Conclusion: AOpen Is Cleverly Open
If you want to go with a Pentium 4 or Pentium D computer today, do still tread carefully, however. The real downside of Intel's current architecture is high leakage currents, which means king-size thermal dissipation and cooling requirements. Unfortunately, Enhanced SpeedStep is not available for all processor models and eases the problem only partially, leaving the user along with high thermal numbers and electricity bills.
Finally, AOpen is the first motherboard manufacturer to counter this handicap and extends what SpeedStep does. The i945Pa-PLF is able to dynamically reduce the FSB clock when idle and thus can be called a clever solution. If you are looking for a wide feature set, you should also consider the boards from Foxconn or Gigabyte. As long as this is not necessary, AOpen wins our recommendation and editor's choice.
