Verdict: Cheap, cheerful and reasonably overclockable

The Intel 945P first appeared back when Intel was trying to convince us all to buy Pentium Ds, but it was never a particularly distinguished chipset, thanks to its poor performance and limited overclockability. Since then Intel has revised the 945P to the 945PL, which adds support for Core 2 CPUs.

The 945PL provides the basis for this super-cheap and diminutively-sized Core 2 motherboard. Unlike the MSI P4M890M, the GA-945PL-S3 has four DIMM sockets, giving it more upgrade flexibility. The PCB is smaller than that of a full-sized ATX motherboard, but it's the same width, providing enough space for a 16x PCI-E slot, three 1x PCI-E slots and three PCI slots. Despite its sub-£60 price tag, the GA-945PL-S3 has an 8-channel Intel HD Audio sound chip, although, with only three analogue audio jacks and no S/PDIF ports, the board is limited to 6-channel sound.

The GA-945PL-S3 proved to be a good performer; at stock settings, its benchmark scores were almost identical to those of the much more expensive P965- and 975X-based motherboards. Even more impressively, the BIOS offers the ability to increase the FSB to 600MHz, the vcore to 2V and the RAM to 2.4V, as well as up the FSB termination by 0.3V and the PCI-E bus by 0.3V. By maxing out all the voltages except the vcore, which we set to 1.525V, we raised the FSB of our test Core 2 Duo CPU from 266MHz to 290MHz. This is the same overclocked frequency as that of the much more expensive MSI P965 Platinum, and just 10MHz less than the Asus P5NSLI, which is a great achievement for a sub-£60 board.

While the GA-945PL-S3 isn't suitable for dedicated overclockers, it enables you to build a cheap Core 2 PC and squeeze some extra performance out of the CPU. What's more, at less than £60, it's amazing value for money and certainly worth buying if you're on a tight budget.

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