCI-E slots.

As this is a budget board, we weren't surprised to find that the Northbridge and Southbridge are fitted with small heatsinks, while the VRMs are left open to the elements. However, despite its basic cooling and use of the aging ICH7R Southbridge, the GA-P31-DS3L proved to be a good performer in our benchmarks, speeding past several motherboards that cost more than twice as much. Even more incredibly, the BIOS offers the ability to overvolt the CPU, RAM, Northbridge and FSB. With an additional 0.3V coursing through the Northbridge and FSB, we easily overclocked the FSB to a maximum of 480MHz.

A 480MHz FSB would be considered a good overclock for any motherboard, but from a motherboard costing less than £50, it's stunning. However, our enthusiasm for the GA-P31-DS3L is tempered by its lack of VRM cooling, which means that it isn't suited to running overclocked and overvolted for months on end. Still, it's an incredible bargain and well worth considering as long as you bear in mind, or circumnavigate, the limited VRM cooling.

• Multi-GPU graphics - 20th June 2008
• CPU water cooling - 17th June 2008
• Hard disks - 20th March 2008
• Audio hardware - 29th February 2008
• Graphics cards - 24th January 2008
• CPUs - 21st December 2007
• Motherboards - 13th November 2007

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