I invented a rule of thumb when buying a new laptop or desktop PC. I call it the "three threes" rule of thumb. If you have all three three's, you are guaranteed that your motherboard and by extension the entire PC is not too old. Of course this rule of thumb will get out of date soon (its now july 2011). At the end I'll talk about an addition to make it a "four threes" rule. But eventually, as techology progresses, this rule of thumb will be obsolete.
This rule of thumb relies on the happy coincidence that several new motherboard features just happen to have the number 3 on them. So for a noob person building or buying a PC, just look if the motherboard has all of the threes. Think of it as a "must have" list of features
1. DDR 3
2. USB 3.0
3. SATA III (although the more correct term would be SATA revision 3.0 orSATA 6 Gbit/s)
in the near future, the fourth three would be
4. PCI-express 3.0
I did not include #4 right now since PCI-e 3.0 is not widely available yet in the philippines
update: of course like all rule of thumbs, this is not 100% accurate. Knowing the chipset model or the CPU socket of the motherboard would be more accurate in some cases but its more difficult for noobs
the end
