I am planning on buying a new motherboard and processor. My price range is around total of $400. I have been looking at soyo motherboards, and i wanna get a 2.53 ghz processor. What are some good brands and what should i look for in the motherboards? what are the differences between the different ddr rams?

Price is my main concern (and options available to me with the hardware). For example, how many PCI slots do I get, how much RAM can the board hold, etc; generic information. I don't follow hardware too carefully (gets outdated way to fast). This isn't a suggestion of which brand to choose. I posted to share a link, in case you did not know of it, where to get good deals on mobo/cpu combos. http://www.pricewatch.com/menus/m306.htm Many companies that post on this site require that you live in the U.S. ECS is good. Gigabyte, I believe I once heard someone say, that it has dual BIOS capabilities. I have never used such a baord, so I cannot confirm this. Perhaps it was another brand. Oh well, it's good to look through the list there anyway to get some sort of idea what you might be looking for. Good luck.

Stay away from Asus..... nuff said

Fanatic is right ECS is alright, I Really recommend SOYO Dragon Kt400 with the 333mhz DDR thats what i have im very satisfied :)

There is a hardware forum on this web site. Read through positings there and you'll get some idea as to what people think.