I have used a Gigabyte motherboard as well as an Asus and I just overall like Asus better. No specific reason, really, I just feel it's more feature rich and more reliable for me.

Sounds good! Im saving like 50$ getting the ASUS anyway lol. Some people said they had trouble installing Windows XP with it. Do you know anything about that happening?

Oh also, how will I know if my RAM is compatible with the ASUS motherboard? This is the RAM http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...145-450&depa=0

--nevermind
the motherboard says RAM: 4x DIMM for Dual-Channel DDR400/333/266 Max 4GB
the ram is DDR400(PC3200), 184 Pin DDR SDRAM so i think thats ok


I was going to get the one with the activity lights because I thought it had better preformance, until I realized basically for the extra 50$ your just getting lights.. And whats this about the Memtests and stuff and 6-3-3-2 and stuff like that, i'm a RAM noob

I have older Asus boards and they still to this day are very stable. I have an Asus P2B-F, P2B, P3B-F, and C34vx (not sure of this one its my dads board) The only issue we have ever had with an Asus is the P3B-F (since replaced with a new P3B-F) got left on during a lightning storm, Power supply got taged, Bought a new one, turned out to be faulty and the bad power supply blew up the board. Other then that my dad and I swear by Asus won't buy anything but Asus.

Cool, that makes me feel better on picking ASUS (I knew they were a good company anyway). The one I'm getting has onboard wireless LAN so that means all i have to do is get a wireless router, configure the internet setup and im set; at least i think thats what it means lol. I could hard-wire the motherboard to the modem also right?

Personally, I think I'd go with ASUS.

I've got a Gigabyte GA-7VT600 1394 board. I like it okay enough, but I have some gripes with it. For starters, it's got jumpers for setting the mulitplier and FSB speed. In this day and age, that's a little funky, IMHO. There's not a CMOS jumper on it-- you have to pull the battery on it to clear the BIOS settings. And finally, it doesn't adhere to AMD spec for the processor socket-- I've got a Swiftech MCX-462V CPU cooler on my Barton 2500, and I had to nudge over a capacitor to ensure a proper fit. The board performs well enough, and it has plenty of features (serial ATA RAID, firewire, USB2.0, 6-channel sound, supports DDR400, up to XP 3200+ chip), but it's those little things that irk you when you're working inside of your case.

The last ASUS board I owned I LOVED. It was an A7V-133C. That board was a WORKHORSE. I had it paired with 512MB PC133, and an Athlon 1.4Ghz t-bird. That thing was my first box I was ever completely happy with, I didn't cut corners anywhere with it. I ended up selling it, and it's still running perfectly, last I heard. If their current boards are anything like that board, I'd definitely go with an ASUS. Matter of fact, I think that the next box I build will be based off of an ASUS board...